emily bell Profile picture
Oct 2, 2020 6 tweets 1 min read Read on X
Google’s extension of $1bn to the news industry (maybe) over 3 years represents c 3x it’s current rate of global expenditure on supporting the news industry. Or lobbying against regulation depending on how you see it
The glaring issue often ignored by those funded by Google (in the press and academic research), is how these interventions potentially make very little difference to long term sustainability for newsrooms, but a lot of difference to the progress - or not - of regulation
It’s hard to evaluate the long term benefits of monetary support by platforms of news because it is a. difficult to trace exactly how much and where funds are dispersed, b.the funding is deliberately highly distributed in small amounts - making large impact less likely
And c., the hypotheses tested by platforms in their funding broadly align with the goals of platforms -to effectively access regulatory spaces, to be seen supporting areas with most regulatory scrutiny (often areas of greatest need) and to wean journalism off advertising
The talking points most often advanced by tech platforms in relation to content - like those of ‘trust in journalism’ or the ‘fight against misinformation’ might touch on issues of relevance, but they can also be read as deflecting from deep systemic flaws which go unaddressed
That companies like Facebook and Google are now so completely embedded in discussions of and policy making around the future of journalism is a yardstick to how successful their positioning has been. And how much journalistic institutions have allowed or encouraged it to be so

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More from @emilybell

Jun 6
Some (serious) thoughts on what is different about the UK news market and maybe why there is a high number of Brit execs and editors in top news posts at the moment. First what British editors *really* think about US journalism 1/
They admire its quality but often think it is too slow, too ponderous, and lacks urgency. The number of bylines on longer pieces from the NYT raises eyebrows. Also it lacks a competitiveness baked into the UK structure 2/
The UK has a comparatively large number of daily news brands competing directly with each other on the same time zone. They are differentiated not through geography but through market segmentation AND *political affiliation* - expect more of this 3/
Read 6 tweets
Nov 18, 2022
Twitter vs not Twitter isn't a simple binary, particularly not for news journalism. The 24 hour global connectivity has changed almost everything about workflows in newsrooms and even for freelance journalists. It changes commissioning, newsgathering, sourcing, verification...
No everything is wholly good, but everything is wholly changed. As @EliotHiggins points out about @bellingcat, the network makes possible new types of work and to some extent breaks the hegemony of dominant news providers.
We would have made *even less* progress on changing working practices of journalism and diversifying newsrooms without Twitter or a platform that does what Twitter does. Twitter has at times been both an attack surface against journalism and an enabler of journalism
Read 9 tweets
Nov 17, 2022
Messages like this increasingly make me thing of the rogue property developer model of Twitter. Over 15 years Twitter has been the ‘street’ a lot of communities meet on 1/
Every morning you walk down the street and see familiar faces, people you ‘know’ talking about things of interest in your ‘neighborhood’, be it academic Twitter, Black Twitter, journo Twitter etc.,
You only know some people through meeting on this ‘street’ but it is nevertheless a community. One day, without warning, a developer moves in and blows up the street, sells off housing to their friends. Buys off the town council, poisons the water supply, threaten the residents.
Read 5 tweets
May 3, 2022
Alito’s draft heavily references English legal precedent, including that of famed jurist Sir Matthew Hale who, it should be noted, had at least two women executed for witchcraft and wrote a treatise supporting marital rape
digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewconten… for those interested in why Sir Matthew Hale’s views on abortion are suddenly relevant
Noted jurists, legitimizing the abuse of women since 1736…
Read 4 tweets
Feb 3, 2022
Interesting piece from ⁦@jbenton⁩ - all an excellent read - half of it I agree with, but the key premise, that the News Media Bargaining Code is a terrible policy, needs further scrutiny 1/ niemanlab.org/2022/02/austra…
First - the policy itself has holes. And the origin of it might well represent a bad faith stitch-up between News Corp and the Scott Morrison government . But there are parts of the code that can be built upon and improved by other legislation elsewhere.
As has been reported elsewhere - pressgazette.co.uk/news-media-bar… - the ability for smaller publishers to collectively bargain for a payment / settlement is key. The fact that the Morrison govt is doing a bad job of implementing its own code is unfortunate
Read 12 tweets
Oct 25, 2021
A mind-boggling case in Montana of how disinformation is a new playbook at local level. The thinned down local newspaper is no match for a barrage of nonsense on the Internet nytimes.com/2021/10/24/us/…
The recession in local journalism, the growth of campaigning Facebook groups; any wedge issue can turn an electorate if swaddled in enough untruths
The Great Falls Tribune, once had 45 journalists now it has eight
Read 4 tweets

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