The Houston Landing’s newsroom is “blindsided” by the firing of its top editor and a star reporter

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Wednesday, January 10, 2024 [The Houston Landing’s newsroom is “blindsided” by the firing of its top editor and a star reporter]( “I was not given a reason beyond ‘the company needs a reset, and you’re not part of it.'” By Sophie Culpepper. What We’re Reading Vanity Fair / Tom Kludt [How NFL writers made peace with covering “the Taylor Swift season” →]( “Chiefs scribes entered the season expecting the team’s defense of a Super Bowl title to dominate headlines; instead, they found themselves swept up by a modern-day version of DiMaggio and Monroe. ‘You have to cater to what the public craves and wants,’ says one.” CNBC / Alex Sherman and Brian Schwartz [The Messenger is forecasting a dramatic ad revenue turnaround →]( CNBC obtained an investor deck The Messenger used while seeking a cash infusion of more than $20 million. In it, The Messenger forecasted advertising revenue would surge from $3.8 million in 2023 to more than $55 million in 2024. The Messenger said it also plans to add 19 more employees to launch Messenger TV despite barely having any cash left by the end of 2023. The Texas Observer / Jason Buch [An unconventional citizen journalist is standing up for free speech in the Texas border city of Laredo →]( “[Priscilla] Villarreal consistently breaks news about day-to-day crime and traffic incidents in the city of 250,000—almost all Latino. The audience knows her as La Gordiloca, an affectionate nickname that translates to something like ‘Crazy Chubby Lady’ … She communicates with more than 200,000 followers through meandering, expletive-filled Facebook Live streams. They’re mostly in Spanish and peppered with snark and slang particular to the stretch of Texas-Mexico border where she lives.” Puck / Dylan Byers [The Washington Post’s traffic has dipped by more than 50% in the past few years →]( “In addition to churning subscribers and losing $100 million a year, the Post is also failing to engage audiences. Four years ago, the Post boasted 139 million monthly visitors. By the end of last year, it had less than 60 million, according to sources familiar with its internal numbers. Of that audience, less than one in five read more than a single article per month, while less than one in 500 actually convert to a paying subscription.” BBC / Marita Moloney and Patrick Jackson [Masked gunmen stormed Ecuador public television studio live on air →]( “Through our earpieces the producers told us, ‘Be careful, they are trying to enter, they are stealing, they are mugging us’.” Press Gazette / Bron Maher [Survey of media execs: AI, Whatsapp, newsletters, and video are key focus areas →]( The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism survey found widespread concern over the “sharp decline in referral traffic” from Facebook and the platform previously known as Twitter. The majority of senior media staff surveyed said their company will be putting more effort into Whatsapp and TikTok in 2024 “in a bid to tackle the traffic tail-off.” (Read more: [How 13 news publishers are using WhatsApp Channels]( Vanity Fair / Charlotte Klein [Washington Post reporters voice concern over a research department gutted by buyouts →]( The news research department “assists investigations by, among other things, tracking down subjects, finding court records, verifying claims, and scouring documents. The department’s three most senior researchers—Magda Jean-Louis and Pulitzer Prize winners Alice Crites and Jennifer Jenkins—had all accepted buyouts, among the 240 that the company offered employees across departments amid financial struggles. That left news research with only three people.” The Verge / Ash Parrish [Twitch is laying off more than 500 employees, around 35% of its staff →]( “The cuts at Twitch were accompanied by layoffs elsewhere at Amazon today. The company’s Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions also cut hundreds of roles.” The Verge / Mia Sato [How the internet reshaped itself around Google’s search algorithms →]( “The relentless optimizing of pages, words, paragraphs, photos, and hundreds of other variables has led to a wasteland of capital-C Content that is competing for increasingly dwindling Google Search real estate as generative AI rears its head. You’ve seen it before: the awkward subheadings and text that repeats the same phrases a dozen times, the articles that say nothing but which are sprayed with links that in turn direct you to other meaningless pages. Much of the information we find on the web — and much of what’s produced for the web in the first place — is designed to get Google’s attention.” Substack / Richard J. Tofel [Taking that James Bennet article seriously →]( “When Bennet analogizes to newsrooms in saying that ‘liberal-minded college presidents lost control of their campuses,’ I think he reveals more than he intends. Universities, perhaps a bit like op-ed pages, are not analogous to newsrooms in being appropriately subject to ‘control.’ Rather, they ought to be places where diversity of all sorts, very much including in views, are among the attributes most highly prized.” New York Times / Benjamin Mullin [Outgoing editor of L.A. Times clashed with owner over budget and restricting journalists who signed Israel open letter →]( “Mr. Merida and the Soon-Shiong family have clashed over his decision to restrict journalists who signed a letter condemning Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks from covering the conflict in Gaza, the people said. Some members of the Soon-Shiong family raised objections to Mr. Merida’s decision, one of the people said, and they were unable to reach a resolution with Mr. Merida and even discussed selling the newspaper.” The New Republic / Tori Otten [Twitter temporarily suspended the accounts of several journalists, including some critical of Elon Musk →]( “The reporters who were banned include Steven Monacelli, a journalist at the Texas Observer who covers extremism, and Ken Klippenstein, who covers national security for The Intercept. Last year, Klippenstein published a piece on the errors with Tesla’s self-driving feature, and Monacelli noted that X shadow-banned the Intercept author since then … All of the suspended accounts were reinstated a few hours later, but with significantly lower follower counts than before.” [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. Nieman Journalism Lab Harvard University 1 Francis Ave.Cambridge, MA 02138 [Add us to your address book](