#LED Traffic Signs and Signals Research Report

[businessindustry]

LED Traffic Signs and Signals Market Size, Analysis, Research Report, Trends by 2024-2032

The Reports and Insights, a leading market research company, has recently releases report titled “LED Traffic Signs and Signals Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2024-2032.” The study provides a detailed analysis of the industry, including the global LED Traffic Signs and Signals Market share, size, trends, and growth forecasts. The report also includes competitor and regional analysis and highlights the latest advancements in the market.

Report Highlights:

How big is the LED Traffic Signs and Signals Market?

The global LED traffic signs and signals market was valued at US$ 1,106.2 Million in 2023 and is expected to register a CAGR of 5.6% over the forecast period and reach US$ 1,806.4 Mn in 2032.

What are LED Traffic Signs and Signals?                                                                                                                                                                            

LED traffic signs and signals are modern roadway devices that employ light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to communicate vital information to drivers and pedestrians. These signs and signals are designed to improve road safety and traffic management by providing clear and highly visible indications, such as stop signs, speed limits, and directional arrows, even in challenging weather conditions and low-light environments. The use of LED technology offers numerous advantages, including energy efficiency, long lifespan, and minimal maintenance needs, making them a cost-effective option for municipalities and transportation agencies. The bright illumination and rapid response time of LED traffic signs enhance drivers' reaction times, reducing the risk of accidents and promoting smoother traffic flow. Overall, LED traffic signs and signals represent a significant advancement in traffic control systems, contributing to safer and more efficient transportation networks.

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What are the growth prospects and trends in the LED Traffic Signs and Signals industry?

The LED traffic signs and signals market growth is driven by various factors and trends. The LED traffic signs and signals market is witnessing significant growth, driven by factors such as rising urbanization, increasing vehicle populations, and a heightened focus on road safety and effective traffic management. These advanced devices offer improved visibility and clarity, essential for conveying crucial information to drivers and pedestrians, particularly in low-light and adverse weather conditions. Government initiatives and investments in smart city infrastructure are further fueling market expansion, as they aim to enhance transportation systems and reduce traffic-related accidents. Technological advancements in LED technology, including greater energy efficiency and longer lifespans, are making these solutions more attractive to municipalities and transportation agencies. Additionally, the growing awareness of sustainable practices is promoting the adoption of eco-friendly LED traffic solutions, positioning the market for continued growth in the years ahead. Overall, the LED traffic signs and signals market is set to flourish, reflecting the rising demand for innovative and effective traffic control systems. Hence, all these factors contribute to LED traffic signs and signals market growth.

What is included in market segmentation?

The report has segmented the market into the following categories:

By Type

Solar

Electric Power

By Product Type

Traffic Signals

Variable Message Signs

Guidance Signs

Warning Signs

Others

By Technology

Conventional LED

Smart LED

By Application

Urban Areas

Highways

Construction Sites

Others

By End User

Private Sector

Public Sector

Europe

Germany

United Kingdom

France

Italy

Spain

Russia

Poland

Benelux

Nordic

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

Japan

India

South Korea

ASEAN

Australia & New Zealand

Rest of Asia Pacific

Latin America

Brazil

Mexico

Argentina

Middle East & Africa

Saudi Arabia

South Africa

United Arab Emirates

Israel

Rest of MEA

Who are the key players operating in the industry?

The report covers the major market players including:

ARCUS USA Inc.

D G Controls Ltd.

Econolite Control Products Inc.

Envoys Electronics Pvt. Ltd.

European Safety Systems Ltd.

Federal Signal Corp.

Horizon Signal Technologies Inc.

LITE-ON Technology Corp.

North America Traffic

Pfannenberg Group Holding GmbH

Sinowatcher Technology Co. Ltd.

Traffic Safety Corp.

Trafitronics India Pvt. Ltd.

Ver Mac

Yangzhou Xintong Transport Equipment Group Co., Ltd

Beijing Wistron Technology Ltd

Yunex Traffic

Hesham Industrial Solutions

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If you require any specific information that is not covered currently within the scope of the report, we will provide the same as a part of the customization.

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[david843346]

Visible Light Communication Market: Global Demand Analysis & Opportunity Outlook 2035

Research Nester’s recent market research analysis on “Visible Light Communication Market: Global Demand Analysis & Opportunity Outlook 2035” delivers a detailed competitors analysis and a detailed overview of the global visible light communication market in terms of market segmentation by component, transmission type, application, and by region.

