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Facebook parent Meta laying off more than 11,000 workers — www.axios.com

Next week's podcast episode is going to be doing a deep dive into the year in platforms. It's an insane topic to try and cover in 40 minutes, and unsurprisingly we spent much of it discussing Meta. It's hard to convey just how fast and hard the company has fallen in the past twelve months - it has lost more than 70% of its value in that time.

Zuckerberg has said he wants to take accountability for how the company got to this point. His announcement detailed several reasons, including a slower ad market and a wrong belief that accelerated e-commerce trends would outlive the pandemic.

To me this glosses over one massive reason why these layoffs are taking place: his metaverse vision. For the first 9 months of the year, Meta lost $9.4 billion on its metaverse unit Reality Labs, and expects the unit to have significantly wider operating losses next year. If you're going to lay people off in order to afford to go all-in on the metaverse, at least be honest about it.

“We actually go back to the beginning”: After launching in London, the TikTok-focused News Movement comes to the U.S. — www.niemanlab.org

The News Movement is an English-language news outlet with a strong focus on social media. Founded by former executives from Dow Jones and the BBC, it employs 30 people based in London and New York, and has experienced fast growth across platforms since its launch at the beginning of 2021.

50 paywall examples to inspire your subscription strategy — theaudiencers.com

The Audiencers has gone and pulled together 50 paywall benchmark examples from around the world. Each one has a list of best practices to take away, as well as top-level pros and cons.

Three journalists locked up for covering M25 protests - police force says the arrests were justified — pressgazette.co.uk

I don't personally think causing masses of traffic to sit idling for hours on the motorway is a good way to protest against fossil fuels. Arresting the journalists trying to cover it is definitely not smart. Some really worrying reports here, especially with the police continuing to say they were justified.

New podcast:

Can we stop the endless decline of trust in the media? — voices.media

Our seventh episode looks at trust in the media, the growth of news fatigue and avoidance, and the opportunities and dangers in the future, from AI to platforms. Will transparency in reporting help bring round reluctant or sceptical readers, or do we need to do more? Joining us this week to discuss the year in trust is Martha Williams, CEO of World Newsmedia Network.

How Reuters News Agency uses data to build trust in its reporting — voices.media

This year has seen trust in the news fall to an historic low. Despite this bleak picture, there are concrete steps news publishers can take to build and maintain trust in their reporting. One factor that is growing in significance is using data, infographics, maps and charts to add context and help audiences to understand what is going on.