Business of Media
Press Freedom Index 2023: Russia slides down ranking amid global volatility
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says that the “fake content industry” has increased “volatility” in its World Press Freedom Index rankings for 2023, reports Press Gazette’s Bron Maher.
This year’s report shows the number of countries deemed “satisfactory” for their treatment of journalists rising slightly, but so does the number where the situation is “very serious”.
RSF’s secretary-general said this year’s index was characterised by “major falls and unprecedented changes”.
Overall, the 21st edition of the index puts the environment for journalism as “bad in seven out of ten countries, and satisfactory in only three out of ten”, RSF said in a release.
RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said: “The World Press Freedom Index shows an enormous volatility in situations, with major rises and falls and unprecedented changes, such as Brazil’s 18-place rise and Senegal’s 31-place fall.
“This instability is the result of an increased aggressiveness on the part of the authorities in many countries and a growing animosity towards journalists on social media and in the physical world.”
Jack Dorsey has a lot to say, including about Elon Musk and Twitter
Jack Dorsey has barely posted on Twitter, the social media platform he helped create, since January. In two of his last tweets, the billionaire entrepreneur promoted an app for Nostr, a new social network, reports The New York Times’ Kate Conger.
“#nostr is now officially on the Apple App Store,” he wrote. “and Google Play Store.”
Since then, Dorsey has posted on Nostr an average of 59 times a day — including messages that take aim at Twitter and its new owner, Elon Musk.
“This is weak,” Dorsey wrote on Nostr last month of Musk’s move to prevent Twitter’s users from linking to Substack, a newsletter platform that started a Twitter competitor.
Dorsey has also started using another new social network, Bluesky. On Saturday, in response to a Bluesky user’s question about whether Musk was the best steward for Twitter, Dorsey replied bluntly, “No.”
“It all went south,” he said of what Musk had done at Twitter. “But it happened and all we can do now is build something to avoid that ever happening again.”
Imprisoned Iranian female journalists who reported on Mahsa Amini’s death win top UN prize
The United Nations’s premier prize for press freedom has been awarded to three imprisoned Iranian female journalists “for their commitment to truth and accountability”, reports the ABC.
The winners are Niloufar Hamedi, who broke the news that Mahsa Amini died last September while being held by the morality police for wearing her headscarf too loosely, and Elaheh Mohammadi who wrote about Amini’s funeral.
Her death touched off months-long protests in dozens of cities across Iran. The demonstrations posed one of the most serious challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 2009 Green Movement protests drew millions to the streets.
The third winner is Narges Mohammadi, who has worked for many years as a journalist and is one of Iran’s most prominent activists.
TikTok is launching ad product for publishers and giving them 50% cut
TikTok said it is launching a new product that will make it possible for publishers to sell ads alongside their posts, a shift for the video-sharing app, which historically has focused on independent creators, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Alexandra Bruell.
The product, Pulse Premiere, is the evolution of TikTok’s Pulse program, which allows an elite group of creators to collect half the revenue from video ads that appear just after their TikTok posts.
The new product will offer similar perks for accounts from select publishers, such as Condé Nast, BuzzFeed and NBC. While Pulse is only available to the top 4% of its creators’ posts—based on metrics such as likes, watch time and comments—the new product will sell ads against all posts from participating publishers, the company said.
The opportunity to sell ads in social media’s hottest app comes as many publishers are struggling to deal with tough economic conditions, resulting in cost-cutting and layoffs across the industry.
News Brands
Mirror publisher blames revenue decline on Facebook changes
The publisher of the Mirror, Express and Daily Star newspapers has blamed changes in the way Facebook displays news content for a slide in its digital revenues, reports The Guardian’s Joanna Partridge.
Reach, which also owns hundreds of regional newspapers including the Birmingham Mail, Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News, reported a fall in group revenue of almost 6% for the four months to 23 April.
It has previously announced plans to slash hundreds more jobs amid a £30m cost-cutting drive as it battles higher costs resulting from inflation and disappointing advertising sales.
The newspaper group, which owns a network of regionally focused news websites including Glasgow Live and Hampshire Live, said it had experienced a slowdown in the number of page views from online readers, with changes to the presentation of news by Facebook reducing traffic to its sites.