Rise in Adoption of Automotive to Boost Growth of Global Visible Light Communication Market

The global market for visible light communication is estimated to grow on account of the rise in the adoption of automobiles. Visible light communication is widely used in vehicle communication as a result of the availability of car lights and the already-existing system of traffic signals. This may include cooperative forward collision warning, emergency electronic brake lights, pre-crash sensing, lane change warning, left turn assistant, stop sign movement assistant, traffic signal violation warning, and curve speed warning.

Another key driver for visible light communication (VLC) systems is the rising acceptance and use of wireless applications. Investments are necessary for the market expansion of visible light communication (VLC) due to the issue of the radio spectrum bottleneck faced by Wi-Fi and cellular radio systems. Additionally, the popularity and use of VLC technology would grow as a result of technological developments that solve difficulties with network coverage and dependability, line of sight (LOS) requirements, and system setup complexity.

Some of the major growth factors and challenges that are associated with the growth of the global visible light communication market are:

Growth Drivers:

Growth on its Application in the Healthcare Industry

Advancement in Educational Institutions

Challenges:

The biggest problem is signal deterioration caused by environmental factors including fog, scintillation, absorption, scattering, and physical obstructions such as trees and birds during signal propagation, which leads to dependability problems. Optical beams are adversely affected by the atmosphere, and this effect intensifies with link length. Fog is the main obstacle to VLC communications. A network architecture that reduces the distances between VLC links and increases network redundancies is the main strategy for combating fog while installing VLC. Currently, fading of signals during propagation owing to environmental interference is providing a significant dependability concern.

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By application, the market visible light communication is segmented into consumer electronics, defense & security, transportation, public infrastructure, and life sciences. Out of these segments, the public infrastructure segment is expected to generate the highest revenue by the end of 20235. However, the transportation segment is also anticipated to grow. Traffic management is facing enormous difficulties as a result of rising traffic and population. For effective administration, the amount of data being communicated via public Wi-Fi is neither sufficient nor secure. In contrast to traffic management, vehicle-to-vehicle, and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication is a promising application for VLC. In traffic management systems, such as roadside lights and traffic signals employing VLC, there is a growing opportunity as traffic lights use LED lighting. For instance, pedestrians may cross a roadway by using a walker's smartphone with VLC to manage traffic from street lights.

By region, the Asia Pacific market for visible light communication is anticipated to grow over the forecast period. Rising government initiatives for smart cities are responsible for the market expansion in this area. The concept of "smart cities" is significantly impacted by the Internet of Things (IoT). Additionally, merging Li-Fi and IoT might greatly enhance smart cities. Consequently, it is projected that visible-light communication would become more popular. Additionally, Li-Fi, which would also automate a number of smart city tasks, would make large-scale connectivity possible. The majority of public spaces are now powered by LED lights, which have previously been installed in many Asia Pacific countries. Therefore, it also projected increasing market demand in this area.

Access our detailed report at: https://www.researchnester.com/reports/visible-light-communication-market/5021

[chetanare]

Global LED Traffic Signs and Signals Market Vendor Landscape with SWOT Analysis 2020 to 2024

Global LED Traffic Signs and Signals Market Vendor Landscape with SWOT Analysis 2020 to 2024

KandJ market research added a new market research report on Global LED Traffic Signs and Signals Market Research Report 2020-2024 in the database of market research collaterals consisting of overall market scenario with prevalent and future growth prospects, among other growth strategies used by key players to stay ahead of the market. The Research has the ability to help the decision-makers in…

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Make money as an Amazon Affiliate Marketer

To make funds as an Amazon Affiliate Marketer you have to have a fantastic website or blog you can post your affiliate hyperlinks on. You want to give valued content that proceeds to draw your guests back again periodically to go through and notice the new items you are advertising in your chosen "specialized niche." When you indicator up with amazon associate packages you are presented with an affiliate account and a distinctive link that you can use to encourage its goods and generate fee on all income created by you. If you have not pin-pointed your market but believe in a variety of products that you've got presently purchased, try the Amazon Affiliate Plan You just use to partner with them and if you can encourage and offer a item via the link they supply you, you make a percentage. Amazon affiliate business is all about marketing the respective items from distinct niches between the target men and women.

