Tag Archives: Local news

Weekly output: Facebook clones Clubhouse, sustainable news business models, Washington Apple Pi

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This week had me spending an above-average time staring into my webcam while trying not to glance away at my notes too often.

6/21/2021: Facebook adds live audio rooms, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news network had me to discuss the “live audio rooms” Facebook launched Monday, part of a suite of upcoming audio features I wrote about at Forbes in April. The hosts wanted to know how Facebook’s clone of the Clubhouse app’s core feature might go over; I noted that Facebook starts out with the advantage of not requiring every user to create a new social graph but then holds itself back by initially only opening this feature to selected users.

Screenshot of the panel video as seen in an iPad's copy of Safari6/24/2021: The Future of Innovation in News Production: Models for Sustainability, Competition Policy International

Two months and change after the last time I moderated a panel about the state of the news business for CPI, this group (and event co-organizer Computer & Communications Industry Association) had me back to hold forth on what could put news on a sounder footing. My co-panelists this time were Poynter Institute media business analyst Rick Edmonds, Accenture managing director Andrew Charlton, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro (who’s both a research fellow at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism and CEO of the National Trust for Local News), and LION Publishers executive director Chris Krewson. As you can watch in the video CPI has temporarily posted, our discussion was a lot less pessimistic than you might expect for this subject.

6/26/2021: Rob Pegoraro Zooms into the Pi 2021, Washington Apple Pi

I was hoping my return to the local Apple user group would not be virtual like last June’s appearance, but the Pi is sticking to Zoom for now–so I’ll have to wait for a future opportunity to appear in person and give away some of the tech-event swag that’s been collecting dust in my office closet for the past year and change. Most of my talk covered my own experience getting through the pandemic, but I also discussed Apple’s transition to using its own Apple Silicon processors and its recent privacy moves–and, because why not, space launches.

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Weekly output: Boost Mobile bundles telemedicine, Tegna’s local-ads sales pitch, Facebook Oversight Board (x2), dark patterns

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This week’s biggest accomplishment doesn’t appear on the list below: getting my second dose of the Moderna novel-coronavirus vaccine Thursday morning.

5/4/2021: Dish’s Boost Mobile to add telemedicine to the bundle, Light Reading

My newest client asked me to write up the news that Dish Network’s T-Mobile reseller Boost Mobile will bundle K Health’s telemedicine service–an interesting departure from marketing as usual in the wireless industry.

5/4/2021: Tegna outlines local-content strategy at NewFronts, FierceVideo

My other regular trade-pub client then asked me to fill in with coverage of the ad-industry group IAB’s conference. I was struck to see the TV company spun out of Gannett several years ago sound so confident about the ad prospects for local news when so many local Gannett papers seem to feel otherwise.

5/5/2021: Facebook Oversight Board’s Trump ruling, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news network had me on for the first time in a while to discuss the Facebook Oversight Board’s May 5 ruling that while Facebook was right to kick Donald Trump off the platform after the January 6 riots at the Capital, suspending him indefinitely instead of just deleting his account was without precedent.

Fast Company FTC dark-patterns post5/6/2021: Can the FTC stop the tech industry’s use of ‘dark patterns’?, Fast Company

I “attended”–meaning I watched from my home office–a conference the Federal Trade Commission held at the end of April about the abuse of “dark pattern” interfaces by tech companies to push customers into making decisions against their own interests. The FTC had a great lineup of speakers, I learned a lot, and at the end I really wished I could have walked over, said hi and asked follow-up questions like in the Before Times.

5/6/2021: (Face)book ’em Donno!, Bipodisan

My friend Robert Schlesinger had me back on the podcast he co-hosts with Jean Card for the first time since last May. We mostly talked about the Facebook Oversight Board’s decision–in particular, its implicit scolding of Facebook’s habit of letting its policy shop override the content-policy enforcement calls–but also discussed broader concerns about the influence of Facebook and what political and technological developments might help check that.

Weekly output: Facebook and politically-tied local news, smartphone plans

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This week was a lot less hectic than the week before, and yet most of the items on my household to-do list remain undone.

8/13/2020: No, Facebook Isn’t Getting Political Clickbait Out Of Its News Tab, Forbes

I took a closer look at a new Facebook policy about political propaganda disguised as news and found two huge holes in it. I was pleasantly surprised to see the tech-news aggregator Techmeme give this post a shout-out, but a plug from that influential site doesn’t seem to have graced me with a lot of extra page views.

8/13/2020: The Best Cell Phone Plans, Wirecutter

This update to the smartphone-plans guide I’ve been maintaining since 2014 leads with the same two picks as before, but the Verizon plan we endorse as the best choice for most people is no longer limited to a single line, while T-Mobile’s advantage for high data use includes a big lead in usable 5G connectivity. (We thought about giving our best-for-most-people nod to an AT&T plan that offered more data but cost more, but “don’t buy more than you need” is a big Wirecutter principle.) This update also benefited from a more systematic process of ranking all of the services we considered in 11 different categories, from coverage to to cost to customer-satisfaction scores.