Journalism roundup: Mapping Media Freedom in Europe

A Ushahidi platform to map media freedom in Europe here. 

Index on Censorship and Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso are joining forces to map the state of media freedom in Europe. With your participation, we are mapping the violations, threats and limitations that European media professionals, bloggers and citizen journalists face everyday. We are also collecting feedback on what would support journalists in such situations. Help protect media freedom and democracy by contributing to this crowd-sourcing effort!

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As journalists become wonks, wonks become journalists

Nieman Journalism Lab by Caroline O’Donovan

The Economist offers an interesting perspective today on the flip side of the wonky data journalism craze. While traditional newsrooms and media startups sift through spreadsheets and build interactive graphics and apps, think tanks — they of the traditionally dry, analytical white paper — have increasingly come to resemble digital news sites themselves. From the magazine:

A most cynical letter from a most cynical company

BuzzMachine by Jeff Jarvis

Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp., just sent a monumentally cynical letter to the EU attacking Google, matching the letter from a posse of European publishers led by Germany’s Axel Springer and another public letter from that company’s head, Mathia Döpfner. These supposed bastions of conservative thinking are running to the government they all disdain to try to get unfair advantage on Google because — simply put — they have failed in the marketplace on their own. The internet and defeated them. They are crying uncle. On Newsgenius, I annotated Thomson’s letter…

The Death of Steven Sotloff

The New Yorker – Dexter Filkins – Sep 2, 3:06 PM – In the final moments before an ISIS executioner beheaded the American journalist Steven Sotloff, the masked man offered up, in an English accent, a message to his viewers: “We take this opportunity to warn those governments that enter this

Six things we learned about big news outlets from a report on editorial standards

Nieman Journalism Lab by Caroline O’Donovan

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism came out with a hefty report earlier this week on developing editorial standards for journalism. “Accuracy, Independence and Impartiality: How legacy media and digital natives approach standards in the digital age,”profiles media companies and describes challenges each were faced with and how they came to craft transparent guidelines for those situations. Kellie Riordan, author of the study, writes:

From Nieman Reports: Where are the women in leadership at news organizations?

Nieman Journalism Lab by Anna Griffin

Editor’s note: Our sister publication Nieman Reports is out with its new issue (and new website). Its cover package focuses on a single issue: the status of women in media. Here’s the lead story, by The Oregonian’s Anna Griffin.

Yet another new site for The Washington Post, this time aimed at aggregation

Nieman Journalism Lab by Caroline O’Donovan

Thanks in part to the recent Bezosian cash infusion, things have been busy over at The Washington Post.

In less than 6 months, the Post has launched @WaPoThing, @TheStorylineand @GetThereWP

— Noah Chestnut (@noahchestnut) August 26, 2014

Today, another new website joins the ranks of these ventures. The Post’s The Most will feature links to “most read” and “most shared” stories from around a dozen websites, including The Post’s.

Designer or journalist: Who shapes the news you read in your favorite apps?

Nieman Journalism Lab by Mike Ananny and Kate Crawford

What are the ethics of platform design? One of the reasons that Facebook study on user emotions was so controversial is that it touched on the kinds of ethics we expect — or don’t expect — from platform designers. The public debate was divided, right down to the words used to describe what happened: science, experimentation, customization, manipulation, effect, significance, consent, harm, algorithm, users, audiences. All these words mean different things to people depending on their experiences, training, values, and expectations. And the simple summary of ethics as the “study of what we ought to do” is often unsatisfying because it invokes hard questions about who is the “we” who does the deciding, what “oughts” are up for debate, and who bears responsibility. Journalists and news technology designers are increasingly finding themselves in the middle of this debate about how platforms should work.