Media statistic of the week

A new Pew Research survey of how Black Americans engage with local news reveals, “Local news is an important part of many Black Americans’ information diet.” 

Among the findings, around six-in-ten (58%) Black adults in the U.S. say local journalists in their area are mostly in touch with their local community. “And by a wide margin, more Black Americans who at least sometimes get news about their local community perceive that coverage as fair than unfair (44% vs. 12%).” Read the full report here.

This past week in the media industry 

The Post’s new CEO

Over the weekend, The Washington Post announced William Lewis as its new publisher and CEO, succeeding interim CEO Patty Stonesifer who joined The Post in June 2023. Lewis will assume the role effective Jan. 2, 2024.

Louise Story, who previously worked at The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, says, “This is great news for journalism. @WilliamLewis is a news leader admired by the journalists, businesspeople, technologists and all who have worked for him. Kudos to @washingtonpost on an awesome new CEO.”

Earlier, Katie Robertson and Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times profiled Lewis, the former Dow Jones executive and Wall Street Journal editor who most recently co-founded The News Movement, a start-up aimed at providing nonpartisan news to young audiences. 

Lewis has also served as Editor of The Daily Telegraph, Business Editor at The Sunday Times and held a number of roles at the Financial Times.

Robertson and Mullin were first to report that Lewis would be the Post’s next chief executive. On X, Robertson shared the text of an email Post owner Jeff Bezos sent to the newsroom after the Times story came out.

Lewis sat down with the Post’s Elahe Izadi and Karla Miller for an interview on Sunday, Post’s new CEO William Lewis has faced big stories and corporate drama.

Among other things, Izadi shares, “Asked him about his vision for The Post, his politics (including his friend Boris Johnson saying he was a fellow Brexiteer), him being labeled a former ‘Murdoch lieutenant,’ and criticism over his role & how he handled the phone-hacking scandal clean-up.”

Identifying a challenge

So, what does the future hold? 

Nicholas Jackson says, “If the Washington Post has a long-term strategy, staffers don't seem to know what it is. Hopeful that will change with a new CEO coming in; it's one of our great journalistic institutions.”

Jackson links to the Vanity Fair piece by Charlotte Klein on the state of play at the newspaper, “What Do We Want to Be?”: The Washington Post at a Crossroads.

“Washington Post's national editor Matea Gold recently told her staff that a goal for 2024 was owning the coverage of ‘threats to democracy.’ With perhaps a few exceptions, these threats originate on the right. Is the Post ready for an asymmetry like that?” wonders NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen.

Also, Arno Kopecky notes, “This piece talks about how ‘Joe Biden’s White House has made for comparatively dull reading,’ part of the reason WaPo is losing money. Been reflecting lately on how good politicians/policy don't get the attention they deserve, because they're boring.”

Kopecky, an environmental journalist and author, expands on that thought in a thread that concludes, “I wish this thread was building towards an epiphany. Mostly I'm just identifying a challenge. Tied up with the attention-span issues of social media, and the outrage-algorithms of the same. Best solution I know of is to read books & strive to reproduce that magic in articles.” 

Short-term terrible

As for the bigger question, “What’s happened to news,” Josh Bornstein links to Charlie Warzel’s piece in The Atlantic, Social Media Broke Up With News. So Did Readers.

Damon Beres praises this “Really smart piece by @cwarzel about the much-more-complicated-than-it-seems narrative about tech platforms sending less and less traffic to news publishers.”

Natalia Antelava dubs it “Essential reading: @cwarzel’s brilliant piece on news in the age of social media. Our grim reality - so well explained here - is that not only platforms, but readers too, are breaking up with news and consequences are felt well beyond journalism.”

“This is one of those pieces where you're like ‘ah man this is excellent and informative’ right before you're like ‘ah man I think the findings here are short-term terrible for my entire industry,’” Jack Jenkins says. 

Not going well

Meanwhile, “Microsoft/MSN.com is still one of the world's biggest news websites since it's a pre-loaded homepage on so many PCs. Microsoft used to employ 800 editors -- but now is relying more on AI. It is not going well,” says Donie O'Sullivan.

