Good morning. But good night tonight to “Late Show With David Letterman.” It’s his finale.
- Hillary Clinton’s Tuesday ‘news’ was the medium, not the message
In Iowa Tuesday Hillary Clinton made news by not making news, pulling a surprise on the press and further accelerating the coincidental Periscope Presidential Campaign. She is, as media critic Jack Shafer underscored, running like a president, not a candidate. (POLITICO) | She’d blown off any serious questioning for a month since announcing her candidacy, taking only 13 questions. On Tuesday she allowed the penned-in media army to shout a few her way after yet another pre-orchestrated forum with small businessmen that, like the others, was part faux “listening tour” and part a game of media keep-away. The campaign is just starting and she’s running out a clock. She batted away a few questions Tuesday, mostly about her email controversy. (YouTube) | But the news here was the media exploiting the “hot” new app, Periscope, to instantly transmit the live video. That video beat the cable news networks and C-SPAN. NBC’s Luke Russert tweeted that it all constituted “a little history.” Perhaps. Ryan Beckwith of Time didn’t Periscope himself but tweeted a screen grab of somebody who was, he tells me. So it was ultimately about the medium, not the message, as a window opened on the multi-platform necessities facing journalists these days. It’s not just having to use Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (or, heaven forbid, actually write a long, thoughtful story). Now everybody will have to serve as live-TV reporters. Back to you in the studio, Ted and Barbara. (Poynter)
- Buyouts, heads to roll at Wall Street Journal?Capital New York)
- What’s really up, and down, with digital journalism?
Leave it to the cerebral, wonderful New York Review of Books to come up with a long, long and fascinating essay – actually the first of a three-part series – on online quality from Michael Massing. He starts with The Huffington Post and how it once “seemed on its way to defining a new type of digital journalism. Ten years on, it seems stuck in place, struggling to recapture the innovative spirit that had once defined it.” Offering what the French call a tour d’horizon, or grand survey, Massing cites Salon, Slate, Talking Points Memo and Daily Beast, among others, in arguing that the same ennui, as the same French would also put it, “seems true of the first generation of digital news sites in general. After an initial burst of daring and creativity, they have entered a middle-aged lethargy.” He concludes with some generally kind words about the transformation of Politico, and curiously damning-with-faint-praise ones about ProPublica, but then leaves us hanging with word that the Part 2 will involve his trip to “the most-talked-about site of them all, BuzzFeed.” This will be interesting! (New York Review of Books)
- As for BuzzFeed, does Massing know we had it in the 1800s?
Not everything around us is new. “If you think BuzzFeed invented the listicle, you haven’t spent enough time with 19th-century newspapers, because they’re everywhere,” says Ryan Cordell, a Northeastern University professor who knows his stuff on “virality in 19th-century newspapers.” Newspapers routinely republished lots of content, including fiction excerpts, even lists of facts found elsewhere. “They were more aggregators than producers of original content.” (Nieman Lab)
- A timely primer on libel
Jonathan Peters, a lawyer who’s a journalism professor at the University of Kansas, talks to the Columbia Journalism Review to analyze the relevance to journalists of three developments: A University of Virginia dean’s libel suit against Rolling Stone, a judge’s decision to pitch a libel suit against The New York Times brought by an academic who claimed it portrayed him as racist, and a high school football player’s libel suit against the Charleston City Paper that claims it falsely portrayed the team’s pre-game rituals as racist. He’s most intrigued by South Carolina, where the paper essentially argues that the suit should be dismissed since its coverage just repeated what the school’s diversity consultant and other officials had said. The problem may be the idiosyncrasies of state law there, which helps to underscore “libel law’s complexity” around the nation. “It’s a state creature, so it varies from place to place—and with complexity comes cost. A libel suit is expensive to bring and expensive to defend. And difficult to predict, too, because the analysis is so fact-dependent. Plus, in some places, like South Carolina, libel law is messier than it needs to be.” (CJR)
- Lucky survives but what’s ahead?
Decreasing a print publication’s frequency can suggest death throes. The Lucky Group says that’s not the case as it reduces the once-hot magazine to a quarterly from a monthly. The chief executive told Adweek the revamped Lucky will surface at the end of summer and have a more “premium ‘collectible’ feeling” with upgraded paper stock. Magazine goliath Conde Nast, which is a shareholder, will continue to print and distribute Lucky. Oh, there’s a desire “to increase output and streamline our content-to-commerce workflow,” notably grow a new e-commerce platform called LuckyShops. (Adweek)
- ‘How I learned to love writing emojis’
Joanna Stern challenged herself to write her entire Wall Street Journal column with those dinky digital imags and icons that express an idea or emotion. Could she pull it off? Impressive but I’ll stick with words for the rest of this day. (The Wall Street Journal)
- If Lucky doesn’t make it, at least there’s a new magazine for your feet. Yes, feet.
You can’t make this stuff up. Hansaplast, a band-aid brand, “is launching a line of creams, deodorant and antiperspirant called FootExpert. To promote the products, agency Being created Feet Mag, a luxury publication designed with heavy paper that can be easily turned by one’s feet, and large print that you can enjoy from an eye-to-foot distance (for those unable to lift the book close to their faces using only their toes).” (Adweek)
- Front page of the day, curated by Kristen Hare
Chicago’s RedEye marks David Letterman’s last day as host of “Late Show with David Letterman.” (Courtesy the Newseum)
- Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin
Melissa Bell is now vice president of growth and analytics at Vox Media. She co-founded Vox.com. (Capital New York) | Marc Frons is leaving The New York Times. He is chief information officer there. (Capital New York) | Marjorie Miller is now director of global news and enterprise at The Associated Press. Previously, she was the AP’s regional editor in Latin America. (The Associated Press) | Jessica Lussenhop will be a senior writer with BBC News Magazine. She is managing editor of the Riverfront Times. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) | Susan Rinkunas is now health editor at The Cut. Previously, she was senior editor at Health.com. (New York) | Sam Gill will be vice president for learning and impact at the Knight Foundation. He is vice president of Freedman Consulting. (Email) | Matt Mansfield is now director of digital content at CQ Roll Call. Previously, he was executive editor of digital at National Geographic. (Email) | Emily Banks will be deputy mobile editor at Bloomberg Digital. Previously, she was news editor for mobile content at The Wall Street Journal. (Email) | Job of the day: BuzzFeed is looking for a food editor. Get your résumés in! (Mediagazer) |Send Ben your job moves: bmullin@poynter.org.
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