The Algebra of Need #3

By Shameel Arafin • Issue #3 • View online

Happy Friday, Beautiful People! I’m writing to you from the Rose Room of the New York Public Library, where I’ve just become a member after 21 years in the city. It seems a fitting place to think about journalism and its discontents.

Journalism has a focus problem: How to combat Shiny Things Syndrome » Nieman Journalism Lab

“This is a permanent process of change, but I feel a great desire for resting.”

www.niemanlab.org • Share

The Facebook

When their growth or profit is challenged, Facebook and its big brothers borrow tactics from the threatened behemoths in industries like tobacco and oil, deceiving lawmakers, funding their own experts, and working to forestall regulation.

Facebook's Dirty Tricks Are Nothing New for Tech | WIRED

Big tech companies have a history of discrediting critics, forging alliances with adversaries, and deflecting scrutiny to competitors.

www.wired.com • Share

Now, people now have burner phones to talk shit about the company — not even to reporters, just to other employees…

Mark Zuckerberg's Biggest Problem: Internal Tensions At Facebook Are Boiling Over

“It’s the bunker mentality. These people have been under siege for 600 days now. They’re getting tired, getting cranky — the only survival strategy is to quit or fully buy in.”

www.buzzfeednews.com • Share

It’s hard… to reckon with the idea that we have taken life and career advice from someone who could be building something that’s not good for the world.

Lean In’s Sheryl Sandberg Problem - The New York Times

The movement that Facebook’s chief operating officer started is trying to leave her, and her scandals, behind.

www.nytimes.com • Share

Business Models

The user experience across devices, the loss of control over what’s displayed on publisher sites, and how this loss may impact brand reputation have all gone understudied by professional journalism curricula. This is a worrisome trend, as ad tech may influence the production, distribution, and perception of journalism in both obvious and subtle ways.

Journalists are rightly suspicious of ad tech. They also depend on it. - Columbia Journalism Review

www.cjr.org • Share

The concept is that whenever a client requests a combination of research and thought leadership strategy, content creation, ads, events, and distribution, the FT can assemble a marketing services team that includes all the necessary skill sets from each of the existing departments. In total, 250 FT staffers globally have been trained on the new marketing services product offers, 170 of whom are in the U.K., 30 in Asia and 50 in the U.S.

How The Financial Times is making marketing services a central part of its ad offering - Digiday

The Financial Times is betting on its newly assembled marketing-services business to bump up its paid-content revenue by 30 percent per year.

digiday.com • Share

You can’t be just a great journalism organization anymore. Along with great journalism, you need to invest in technology and infrastructure. It’s not about the next big product, but building the test-and-learn discipline.

CNN's Andrew Morse: 'We need to diversify our revenue model' - Digiday

digiday.com • Share

We have a market that penalizes long-term relationships. If I have been working with a publisher year after year, you’d think they could raise prices. If I’m working with a client for years, I should be able to charge more. But I have to give a better deal to those clients. Basically, we grind down the publishers.

Ad buyers: Don't blame us for the death of the publishing middle class - Digiday

For publishers, part of the blame can be to be placed on downward pressure from ad buyers.

digiday.com • Share

Disinformation

How mainstream media helps weaponize far-right conspiracy theories

Why do people believe absurd lies about George Soros? The answer depends on the platforms you use, the media influencers you follow and the memes you see.

theconversation.com • Share

The Fake News About Journalism – Financial Times – Medium

One oddity of being a journalist these days is that non-journalists are always critiquing the profession. It isn’t only Donald Trump. Many see broadsheet newspapers and public-sector broadcasters as…

medium.com • Share

The Industry of Journalism

The magazine’s precarious position comes after its leadership spent months searching for a buyer…

Fate of The Weekly Standard is uncertain, editor tells staff - CNN

The fate of The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine that has staked out a position as a publication on the right still critical of President Donald Trump, is uncertain, Editor-in-Chief Stephen Hayes told staff in a series of phone calls Tuesday.

edition.cnn.com • Share

Did you enjoy this issue?

By Shameel Arafin

"The Algebra of Need" is a weekly newsletter on journalism, media, technology and literature, with the occasional post on capitalism, poker and running.

A note on the name. It comes from the introduction to William Burroughs' Naked Lunch: "Junk yields a basic formula of 'evil' virus: The Algebra of Need. The face of 'evil' is always the face of total need... Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control."

When did our world become one of total need?

www.shameelarafin.com

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