Friday 12th June: Can Twitter shame users to share better?

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Chris.

We're all complicit in the spread of misinformation. While a small number of people are responsible for its creation, audiences are responsible for spreading it. Whether that's deliberately amplifying the reach of someone purely because we agree with them, or even quote tweeting them to disagree, social algorithms are very bad at determining sharing done in good faith versus sharing done with mischief in mind.

Which is why it's interesting to see Twitter test out a new feature that introduces a roadblock to indiscriminate sharing. Users who have not clicked through to an article they're about to retweet are now asked if they would at least like to read it before sharing. As yet it doesn't flag when a share has been made blindly - and clicking through is the only criteria for having 'read' it - but it suggests Twitter is taking its role as a vector for sharing news seriously.

Keyword blocking has been an issue for a while now. Giving advertisers the ability to opt-out of appearing against certain news items has led to publishers' articles being undervalued if they happen to mention Covid, Brexit, or the petulant bunker-dweller in the White House. Now, though, Vice Media says CPMs for protest stories are 57 percent lower than for other coverage. We think that's despicable, frankly.

Despite that, the reaction among publishers to Black Lives Matter has prompted some long-overdue uprootings of problematic individuals. Condé's head of video Matt Duckor "resigned Wednesday after accusations of bias from several employees", joining a growing list of media figures forced out for their views and behaviour.

Rebekah Brooks, who is somehow still CEO of News UK, has told staff the pandemic has "hammered" print sales and advertising revenue. As a result, job cuts now seem inevitable - despite the title's success with subscriptions. If we had to bet, we'd also suggest there'll have to be closer integration between the daily and Sunday edition teams.

This week's podcast

This week, we talk to the Wall Street Journal’s Newsroom Innovation Chief Robin Kwong. He talks about how his team develops features to help the WSJ’s wider goals, how he helps facilitate innovation across teams in the business, and how his background in reporting and data journalism has helped his approach to this role.

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