Facebook 'newspaper' spells trouble for media

Facebook's move to fulfill its ambition to be the personal "newspaper" for its billion-plus members is likely to mean more woes for the ailing news media.

The huge social network has become a key source of news for many users, as part of a dramatic shift in how people get information in the digital age.

Company founder Mark Zuckerberg told a forum in early November that his goal is to make Facebook's newsfeed "the perfect personalized newspaper for every person in the world."

Zuckerberg said that while a newspaper provides the same information to every reader, Facebook can tailor its feed to the interests of the individual, delivering a mix of world news, community events and updates about friends or family.

"It's a different approach to newspapering," said Ken Paulson, a former editor of USA Today who is now dean of communications at Middle Tennessee State University. "It's neither good nor bad, but it's something a traditional newspaper can't do."

With Facebook, editorial decisions about what members see are made not by a journalist, but an algorithm that determines which items are likely to be of greatest interest to each person.

This may concern the traditional journalism community, but even some media experts acknowledge that Facebook appears to be able to deliver more of what people want to see, in an efficient way.

"It's intimate, it's relevant, it's extraordinarily timely and it's about you. That's more than any newspaper can do," said Alan Mutter, a former Chicago daily newspaper editor who is now a consultant for digital media ventures.

Mutter said that as newspapers cling to their "ancient" business model, organizations like Facebook are making the news more personal.

And he said the trend will continue as younger readers shun print in favor of digital and mobile platforms.

Algorithm as editor?

Nikki Usher, a George Washington University journalism professor specializing in new media, said Facebook configures its news feed using an algorithm taking into account tens of thousands of factors.

"Facebook has all the data to tell you what all of your friends are reading, so you have a better chance of seeing things that you are interested in," she said.

"The reason Facebook has so many engineers and data scientists is to continually make the algorithm better. The algorithm gets stronger as more people use it."

Facebook is a source of news for at least 30 percent of Americans, and a major driver of traffic to news websites, according to a Pew Research Center study.

This gives the social network enormous power over the news media, which is increasingly dependent on traffic from Facebook and other social platforms.

Even though Facebook is known for its computer coding, it still must make editorial decisions, Usher points out.

"What's scary is how reactive a position it puts news organizations, which are trying to guess Facebook's next move," she said. "That's a lot of power to put in a single organization."

Facebook, Google and other tech firms jealously guard their algorithmic formulas. But observers note that a single tweak of that formula can have important consequences for news organizations.

"News organizations are trying to build their strategy around trying to guess the algorithm, and ultimately that's a losing strategy," Usher said.

Getting 'soul'

But with traditional news media hurting, it remains unclear how the industry can support the kind of journalism needed to keep people informed as it has in the past.

Mutter said what people read may change -- it may be sponsored or subsidized in a way that may or may not be transparent.

"It won't necessarily be real journalism, but it will be content," he said.

Paulson said that while Facebook can deliver much of the information from newspapers, "it would be hard pressed to capture the soul" of traditional print news.

"Freedom of the press was established to keep an eye on people in power and inform the community," he added. "There's a tremendous public spirit component that you can't address with an algorithm."

Paulson said that while Facebook is a useful platform for sharing, it will not underwrite the kind of investigative journalism upon which newspapers often pride themselves. With journalism retrenching, that weakens the entire democratic process.

"We get the kind of news we deserve and are willing to pay for," Paulson added.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

British Red Cross reinforces 'Yolanda' aid efforts

LONDON - The British Red Cross prepared to reinforce relief efforts in the typhoon-ravaged Philippines on Thursday.

Aid packages, which included cars, generators, tents and food were loaded onto an airplane in Stansted Airport early in the morning.

The British Red Cross, which already has workers operating on the ground, said the packages were aimed at supporting their staff in relief efforts.

"The need on the ground is huge, it is enormous, there is a huge amount of people affected by this disaster and we need to make sure that the assessment teams are able to carry out their work and make sure they get the information back to us about what is needed most urgently. We also have centres in Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, where we have had aid leaving since the weekend. And things like tarps and hygiene kits, and stuff that is important for the people of the Philippines. This equipment is for our teams to make sure that they can continue to service the people of the Philippines," said Charlotte McGlade, the logistics officer for the organisation.