Most folks have a much tougher moment shifting visits into income when they make a random site that just links for promoted items due to the fact most of their site visitors are only wanting to seem at info. If you would like to discover how to make income on Amazon, you will discover that there are a number of ways to go about it. Promoting items, articles in the kind of quick reports and e-textbooks and operating as an affiliate, are all methods that you can generate cash on Amazon and employ Kindle Cash Stream. The genuine journey starts from here, you know everything all you want is time to research and submit persuasive evaluations each and every time, make folks acquire those goods, keep an eye on amazon greatest promoting items, improve your Search engine marketing, as you know Seo is changing and you must alter as well otherwise targeted traffic from engines end and your commissions end also. Affiliate marketing is a method of generating income by selling products belonging to other people. How To Make Cash With Amazon Affiliate Program 2016 (New Strategy).The easiest is to sign-up as an Amazon affiliate, stock your keep with Amazon merchandise and receive commissions on anything at all you market. A lot of individuals use Google Adwords to promote affiliate plans and receive funds from income they create. Amazon has invested many years perfecting the artwork of on-line selling and you'll discover a whole lot about on the web advertising and marketing by observing how they do it. They continually check various methods of selling goods and have advanced their website very a good deal over the several years. Affiliate marketing is the on the web organization method of promoting merchandise and services that are owned or supplied by others and earning a commission for any sales that you provide in. 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All you have to do is insert links to Amazon items on your blog, web site, or video clips and anytime somebody clicks on that link and purchases anything you get a tiny share of the promote. 1 of the ideal examples of an internet affiliate program is presented by If you have a website, you could area hyperlinks on your site to (both basic internet pages or specific goods). Web supplying a lot of possibility to make income on the internet, but selecting the greatest website is important good deal of folks newcomers usually enthusiastic with the massive fake banners and they feel can generate like that but a accurate income earning websites usually pays significantly less but as soon as locate the crucial of how to earn quicker you can get make heaps but this website is truly useful for the scam sites. 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Surface Mount Technology Equipment Market Analysis of Key Players, End User, Demand and Consumption By 2022

The global surface mount technology equipment market is on an upward growth trajectory and is expected to reach USD 4 Bn by the end of the forecast period of 2016-2022, reveals Market Research Future (MRFR) in a minutely analyzed research report. The market has been observing persistent growth on account of the ever increasing demand for smart gadgets and need for miniaturization of products and higher accuracy. Rapid replacement of the traditional through-hole method by surface mount technology is a growing trend in various countries which is propelling the market growth. Surface mount technology equipment finds its application over different industry verticals which include automotive, consumer electronics, healthcare, aerospace, and others which boosts the market growth primarily. The automotive industry is one of the most significant end users of the surface mount technology equipment. Electric cars generally have a high number of electric components as compared to traditional vehicles and surface mount technology equipment are very efficient in handling the complex electronics components without any malfunction. Thus, the growing automotive industry and rising production of electric vehicles augment the growth of the market.  High usage of surface mount technology in consumer electronics owing to need for miniaturization and growth in the electronics industry fosters the market growth. Escalating need for printed circuit boards in smartphones and the smart card industry reflects positively on the growth of the market. On the downside, the high cost of surface mount technology equipment is restraining the market growth. Moreover, surface mount technology equipment is not suitable for high power or high voltage parts such as power circuit which too acts as a limiting factor. All of these factors in conjunction will help the market capture a CAGR of 8% over the forecast period. SegmentationThe global surface mount technology market has been segmented based on equipment, end user industries, and components. By equipment, the market has been segmented into Pick and place, Coating equipment, Solder equipment, Cleaning agents, and Rework and repair equipment. By end use industries, the market has been segmented into telecommunication, consumer electronics, automotive and medical. By components, the market has been segmented into passive surface mount devices, transistor & diodes, and integrated circuits.Get Free Sample Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2248 Regional AnalysisThe global surface mount technology equipment market spans across the regions of Asia Pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific is at the forefront of the global market. Countries such as China, India, and Japan are leading the market owing to the abundance of skilled labor in the region and the growing penetration of high tech devices which require miniaturization. Also, high demand for consumer electronics from the populous countries of India and China also boost the market growthCompetitive LandscapeThe notable players in the global surface mount technology market include CyberOptics Corporation (U.S.), Mycronic AB (Sweden), Nordson Corporation (U.S.), Orbotech Ltd. (Israel), Fuji Machine Manufacturing Co., Ltd.(Japan), Assembly Systems (Germany), and Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation (Japan).Industry UpdatesIn July 2018, Vishay Intertechnology, Inc., introduced two new series of surface mount automotive Grade power LEDs. The LEDs are ideal for automotive interior and exterior lighting, traffic signals and signs, LCD switches and for general use. In July 2018, Calgary-based Blackline Safety Corp. announced an investment of USD 1 Million in surface mount technology equipment. The investment will allow the company to reduce their overall costs for which they have expanded their premises. Table of Content:1 MARKET INTRODUCTION1.1 INTRODUCTION1.2 SCOPE OF STUDY1.2.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE1.2.2 ASSUMPTIONS1.2.3 LIMITATIONS1.3 MARKET STRUCTURE 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY2.1 RESEARCH NETWORK SOLUTION2.2