O’Sullivan and Allison Gordon spoke to some of the editors Microsoft fired and replaced with AI for their CNN Business story, How Microsoft’s AI is making a mess of the news. 

People familiar with how MSN.com/Microsoft Start works told CNN that the company’s decision to rely more on automation and AI to curate its homepage appears to be behind the site’s recent amplification of false stories, which “raises questions about the company’s public adoption of the nascent technology and for the journalism industry as a whole.”

Creating solutions

In an essay for The Atlantic, MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey explains why the foundation is making A Billion-Dollar Bet on Local News. MacArthur has helped create a 22-funder consortium called Press Forward, and together, they’re committed to investing more than $500 million to address the local-news crisis over the next five years.

“But that $500 million will not be enough, as many have been quick to point out,” Palfrey writes. “America is a big country. Divide that amount by 50 states and spread it over five years, and even half a billion dollars starts to look grossly inadequate.”

Michael Bolden of the American Press Institute says, “This essay from @jpalfrey @macfound is worth a read. As he says, both local news and democracy are in crisis. Creating solutions to shore up both requires efforts from across the spectrum.”

The MrBeast economy

“Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson, YouTube's biggest star, bought up a cul-de-sac and became a major job creator in the small town of Greenville, N.C. Then he transformed it into a playground of viral spectacle - whether the neighbors like it or not.”

Drew Harwell links to his piece with Taylor Lorenz of The Washington Post on the YouTuber’s impact on his local community, Greenville was quiet. Then a hometown kid became YouTube’s biggest star.

Justin Hendrix calls this a “Must read profile of the economy around YouTube star Mr. Beast.”

For another YouTube economy story, read Madison Malone Kircher’s interview with Kristi Cook, the person behind the popular Spill Sesh channel, in The New York Times, A YouTube Gossip Spills a Secret of Her Own.

On Friday Malone Kircher shared, “For years, a TMZ employee named Kristi Cook led a double life as the YouTuber @spillseshYT. Today, she's revealing her identity. We talked about secrets and money in a candid convo that offers a rare behind the curtain glimpse at YouTube's drama economy.” 

Beyond impressive and fearless 

Last up, Andrew Feinberg of The Independent says, “Can’t argue with this — @TreyYingst is definitely one of the 🐐s.”

In a commentary for the Baltimore Post Examiner, Towson University professor Richard E. Vatz writes that Fox News’ Trey Yingst is the Current Generation’s Top War Correspondent.

Joe Concha of The Hill agrees that “Trey Yingst has been beyond impressive and fearless during his 24/7 war coverage for Fox. Great read below on a job very few of us in this industry would sign up for.”

A few more

• In Vanity Fair, Fred Ritchin writes about how a near collapse of the media ecosystem has left us unable to gauge what is going on in Gaza and Israel. 
• In his latest for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch observes, With the world on fire, a cowardly, timid news media is a threat to U.S. democracy. 
• In an essay for The New Yorker titled Jezebel and the Question of Women’s Anger, Jezebel founder Anna Holmes reflects on what we’ve learned about online outrage since the 2007 launch of the feminist website, which quickly became known for its contentious readership.
• AI companies have all kinds of arguments against paying for copyrighted content, as Wes Davis highlights at The Verge. “The argument by Andreessen Horowitz is basically sunken cost fallacy and soooo flimsy,” says Glendon Mellow.
• Gabriela Barkho of Modern Retail reported on how branded sponsorships took over BravoCon. The convention has reportedly generated an estimated $13.75 million in ticket sales.
• Be sure to check out Columbia Journalism Review fellow Ayodeji Rotinwa’s Q&A with David Marchese on the art of the interview. “💯 advice from the great @NYTmag interviewer David Marchese,” says Andrew Giambrone, who highlights, “If you can get the right person talking about the right thing, & if you can frame the headline & frame the conversation in the right way, you can have a piece that a lot of people want to read.”

From the Muck Rack Team

The inundation of content today means you have access to more reading material than ever, but not all of it is well-communicated. Avoid picking up and integrating bad habits into your work by being aware of these 4 common writing mistakes PR pros make—and how to fix them.