International aid efforts continue to pour into central Philippines as President Benigno Aquino faces mounting pressure to speed up the distribution of supplies.

While relief efforts picked up on Thursday, local authorities began burying the dead - an important, if grim, milestone for a city shredded by one of the world's most powerful typhoons and the tsunami-like wall of seawater believed to have killed thousands.

The preliminary number of missing as of Thursday, according to the Red Cross, remained at 22,000. It has cautioned that that number could include people who have since been located.

More the 544,600 people have been displaced and nearly 12 percent of the population affected, the United Nations said. But many areas still have not received aid.

The overall financial cost of the destruction was hard to assess. Initial estimates varied widely, with a report from German-based CEDIM Forensic Disaster Analysis putting the total at 8 billion USD to 19 billion USD.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Outsourcing to Philippines, US news provider rattles American press with fake bylines

WASHINGTON - A local-news content provider whose payroll includes offshore staff in the Philippines acknowledged Wednesday that false bylines appeared over some of its output sold to major US newspapers, but it denied the practice was widespread.

Journatic, which gathers the minutiae of community news such as real estate deals, police incidents and high-school honor rolls, said a "handful" of pseudonyms had ended up on websites of three of its client publications.

"It's very minimal, and it's being portrayed as something more widespread, because it's not," Journatic's founder and chief executive Brian Timpone told AFP by telephone from his home near Chicago.

The Poynter Institute, a media watchdog, following up on a report on US public radio, said on its website that "dozens of fake bylines" had appeared in some of the nation's best known daily newspapers.

Poynter quoted editors of the Chicago Sun-Times and GateHouse Media, owner of dozens of small-town newspapers, as saying they would no longer use Journatic, whose payroll includes offshore staff in the Philippines.

"It is essential that our news report, no matter the source, is accurate and credible," it quoted Gerould Kern, editor of the Chicago Tribune, an investor in Journatic since April, as saying after it too discovered aliases.

But Timpone - whose six-year-old outfit generates "tens of thousands" of news items for its clients per month - said only three incidents of aliases had appeared on the website of the Chicago Tribune.

A small number also appeared on the Houston Chronicle and the San Francisco Chronicle websites, he said, adding that Journatic had so far found no further instances as it reviews the past work of its 200-odd journalists.

"We're a small, very fast-growing company," he said. "We're not perfect, and we weren't perfect here... I take it seriously because I want to live up to the standard of our clients."

Using pseudonyms is not unusual in European publications, where the practice harks back to literary nom-de-plumes. In the United States, with its ethos of objective newsgathering, they are seen as a serious breach of ethics.

In Journatic's case, Timpone said, they were used on its sister service BlockShopper - which trawls public records to find out who bought or sold what house at what price - so as to protect its writers from legal action while displaying a byline that would get its stories to appear in a Google search.

BlockShopper writes up the most eye-opening property transactions in a given neighborhood, but when the often-affluent subjects didn't like seeing their identities out in the open, they threatened lawsuits, he said.

Originally a website, BlockShopper went on to resell its production to local newspapers, and that was how in most cases the bylines - since replaced by "BlockShopper News Service" - ended up on the newspaper websites, he said.

On the Chicago public radio show "This American Life," former Journatic editor Ryan Smith alleged Journatic favored false bylines to conceal the fact that local news items were being handled by non-local reporters.

"There's something inauthentic about the whole process," Smith said.

Journatic's stock in trade is gathering routine "hyper-local" news items and sending them offshore, notably the Philippines, to be formatted for publication. The items then go back to the United States for a final edit.

Some say its business model amounts to sending jobs in the hard-hit US news industry overseas. Paper Cuts, a website that tracks media job losses, says there have been more than 1,110 newspaper layoffs and buyouts so far this year.

But Timpone - who says Journatic has "dozens" of clients across the United States and is looking to expand abroad - said it actually enables news organizations to free reporters from mundane tasks and focus on bigger stories.

"When you disrupt (the way news media have long functioned), people take shots at you," he said.

source: interaksyon.com