PRIMARY RESEARCH2.3 SECONDARY RESEARCH2.4 FORECAST MODEL2.4.1 MARKET DATA COLLECTION, ANALYSIS & FORECAST2.4.2 MARKET SIZE ESTIMATION 3 MARKET DYNAMICS3.1 INTRODUCTION3.2 MARKET DRIVERS3.3 MARKET CHALLENGES3.4 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES3.5 MARKET RESTRAINTS 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5. MARKET FACTOR ANALYSIS5.1 PORTER’S FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS5.2 SUPPLY CHAIN ANALYSIS 6 SURFACE MOUNT TECNOLOGY EQUIPMENT MARKET, BY SEGMENTS6.1 INTRODUCTION6.2 MARKET STATISTICS6.2.1 BY EQUIPMENT6.2.1.1 PICK AND PLACE6.2.1.2 COATING EQUIPMENT6.2.1.3 SOLDER EQUIPMENT6.2.1.4 CLEANING AGENTS6.2.1.5 REWORK AND REPAIR EQUIPMENT6.2.2 BY END USER INDUSTRIES6.2.2.1 TELECOMMUNICATION6.2.2.2 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS6.2.2.3 AUTOMOTIVE6.2.2.4 MEDICAL6.2.3 BY COMPONENTS6.2.3.1 PASSIVE SURFACE MOUNT DEVICES6.2.3.2 TRANSISTOR & DIODES6.2.3.3 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS6.2.4 BY GEOGRAPHY6.2.4.1 NORTH AMERICA6.2.4.2 EUROPE6.2.4.3 ASIA-PACIFIC6.2.4.4 REST OF THE WORLD 7 COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS7.1 MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS7.2 COMPANY PROFILES7.2.1 CYBEROPTICS CORPORATION (U.S.)7.2.2 FUJI MACHINE MANUFACTURING CO., LTD.(JAPAN)7.2.3 MYCRONIC AB (SWEDEN)7.2.4 ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS (GERMANY)7.2.5 NORDSON CORPORATION (U.S.)7.2.6 HITACHI HIGH-TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION (JAPAN)7.2.7 ORBOTECH LTD. (ISRAEL)7.2.8 APPLIED IMAGE, INC. (U.S.)7.2.9 KBC ELECTRONICS, INC. (U.S.)7.2.10 OHMITE MANUFACTURING CO. LLC (U.S.)7.2.11 OTHERSGet Complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/surface-mount-technology-equipment-market-2248About UsMarket Research Future (MRFR) is an esteemed company with a reputation of serving clients across domains of information technology (IT), healthcare, and chemicals. Our analysts undertake painstaking primary and secondary research to provide a seamless report with a 360 degree perspective. Data is compared against reputed organizations, trustworthy databases, and international surveys for producing impeccable reports backed with graphical and statistical information.We at MRFR provide syndicated and customized reports to clients as per their liking. Our consulting services are aimed at eliminating business risks and driving the bottomline margins of our clients. The hands-on experience of analysts and capability of performing astute research through interviews, surveys, and polls are a statement of our prowess. We constantly monitor the market for any fluctuations and update our reports on a regular basis.Media Contact:Market Research Future (Part of Wantstats Research and Media Private Limited)99 Hudson Street, 5Th FloorNew York, NY 10013United States of America+1 628 258 0071 (US)+44 2035 002 764 (UK)Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.comWebsite: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com

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LED Traffic Signs Market Growth Prediction, Investment Opportunity, Product Type and Forecast 2027

LED Traffic Signs market analysis on global market is a thorough study that offers a select combination of skillful market realities. The study shows changing market trends as well as the market size of individual segments in this market. This report mentions various top players involved in this market. Analysis of the LED Traffic Signs market begins with a market-based outline and underlines the current information on the global market, complemented by data on the current situation. The report further discusses market share, market size, revenue growth, emerging trends, and offers a comprehensive industry overview.