Reach’s digital revenues have slumped by almost 15% since January and it warned of a challenging environment for digital advertising. However, it said its print revenue remained strong, and it had continued to sell “robust” quantities of newspapers.
Television
Writers strike: how has it immediately affected the TV industry?
At 12.01am PT on Tuesday morning, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) called on its 11,500 members to go on strike. By Tuesday afternoon, many were on picket lines outside major studios in New York and Los Angeles, and the impact of a work stoppage over compensation, streaming-based residuals, minimum staffing guidelines and other concerns cascaded through Hollywood – though, given the timing, the proliferation of streaming, and the ability of studios to bank episodes ahead of time, it’s unclear how many people will notice, reports The Guardian’s Adrian Horton.
At the frontline of impact were late-night variety shows, which rely on writers to craft topical jokes based on up-to-the-minute headlines. On Tuesday, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers all halted production and will air reruns during a strike that could potentially last several weeks. (The last writers strike 15 years ago stretched for 100 days, from November 2007 until February 2008.) HBO paused production on the weekly shows Real Time with Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, in the middle of a guest-host run by longtime contributor Dulcé Sloan as part of a rotating audition to replace Trevor Noah, also switched to reruns. And NBC’s Saturday Night Live, which had three episodes left in its 48th season, announced a production shutdown on Tuesday afternoon, beginning with former cast member Pete Davidson’s hosting debut this Saturday.
To Binge or Not to Binge? Netflix, HBO Max debate how to release your favorite shows
Ever since Netflix shook the entertainment world by releasing the entire first season of House of Cards in one fell swoop a decade ago, a debate has raged over whether that approach made any sense, report The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Krouse and Nate Rattner.
Why, some wondered, would a streaming service pay top dollar for a show that users could consume in its entirety in a matter of days? Advocates of that approach, meanwhile, asked why streamers would stick to the weekly release format that defined legacy cable television when they had the flexibility to mix it up and give customers a more immediate payoff.
The answer to the fundamental question of how best to release content, it turns out, is complicated.
House of the Dragon was last year’s most-watched streaming show, according to analytics provider Samba TV, and was released weekly on Warner Bros. Discovery’s WBD HBO Max and the HBO TV channel. The second best, Netflix’s Wednesday, made all eight episodes available at the same time.
An analysis by Samba TV of last year’s 20 most-viewed original streaming programs in the U.S. for The Wall Street Journal shows that both approaches have merits and pitfalls. Viewers are more likely to watch the entire season of a show that was released all at once, but such shows tend to have a shorter shelf life than the ones released weekly.
Brady Halls retiring from A Current Affair
Veteran reporter Brady Halls is retiring from A Current Affair, after 35 years with Nine, reports TV Tonight.
Halls has covered a range of stories from bushfire victims, dodgy tradespeople, NDIS, aged care, immigration, insurance, childcare, local council, scams, neighbourhoods and celebrities.
He’s worked with hosts Tracy Grimshaw, Ray Martin, Mike Munro, Allison Langdon -a journalism survivor.
Fiona Dear, Executive Producer of ACA said, “We all knew this day was coming soon but it’s still hard to believe Brady Halls won’t be on A Current Affair.”
Sports Media
Why Warner Bros’ trademark might not be a devil of an issue for AFL
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan is confident a deal could be reached with Warner Bros movie studio to allow the league’s 19th team to be named the Tasmanian Devils should that be the name settled on by the new club, reports Nine Publishing’s Jon Pierik.
McLachlan’s optimism came as a leading commercial lawyer said the AFL and Warner Bros should be able to find common ground and broker an agreement that would allow the club to be named after the native Tasmanian animal.
However, the AFL and Warner Bros could still be headed for a legal fight over the trademark rights to the Tasmanian Devil, a famous cartoon character in the powerful movie company’s Looney Tunes series.
The Tasmanian Devils shapes as the likely name of the AFL’s expansion club, officially birthed on Wednesday in what McLachlan called a “historic day”. Tasmania’s under-18 team already uses the Devils name in the Coates Talent League, but does not profit from merchandise, unlike the commercially driven senior league.
McLachlan said a final decision on a team name would be made in part with the Tasmanian public but a deal with Warner Bros should be able to be done.