How a new two-minute quiz measures misinformation susceptibility

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Monday, July 24, 2023 [How a new two-minute quiz measures misinformation susceptibility]( Results from a recent YouGov survey using the MIST suggest that younger Americans do a worse job than older Americans distinguishing real news from fake news. By Sophie Culpepper. [If other media companies thought about brand equity the way Elon Musk thinks about Twitter’s (er, X’s)]( In the spirit of Tronc, Elon Musk has decided to throw away more than a decade of brand equity by changing the name of Twitter to…the letter X. Imagine if more media executives followed his lead. By Joshua Benton. What We’re Reading The Santa Barbara Independent / Jean Yamamura [The Santa Barbara News-Press, a past Pulitzer Prize winner, is dead →]( “More than 150 years of history ended on Friday when the Santa Barbara News-Press declared bankruptcy in a Chapter 7 filing by Ampersand Publishing…[The paper was] owned by the New York Times before being bought by onetime billionaire Wendy McCaw in 2000 for a reported $110 million. The Chapter 7 filing is for liquidation, not reorganization.” The New York Times / Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Mullin [Cheddar News’ owner is exploring “strategic alternatives,” including a sale →]( “A sale would be a retreat from Altice USA’s big bet on the streaming news company. Altice…paid $200 million for the streaming network in 2019. The deal was seen as a way to elevate the company’s news division, which also includes the News 12 channel. Cheddar had pitched itself as the future of financial news, featuring interviews with C.E.O.s, newsmakers, and journalists from the floor of the N.Y.S.E.” The New York Times / Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Remy Tumin [Texas A&M’s president is out amid the fallout over its failed hire of journalist Kathleen McElroy →]( “Dr. Banks’s resignation came days after the resignation of the dean overseeing the university’s College of Arts and Sciences and followed a tense meeting between Dr. Banks and the university’s faculty senate on Wednesday.” The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson [A decade ago, Jeff Bezos bought a newspaper. Now he’s paying attention to it again. →]( “Mr. Bezos has said he wants The [Washington] Post to be profitable, but it is unlikely to reach that target this year. The Post is on a pace to lose about $100 million in 2023, according to two people with knowledge of the company’s finances…The Post has struggled to increase the number of its paying customers since the 2020 election, when its digital subscriptions peaked at three million. It now has around 2.5 million.” The Objective / Uyiosa Elegon [After 2020, Black-led newsrooms ask: Where is the long-term support? →]( “A recent report published by Professor Meredith D. Clark and Tracie M. Powell found twenty-three of the 42 respondents (54.76%) who answered questions about the health of their BIPOC-founded news organizations indicated that they had cash on hand to sustain operations for three months or fewer. Clark and Powell put it plainly: ‘Journalism philanthropy — and with it, journalism entrepreneurship — has a race problem.'” CBC / Natalie Pressman [Small Canadian digital news orgs aren’t sure what the Online News Act will do to their business →]( “Gordon Gow…says the Online News Act plays into larger faults with the structure of the industry and inequality between major news outlets and smaller ones….the Act enables a news sphere where smaller, local publications are shut out by giants like Postmedia and Torstar who have more bargaining power. Gow says critics argue that Act props up an antiquated business strategy and impairs digital-focused startups from innovating.” The New York Times / Noam Scheiber [How writing for Hollywood became a dead-end job →]( “…a longer-term pattern: the fracturing of work into ‘many smaller, more degraded, poorly paid jobs’…Large law firms have relatively fewer equity partners and more lawyers off the standard partner track…Universities employ fewer tenured professors as a share of their faculty and more untenured instructors. Large tech companies hire relatively fewer engineers, while raising armies of temps and contractors to test software, label web pages and do low-level programming.” The Verge / Richard Lawler [An NFT of the first tweet that sold for $2.9 million is for sale again; top bid: $1,852 →]( “just setting up my extremely fungible token” The Verge / Elizabeth Lopatto [Can we go back to Web 1.0 now? →]( “We have the opportunity to get out from under the algorithms. So maybe it’s time to think about what a web of people looks like now. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now — the decay of Google Search and, with it, the findability of archive material; the destruction of Twitter by the coward Elon Musk; the AI glurge polluting the open web; the needless login prompts. The era of Web 2.0 is ending.” Reuters / Luc Cohen [The Forbes contributor-slash-accused crypto launderer “Razzlekhan” has reached a plea deal with prosecutors →]( “The bitcoin was worth $71 million at the time of the hack, but had appreciated to more than $4.5 billion at the time of their arrest.” (You may remember Razzlekhan from her Forbes pieces, like [“Experts Share Tips to Protect Your Business From Cybercriminals.”]( The Verge / David Pierce and Andrew Marino [The best IMAX movies still require an emulated Palm Pilot to work →]( “The m130 is apparently crucial to keeping the thing humming — ‘PALM PILOT MUST BE ON ALL THE TIME,’ reads a notice above an image of a different m130 that has since been passed around the internet — but doesn’t often need to be used.” Tampa Bay Times / Justin Garcia [Tim Burke and lawyers deny hacking Fox News, demand return of devices →]( “In May, FBI agents searched his house while looking for evidence related to leaked Fox News footage, including an anti-Semitic rant from Kanye West and behind-the-scenes footage of Tucker Carlson on his now-canceled show.” Los Angeles Times / Brian Merchant [Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking →]( “‘These companies blew up a successful business model that the public enjoyed, that was immensely profitable, and they replaced it with a mishmash that we have now,’ Adam Conover, the star of ‘Adam Ruins Everything’ and a negotiating committee member of the Writers Guild of America, tells me. ‘And now, they’re refusing to update the contract to reflect those changes.'” CNBC / Alex Sherman [ESPN is talking to the NFL, NBA, and MLB about the leagues buying part of the company →]( “[Bob] Iger said last week in an interview with CNBC’s David Faber that Disney is looking for a strategic partner for ESPN as it prepares to transition the sports network to streaming. He didn’t elaborate on what exactly that meant beyond saying a partner could bring additional value with distribution or content.” Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt [The BBC says its Huw Edwards coverage was “proportionate,” not overkill →]( “However, we realise not everyone will agree with the stories we cover and the prominence we give them.” The Guardian / Amanda Meade [Australia’s government will look for ways to protect its public broadcasters from arbitrary defunding threats →]( “‘Under the former Liberal National government, the threat of privatisation was real, arbitrary funding cuts caused disruption and uncertainty, and there was scant regard for the independent merit-based selection process for ABC board members,’ Rowland said on Thursday evening.” The Wall Street Journal / Lauren Thomas and Vicky Ge Huang [Someone thinks a news site covering crypto is still worth $125 million →]( “CoinDesk’s parent company, Digital Currency Group or DCG, is expected to retain a stake in the media, events, data, and indexes business as part of the deal, which is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. CoinDesk’s current management is expected to stay in place, they said.” The Washington Post / Erik Wemple [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s report on University of Georgia football was a big fumble →]( “‘Upon review, we discovered parts of the story did not meet our standards, and for that, we apologize,’ the AJC said in a statement issued Wednesday. It published a story announcing corrections, changed the original piece, and fired the reporter who wrote it. There was no retraction, but there might as well have been — such was the gap between what the story had promised and what it delivered.” The Wrap / Jeremy Bailey [Hearst magazines lay off 41 union staffers, citing “company restructuring” →]( “The layoffs impacted multiple publications including Elle, Seventeen, and Men’s Health.” [Nieman Lab]( / [Fuego]( [Twitter]( / [Facebook]( [View email in browser]( [Unsubscribe]( You are receiving this daily newsletter because you signed up for for it at www.niemanlab.org. 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