Global LED Traffic Signs market report is a comprehensive study of the global market and has been recently added by Reports and Data to its extensive database. Augmented demand for the global market has increased in the last few years. This informative research report has been scrutinized by using primary and secondary research. The LED Traffic Signs market is a valuable source of reliable data including data of the current market.

Market Overview:

The automotive industry has expanded exponentially in the recent decades owing to increasing demand for vehicles in emerging economies. Countries like China, India, Vietnam and others have offered lucrative growth opportunities to the automotive sector as the growing middle-class population and rising disposable income in these countries have created a massive demand for passenger vehicles as well as other types of vehicles.

Leading companies included in the study:

Voxson

Yaham

Traffic Safety Corp.

Messagemaker

EKTA

Hunan Xiangxu Traffic & Lighting Co. Ltd.

SWARCO

Federal Signal

Stars Plastic

Econolite Group

Aldridge Traffic Systems

Alphatronics

Arcus Light

D.G. Controls

Market coverage based on Type:

Flashing

Non-flashing

Market coverage based on Application:

Railways

Airports

Urban Traffic

Others

Highways

Roadways

Pathways

Other Routes

In the more mature markets of developed nations, there has been a rising demand for electric and hybrid vehicles. Concern for climate change and the catastrophic effect carbon emissions can have on the planet, strict legislature has been put in place around the world. This has driven the growth of electric automotive industry.

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The key questions answered in the report:

What will be the market size and growth rate in the forecast year?

What are the key factors driving the LED Traffic Signs market?

What are the risks and challenges in front of the market?

Who are the key vendors in the LED Traffic Signs market?

What are the trending factors influencing the market shares?

What are the key outcomes of Porter’s five forces model?

Which are the global opportunities for expanding the LED Traffic Signs market?

To know more about the report @ https://www.reportsanddata.com/report-detail/led-traffic-signs-market

Across the globe, different regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa have been examined on the basis of productivity and manufacturing base. Researchers of this report highlight different terminologies of the LED Traffic Signs market.

This research report represents a 360-degree overview of the competitive landscape of the LED Traffic Signs market. Furthermore, it offers massive data relating to the recent trends, technological advancements, tools, and methodologies. The research report analyzes the LED Traffic Signs market in a detailed and concise manner for better insights into the businesses.

The research study has taken the help of graphical presentation techniques such as info graphics, charts, tables, and pictures. It provides guidelines for both established players and new entrants in the LED Traffic Signs market.

The detailed elaboration of the LED Traffic Signs market has been provided by applying industry analysis techniques such as SWOT and Porter’s five-technique. Collectively, this research report offers a reliable evaluation of the global market to present the overall framework of businesses.

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Table of Contents:

LED Traffic Signs market Overview

Economic Impact on Industry

Market Competition by Manufacturers

Production, Revenue (Value) by Region

Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions

Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type

Market Analysis by Application

Manufacturing Cost Analysis

Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers

Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders

Market Effect Factors Analysis

LED Traffic Signs market Forecast

Reasons for Buying this Report

This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics

It provides a forward-looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth

It provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow

It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future

It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors

It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments

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Reports and Data is a market research and consulting company that provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. Our solutions purely focus on your purpose to locate, target and analyze consumer behavior shifts across demographics, across industries and help client’s make a smarter business decision. We offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a multiple industries including Healthcare, Technology, Chemicals, Power and Energy. We consistently update our research offerings to ensure our clients are aware about the latest trends existent in the market. Reports and Data has a strong base of experienced analysts from varied areas of expertise.

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[livinginlandmarketing]

The first time Olani LaBeaud learned in detail about Juneteenth — a day in history that marks the end of slavery in America — was toward the end of high school, in an AP history class.

She was in her first year of college at Cal State Long Beach when she heard about the Tulsa Massacre — a race riot in 1921 when mobs of White residents, some deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked Black residents and destroyed homes, killing more than 800 people and wounding many others.

LaBeaud, who graduated from Summit High School in Fontana in 2017, learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks in the classroom and during Black History Month, observed in February. But as a young African American girl, she had to rely on her own curiosity and research skills to discover illustrious figures such as Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women’s rights activist who was born into slavery, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, Truth became the first Black woman to win such a case against a White man.

