Social media interactions with news dropped 65% in 2021 PLUS a new global news outlet to launch amidst industry consolidation

January 05, 2022

Data from NewsWhip showed that social media interactions with news articles dropped by 65% but that doesn't mean that traffic to news site dropped by that much. Axios reported that traffic to news sites only dropped by 8% from 2021 to 2020. There is a lot to unpack here, but based on the data that I see, I think some of what is missing from Axios' data overview is traffic driven by search. The pandemic is a search story, while in 2020, the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter and election stories were driven by social media. Smart media operators have begun to understand the channels that drive engagement with different types of stories.

Justin Smith is stepping down as the chief executive of Bloomberg News and Ben Smith is leaving the New York Times to launch a new global newsroom. They see an opportunity with the 200 m people globally who are college-educated and read English. I'm not sure that this market is underserved, and outside of the US, I have seen English-language publications in non-English speaking countries struggling over the past decade. But the Smith duo are serious operators, and it will be interesting to see how they build out this business.

PLUS how to ask the right questions of your data. These questions might be for journalism, or they might be about your products. There were a couple of interesting stories about misinformation and platforms, one about the de-platforming of a political news aggregator in the UK and the other about how podcasts helped distribute misinformation ahead of the US insurrection last year. Sweden is launching a psychological defence agency to combat misinformation. Also, the US state of Oklahoma shows how small, indie newsrooms are collaborating. I think we'll see more of these networks develop to rebuild local coverage.

It doesn't look like 2022 will be much better.

Mr. Smith will help start a new organization with Justin Smith, the chief executive of Bloomberg Media.

It represents a comeback for the company.

In my last post I lamented the fact that there is too little focus on data thinking in data science and data visualization, and I described how much of a struggle it’s been for me to figure out how to learn and teach these skills. When I teach my academic visualization course, the thing the most exemplifies this need is the way I struggle to teach how to formulate good

Spokesperson says account ‘suspended for violating rules on platform manipulation and spam’

A new study analyzed nearly 1,500 episodes, showing the extent to which podcasts pushed misinformation about voter fraud.

The Record by Recorded Future gives exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to leaders, policymakers, researchers, and the shadows of the cyber underground.

Local news organizations collaborated last year in revenue and audience engagement in a dozen experiments fueled by the Oklahoma Media Center 2021 Innovation Fund.