CNN Further Focuses Coverage Towards Tech News

This previous week in our our Mass Media & Politics class we discussed reporting the news. I found a article online that relates to this topic that I thought I should share. The article details a new venture that CNN is taking a part in called 'Pacific' which is a news platform that specifically focuses on the West Coast's changing media landscape. The author Maxwell Tani explains, "the new franchise will be led by Senior Media Reporter Dylan Byers, and will focus on the powerful West Coast-based companies that have changed media, technology, and politics" (Tani 2017). This platform will starting sending out daily newsletters, events, and a podcast soon on 'Pacific'. According to the article, CNN technology coverage has notably increased within the year. They also recently launched another website that is different than 'Pacific' because it more broadly focuses on the business of technology. That is a standalone website like CNNMoney and Can Politics, which focuses on technology called "CNNTech". Some key features tabs of the site include 'Business', 'Culture', 'Gadgets', 'Future', and 'Startups'. Its seems as if more and more news sites are shifting more of their news sources towards tech news and CNN is definitely one of those sources.

• Question to Ponder: Do you think it is a good idea for major news sources to focus more of their news coverage towards tech news?

*News Article: http://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-tech-site-pacific-silicon-valley-dylan-byers-2017-9

Amazon CEO Buys The Washington Post in the "Dying" Age of Newspapers

Before doing some research on the Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, I knew little about his "empire" of companies he owns and just how impressive of a man he is. If you look on the right at the picture I posted of 'The Bezos Empire' you can see the incredible amount of companies that Bezos has purchased or invested in. In what some refer to as the 'dying' age of newspapers, Bezos decided to buy The Washington Post for $230 million with no prior experience  in the news paper business or journalism less than three years ago. Although he had with no prior experience Bezos has still somehow turned the company around after they were facing years of decline by revamping the newspaper to be more apart of the digital age.

In an article I found online it explains, "Bezos isn't involved in setting the Post's editorial direction at all. But he's taken a more hands-on approach on the business and technology sides to reinvent the paper as a 'media and technology company'" (Kim 2016). One way he has done this is by revitalizing the newspapers website and mobile apps. Bezos also has employed web strategies and software programs to track readership of stories and ways in which ways readership if affected by different options. Furthermore, during a time where most newspapers are making staff cuts Bezos has significantly increase The Post's hiring. The companies engineering team has almost tripled in the past few years and it has also hired new editors and reporters to increase the content that is published. Bezos also uses social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, to help distribute the new content that is published and offers discounts to Amazon members to help even further push 
viewership. 

It is amazing to see the growth of The Washington Post that has come from the focus on it being more a media and technology company. I have attached a photo of a growth chart of to this blog that shows the significant increase in the news of viewers of the website since Bezos bought the company. It seems as if though newspapers are dying, we just need to make them a part of the digital age instead of trying to resit the digital age and Bezos understood that.


*News Article: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-washington-post-changed-after-jeff-bezos-acquisition-2016-5/#its-also-hired-a-bunch-of-new-editors-and-reporters-lately-it-now-publishes-1200-articles-a-day-its-content-varies-from-breaking-news-and-long-features-to-fun-photo-slideshows-like-this-one-8

How Facebook Live Is Changing The Way News Is Being Covered

Facebook Live is a pretty recent feature that allows any Facebook user to stream a live video on the site. Since the start Facebook Live has had a lot of negative back lash due to ethical reasons such as numerous users using this feature as an outlet to share live videos of crimes they have committed. It has also received some good feedback as well because it provides an very simple solution for broad casting live videos, which was a difficult task previously. One major thing that is new Facebook feature is stirring up is journalism and  I discovered an article online about Facebook Live that gives us a better understanding of just exactly how it is. 

The article lists five considerations for understanding how live-streaming services are challenging journalism today:

1. 'Liveness' and Bearing Witness:
In the article it explains that 'liveness' is a feature that media/news outlets can now provide due to live-streaming services and that this 'liveness' allows for a great sense of authenticity. Now everyone can cut out news broadcasts as the middle man and bear witness to actual live events that are steaming.

2. Visually Driven Content:
It is stated in the article that news that is visually oriented can have major benefits such as increasing audience attention, easier recollection, increased engagement, etc. 

3. Citizen Reporting:
Facebook live and audience-led forms of journalism are now allowing people to by-pass news organizations all together to receive news content in some instances.

4. Live Video Driving News:
Its is stated in the article, "Facebook Live videos can create a cycle in which social media videos lead to mainstream media coverage of an event or issue, generating heightened public awareness -- which means more people are likely to post new live videos on that topic."

5. Ethics:
Ethics is a pitfall regarding Facebook Live because even though normal, every-day people now have ability to report the news straight from their smartphone, they do not have to abide by the same code of ethics that journalists have to.

