Category: media

NPR Develops Open-Source Tool For Getting Podcast User Data, And Feelings Are, Well, Mixed

Until now, the only tools for telling how long users actually listened to the podcasts they downloaded were the proprietary ones of Apple and Spotify. So NPR developed an open-source tool to get data beyond download figures. But with the privacy scandals that have broken over the past year, some podcasters are leery. — Columbia Journalism Review

What It Means To Disconnect From Facebook

Slate spoke with a small group of people who had publicly declared they planned to #DeleteFacebook. Most were successful, though some find themselves back on the site from time to time. Their stories demonstrate that reducing exposure to Facebook does not necessarily mean deleting an account, but that taking the extra step makes it easier to avoid falling back into the trap. – Slate

After Tumultuous Year, New York Public Radio President Laura Walker To Step Down

In a memo to staff, Walker said that “the Board and I have agreed that the time has come for me to move on.” (Her contract was due to expire in June; she steps down at the end of March.) Over 23 years, Walker presided over extraordinary growth at WNYC, the US’s largest public radio outlet, but a series of scandals and controversies over the past year led to more general criticism of her management style and extremely high pay. — Current

Why There Are So Many Of Those Cheesy Christmas Movies

This, when uttered in the context of a Hallmark holiday movie, is a beacon to the Christmas spirits, who know one thing, and pretty much one thing only: No one should simply muddle through the holidays. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not — however you find meaning in the time of year that these movies shorthand as “the season” — the ideal, these films insist, is unmitigated joy. — The Atlantic

Too Big, Too Well-Funded And Too Scared: A BBC World Service Veteran On Why The Network Is Becoming Sclerotic

Owen Bennett-Jones writes that the network is now so top-heavy with senior managers who are terrified of negative public attention that it takes months to get a project approved — and that reporters who have serious stories to break are sometimes reduced to leaking them to The Guardian or The Times because their managers will only feel comfortable broadcasting those stories if they’ve seen them in print. — London Review of Books

Steven Spielberg Is Expanding His Shoah Foundation To Cover Genocides Beyond The Holocaust

“The Holocaust cannot stand alone. We decided to send our videographers into Rwanda to get testimony. From there we went to Cambodia, Armenia — we’re doing a critical study in the Central African Republic, Guatemala, the Nanjing massacre. Most recently, we’re doing testimony on the anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar and the current anti-Semitic violence in Europe. We’re expanding our scope to counter many forms of hate.” — The New York Times

Remember Infomercials? They’ve Got More In Common With Apps Than We’d Like To Think

Ernie Smith gives a brief history of the very American phenomenon, from its 1949 birth (pitching Vitamix blenders, actually a legit product) through the Psychic Friends Network and Miss Cleo. “In a lot of ways, the modern app-store ecosystem shares much in common with the televised grift that many vintage infomercials specialized in. The difference, of course, is scale and intent.” — Tedium