Monday 18th July: Fact-checking, publisher partnerships, and Putin

July 18, 2022

Good morning! This morning's newsletter is brought to you by Chris.

I'm a big fan of Full Fact. Any effort to provide independent fact-checking with a totally apolitical bent should be encouraged, particularly in 2022 when disinformation has been weaponised. But modern problems require modern solutions, and the biggest issue in an age of live coverage and instant news consumption is that it is incredibly tricky to fact-check in real-time. So kudos to Full Fact for investing in a potential solution.

“Our intention is to really take these tools to as many users as possible, and especially take them to language users who have historically been underserved in automated fact-checking because of the difficulties that are associated with multilingual tools,” said Kate Wilkinson, senior product manager at Full Fact.

Look, even if it works this isn't going to be a silver bullet for live fact-checking. Sections of the public will always choose to believe what they want to believe, and it's very very difficult if not impossible to be entirely impartial. But this is still very valuable. More please.

Preach! We've been saying this for so long and it's so good to know that other people have been chatting about the dangers of locking news away. "Paywalls bolster news organizations’ bottom lines, but leave Americans in the dark. As a public service, let everyone read election stories for free." YES.

Russia has threatened Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung with legal action after it published a caricature of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Newspapers should be about rattling the cages of the powerful, so frankly NZZ should be wearing this as a mark of honour.

It's rare that we recommend podcasts other than our own, but this interview with Claire Sanderson from Jacob Granger at journalism.co.uk is well worth your time. Especially valuable for the insights in how you work with partners to bring campaigns to fruition. Give it a listen (after our latest episode, obviously).

This week's podcast:

This week we hear from Sajeeda Merali, CEO of the Professional Publishers Association (PPA). We talked about what her publishing background brings to the organisation, what’s top-of-mind for the publishers the association represents as the effects of the pandemic rumble on, and what defines a magazine publisher today.

In this Conversations episode we discuss the benefits of systems consolidation, from improved operational efficiency to increased profitability, as well as exploring some of the challenges publishers face when looking to consolidate, and how they can get the process started.