Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Photo: AP Yesterday, the New York Times announced that it had hired Sarah Jeong, who is by all accounts an extremely talented tech reporter, as a new member of its editorial board. Today, Jim Hoft, once accurately called the “dumbest man on the internet” by Media Matters, published a collection of Jeong’s tweets which he…
Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks is tweaking the business model for his video streaming startup after falling short of his initial expectations for subscriber growth. When CuriosityStream was launched in 2015, Mr. Hendricks predicted that between five million and seven million people would pay to view the company’s blend of documentaries and other non-fiction content within two…
Cheddar Inc. set out to upend traditional cable TV with its financial news-focused streaming service. Now it is making a push onto the cable dial. The company this week went live on WOW, a Denver-based cable and broadband provider with close to 800,000 subscribers. The network has been made available to about 400,000 of WOW’s…
The shift towards audio and voice-based digital user interfaces forces publishers to develop new tools, adapt workflows and ensure new ways of monetization. This week, Google DNI has approved to co-fund a €1.2 million open-source project with a collaborative approach we now will be working on until the end of 2020. It is called VAMP — pun…
It’s harder and harder to have an honest debate on the internet. Social-media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook Groups are rife with trolls; forums are plagued by archaic layouts and spambots. Teenagers who are looking to talk about big issues face additional frustrations, like the fact that most adults on these platforms don’t take…
Photo: Spencer Platt (Getty) This past spring, Michael Ferro resigned as chairman of publicly traded media-looting hell-company Tronc, Inc., just ahead of the publication of sexual harassment allegations against him. As a parting gift, Tronc paid him $15 million, voluntarily bundling up the total value of a three-year consulting contract into one lump payment expensed…
When a top executive from frugal newspaper giant Tronc was asked Tuesday about the specific strategy behind draconian cuts to the New York Daily News on Monday, he didn’t have an answer. On Monday, the company slashed 50 percent of the editorial staff at one of New York’s two remaining iconic tabloids, including dozens of…
Illustration: Jim Cooke (GMG) A year ago today, my brilliant predecessor, Dodai Stewart, announced our little blog’s existence with a rhetorical question that also served as a philosophical one: “What the Hell Is Splinter?” The question could just as easily have been: How (and why) the hell do you start a new website in 2017?…
Photo: Jim Cooke (GMG) It wasn’t supposed to be like this, I swear. When these here Intertubes came to prominence, the idea was that information would finally be free; that people would know MORE about this stupid world than they did before, because everyone would have a voice and because anyone, regardless of background, could…
New York City and its environs are home to 20 million people, Wall Street, Broadway, the fashion and media industries, and a mix of cultures unlike few cities on the planet. And yet news organizations operating in this singular metropolis barely have enough reporters to cover the Bronx or Queens. On Monday, the New York…