Australia’s Facebook News Blackout Ends . . .
Posted on Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 3:26 PM
In the news: News content and sharing have returned to Australian
Facebook users after a temporary standoff between the tech giant and the
Australian government.
A standoff between Facebook and the
Australia government that temporarily barred Australians from seeing
seeing or sharing news on the social network ended this week. Rod
McGuirk of the AP reports that Facebook had “struck a deal with the
government on proposed legislation that would make digital giants pay
for journalism.” The temporary blackout didn’t just affect Facebook news
access; McGuirk says that “the blackout also cut access -- at least
temporarily -- to government pandemic, public health and emergency
services, fueling outrage.”
This story comes at a time when
internet giants such as Facebook and Google are under increased pressure
to pay journalists and publishers for the content that appears on their
networks. Read more here.
.
. . But Do the Internet Giants Still Hold the Cards?
Although
deals between Facebook and the Australian government, and between Google
and News Corp, provide a long overdue boost to publishers and
journalists, it’s not all rosy. Kate Kaye of Digiday.com writes: “Some
publishing industry members say the agreement to compensate the
publishing giant obfuscates the power that platforms like Google and
Facebook hold over smaller publishers, which Australia’s proposed media
bargaining law is meant to address.” Her article raises an important
question: Are Google and Facebook’s efforts to comply with Australian
law “a bargaining chip or hush money?” Read more here.
Also
Notable
News Production Cost Control
“If
your business survived 2020, you can tackle just about anything at this
point,” writes Jerry Simpkins in a February 22 Editor &
Publisher column. He shares his suggestions to minimize production
costs in 2021 and beyond, including reassessing circulation draws,
pre-runs, and single-copy sales. He also cautions publishers to “stop
padding for runs for ‘insurance.’” Read the full column here.
Visually
Depicting Covid-19 Losses
How can a newspaper or magazine
with limited editorial space drive home the enormity of 500,000 Covid-19
casualties in the US? A few notable newspapers tried to drive home the
magnitude visually in the last week. On the front page of the Sunday
(February 21) New York Times is a chart of nearly half a million
dots, one for each American who has died of Covid-19. Elsewhere, Artur
Galocha and Bonnie Berkowitz of the Washington Post presented
three visual analogies to show the scale of the country’s Covid losses.
See the NYT graphic here
and the Washington Post graphics here.
A
300-Year US Magazine Retrospective
A major magazine
retrospective is now on display at New York’s Grolier Club. The exhibit,
entitled “Magazines and the American Experience,” features over 80,000
issues from collector Steven Lomazow’s trove of magazines from the 1700s
through today, reports Nora McGreevy of Smithsonian magazine.
Ultimately, McGreevy says: “As Lomazow himself points out, the
exhibition also functions as an ode to the long cultural production of a
now-struggling industry.... But in the heyday of print advertisements,
magazine flourished and writers reaped the benefits.” Read more about
the exhibit here.
Print
Magazine Closure: Saveur
Influential food magazine Saveur
has shuttered its printed edition after several years of struggle. Most
recently, the title was purchased by Bonnier in October 2020. Chris
Crowley of GrubStreet.com writes that the closure comes “at a time of
some transition in food media, including the rise of more independent
magazines like Whetstone and a boom in newsletters bringing in different
voices and perspectives not always given space.” Read more here.
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