• Question to Ponder: Can you think of any connections between the Facebook Live feature and journalism; possibly how live streaming videos could change/have changed political journalism in particular? 

*News Article: https://theconversation.com/what-facebook-live-means-for-journalism-72233

Quitting Facebook Can Help Democracy

This image depicts Facebook as the "master key" to democracy

While I was searching the web, I came across an article I found very interesting that gives you a simple suggestion that can help with this countries democracy. All you have to do is......................quit using Facebook!

The author of the article, Martin Weigert, explains that Facebook plays a unintentional but key role in weakening the democratic values through things such as fake news, micro-targeting- and bots. So, he suggests that ALL you have to do it simply stop using Facebook.com and the Facebook app, you don't even have to stop using the other services it provides such at Instagram and Messenger. Seems easy enough doesn't it? Weigert explains that if we stop using the Facebook service we will be cause them to lose profit. With less people focusing a large portion of their time on this service, there will also be less desire for people to want to buy advertisement spots on Facebook. In the end, the main goal of quitting Facebook is to help weaken the business model.

This suggestion seems easy enough on paper, but how easy do you think it will actually be to quit Facebook? The service allows you with a way to connect and keep up-to-date with your friends and family. It also has other features that would be hard to let go of. On a serious note, after natural disasters, it gives people an option to "Mark them selves safe" on Facebook, so that people can know you are ok and have less worry when there might be no other way to reach you. There is also less serious options such as Facebook groups and Facebook events that are easy ways to stay connected and plan events.

• Questions to Ponder after reading this post I have to questions for you:

1. Do you think quitting Facebook would be hard or easy?
2. Do you believe that quitting Facebook could help our democracy?

*News Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/if-you-are-worried-about-hacked-democracy-quit-facebook_us_59b68cc1e4b0b5e5310792c2 

Potential New Election Rules Targeting Social Media

In the "Digital News Report 2016" our class learned that more than a quarter of 18 to 24 year-olds said that social media is there main source or news. Since social media has rapidly become the main source of news, it is not surprising that this has also caused a large increase in political coverage of elections on these social media platforms as well.

In an article I discovered online, I found that now many congress members are now wanting to create new election rules to regulate social media. Many lawmakers are eager for these regulation due to the recent discovery that Facebook, one of the largest social media platforms, possibly interfered with the elections by allowing foreign countries to buy political advertising on the site. Russia was behind these particular political advertising purchases on social media and it in the article it was described what the firm behind this did. Boylan, the author of the article explained, "...the Internet Research Agency drove a disinformation campaign during the election, spraying out waves of of divisive 'fake news' focused on controversial American social issues including gun control, immigration, race and gay rights" (Boylan 2017).

This discovery is very disconcerting due to the fact that social media is proven to be the main source of news for many young adults and only seems to be growing. I agree with the fact that there needs to be some type of regulations set in place for social media platforms regarding elections, so that these can be places where news is more unbiased and factual.

*News Article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/11/congress-members-want-social-media-platforms-to-ha/

New Tech: Create-Your-Own News Story

The idea of algorithm technology seems to have been taken to an entirely new spectrum by Netflix with a new interactive technology they developed. This interactive technology created for television allows viewers to "choose-your-own-adventure" and lets users have the option to alter the plot of a television show, so it heads in a different direction. 

This article focuses on the scenario of this technology being used with the news and the possible outcomes it might have. It is explained in the article that technology is already headed in the direction of self-selection with electronics available today. The author Rutenberg states"...people are being primed to shape the arc of the narratives on their highly personalized electronic screens to suit their own tastes, even if it means banishing inconvenient facts."  These current technologies already are leading to people having different and skewed views of the same information. This interactive technology could lead to even more contradictions of information in the news or even worse, news that is inaccurate based on the plot line you choose. 

In the article, Rutenberg describes a political news scenario that involves the use of this new technology and how three different "plot" options (Adventure A, B, and C) would play out. In this scenario he created, Adventure B is the plot option that is based on real life facts and is the most accurate account of the certain news story he chose. He goes on to describe, "One of the plots we’re talking about here is of the sort that democracy depends on — that would be Adventure B, the one based on established facts that exist in the real world — and the others are of the sort that threatens to undermine any shared sense of truth while driving us into our corners." I believe that this is a great explanation of the impact this type interactive technology would have with our democratic system.


This topic of this new interactive technology sparked my interest, because it seems to be a somewhat of a contradiction to one of the reforms that Bennett listed in our text. He suggest that "the use of interactive technologies" could help the media more effectively serve the needs of democracy, but this does not seem to be the case for the technology Netflix developed. In fact, I believe that it does the complete opposite of serve the needs of the democracy because it seems as if it could end up diminishing most shared unbiased information depending of the direction you choose. 


*News article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/business/media/mediator-personalized-feeds-news-choice-jim-rutenberg.html