Wednesday 7th April: Why Silicon Valley's most astute critics are women

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

There's no scientific method within John Naughton's piece for The Guardian, but his observations are nonetheless interesting. He noticed that the authors of the most insightful critiques of digital technology as deployed by the tech companies were women.

This tells us quite a lot, and Naughton draws a few conclusions: "The industry that is reshaping our societies and undermining our democracies is overwhelmingly dominated by males. Yet – with a few honourable exceptions – male critics seem relatively untroubled by, or phlegmatic about, this particular aspect of the industry."

The tech bros who dominate Silicon Valley are unlikely to have experienced social exclusion, racism, misogyny, poverty, or physical abuse. But they are making and profiting from machines that monitor and control people. "Democracies need smart, informed, critical perspectives on the asymmetries of power implicit in such abusive technologies," he concludes. And he has a list of women who are up to the job.

Jobs! And not just any jobs. Newsroom jobs! It's great to see a publisher hiring in these 'unprecedented times', with additional good news that their subscriber base has just surpassed 600,000 people across both print and digital.

Even without the U.K., English is still the most widely spoken language in the EU, and that's led to some awkward arrangements. Some smart thoughts from (U.S.-based 😉) Nieman Lab's Joshua Benton about the British dominance of European news, and some possible solutions.

For The Economist, podcasts serve the dual purpose of helping attract and retain subscribers, while the audio advertising pays enough to cover the production costs. A neat overview of their podcast strategy and wider audio experiments.

Today's throwback:

With Facebook, Twitter, and now Clubhouse trying to tempt creators with payments, newsletters and other tools, it's an ideal time to re-surface last year's podumentary about the realities of going solo as a journalist. There's a transcript too, if you'd rather read it.

We're putting the finishing touches to our virtual awards ceremony, which is just two weeks away. It's free to register for a ticket, so why not sign up and have a peek? It could be your podcast winning next year...