For Immediate Release

FIR #80: New life for news outlets, fake news 2.0 and how the ‘like’ button ruined the internet


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Shel Holtz is globe-trotting this week, so Paul Gillin and David Strom of FIR B2B take the reins. Our guests are Todd Van Hoosear, a well-known social media figure in Boston and elsewhere, and Barbara Selvin, associate professor at the Stony Brook University School of Journalism, where she created and teaches a course on the changing news industry.

* Within minutes of delaying a vote on the replacement bill for the Affordable Care Act, President Trump placed calls to The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and The Washington Post’s Robert Costa to spin the decision. These are the same publications the President recently branded as “enemies of the people.” What are we to make of his decision to reach out to them rather than Breitbart or Fox News, whom he has praised as being more reliable?
* Subscriptions surge for the ‘dishonest media’ after Trump’s attacks – Newspapers and magazines such as the New Yorker and the Atlantic and sites such as ProPublica and the ACLU are seeing print and online subscriptions surge in the wake of Trump’s victory. Could this be the silver lining in the “fake news” crisis?
* We could use one, because Nick Bolton writes in Vanity Fair that fake news is about to get even scarier than you ever dreamed. “Advancements in audio and video technology are becoming so sophisticated that they will be able to replicate real news—real TV broadcasts, for instance, or radio interviews—in unprecedented, and truly indecipherable, ways.” This is a chilling piece. Maybe blockchain will help?
* A photo of an all-male White House panel discussing women’s health issues sparks anger, highlighting the power of imagery and the importance of thinking about your images might be interpreted before you post them.
* IBM, remote-work pioneer, is calling thousands of employees back to the office. In a dramatic change of course, the company that championed telecommuting is telling its U.S. marketing employees that they must now work from one of six locations in Atlanta, Raleigh, Austin, Boston, San Francisco or New York or seek employment elsewhere. Has the tide turned on the virtual office concept?
* How do you label audio promotions? Google wants to create promotions that aren’t ads for its voice-controlled assistant, but it got grief for an audio Plug for Disney that Google said wasn’t an ad.
* One thing’s for sure: native advertising is a thing. eMarketer says spending on native digital display ads will make up more than half of all digital display ad spending in the US this year. Are these ads diluting th the quality of editorial content that goes around them?
* Dan York’s report covers the launch of a Producer API for Twitter and
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For Immediate ReleaseBy Archive