“Why did I not hear about her in school?,” LaBeaud asks. “What about Ida B. Wells, Toni Morrison and so many others? Why did I have to learn so much on my own?”

Depth, context lacking

LeBeaud is not the only one asking such questions. A year after a nationwide reckoning with racism following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and a pandemic that disproportionately killed African Americans, Black students, teachers and activists in Southern California and across the U.S. are demanding better Black history programs in schools. They speak of an urgent need to give Black history the context, depth and meaning it deserves.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday, commemorating June 19, 1865, the day Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, who had fought for the Union, led a force to Galveston, Texas, to deliver the message that the war was over, the Union had won and now had the manpower to enforce the end of slavery. This came two months after the Civil War ended and after President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

African Americans have traditionally commemorated Juneteenth with readings of the Proclamation, cookouts, food festivals and other activities celebrating African American history and culture.

While many in the community are happy to see Juneteenth formally recognized by the U.S. government, some worry that history lessons say little about the strife and struggle Black people endured after that day and the systemic inequities that took shape in the next century.

A report titled “Inland Empire Black Education Agenda” released by the BLU Educational Foundation in San Bernardino in February, found that Black history was among the top three priorities for Black students and their parents, a finding that came as a surprise even to the study’s authors at the time. The group surveyed 1,100 Black parents, students and community members in the Inland Empire.

A 2015 study by the National Museum of African American History and Culture showed that U.S. history classrooms devote one or two lessons to Black history. In a 2014 study, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that 12 states did not require any instruction on the civil rights movement. Fewer than half covered Jim Crow laws.

The center gave California a B for its history standards, which were adopted in 1998 and recently updated in 2016.

California schools introduce Martin Luther King Jr.’s story in kindergarten in the context of learning about the national holiday named for him. In second and third grades, students learn about Harriet Tubman, who pioneered a network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad to rescue and free slaves. The standards call for a deeper dive into slavery around fifth grade.

In eighth grade, teachers are encouraged to discuss resistance by enslaved people and the role slavery played in American politics. In 11th grade, students analyze the development of federal and civil voting rights legislation and landmark cases such as Brown v. Board of Education that led to the desegregation of schools.

Related links

First Juneteenth events set for two Inland cities

Celebrating Juneteenth looks back on previous challenges and victories, the fight ahead

Can Inland Empire leaders turn racial justice talk into action in 2021?

Student-led group aims to make high school reading lists more diverse

Teaching hard truths

Despite those standards in California, actual teaching practices fall short, said Akilah Lyons-Moore, an assistant professor at USC Rossier School of Education. Students learn about Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, she said, and they learn about slavery, but the racial aspect of slavery is not explicitly taught.

“We move from indentured servitude to slavery to slave trade,” Lyons-Moore said. “But students don’t learn about how color became a way to distinguish who was enslaved and who was free. They learn that the slaves were freed. But they have no idea that the period of reconstruction — what came after Juneteenth — was the deadliest for Black people.”

While slavery “may feel like a long time ago” for some, she said, it doesn’t feel that way for Black people.

“My grandma was born into a sharecropping family,” Lyons-Moore said. “That’s barely two generations ago. And the repercussions are still being felt. You don’t get that from the history that is taught in our classrooms.”

Black history should be introduced in detail at the elementary school level, said the Rev. James Baylark, pastor at First Community Baptist Church in Desert Hot Springs. He says he is working with school districts in the Inland Empire and in Los Angeles County to make that happen.

“I will not say California is any better than other states when it comes to teaching Black history,” he said. “It seems to me that the teaching is limited to Black History Month. It should be talked about every day.”

Catching them young

Even high school students have no idea who Garrett Morgan was, notes Baylark, who is African American. Morgan was an African American inventor whose notable inventions were the traffic signal and the gas mask.

“It seems to me that important facts about Black history are introduced too late,” the pastor said. “By that time, (students have) lost interest. We need to catch them young. And it’s important for all children, not just African American children.”

Elementary school teacher Billy Bush at his home in Yorba Linda, CA, on Friday, June 18, 2021. Bush believes students don’t learn nearly enough about slavery and what happened to Black people after slavery. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

But when African American children, especially, are not taught their history and culture, it leaves a lasting impression on their psyche, said Billy Bush, who teaches history and math at Dr. Mildred Dalton Henry Elementary School in San Bernardino.

“Children’s self worth comes from knowing who they are and where they come from,” he said. “When it comes to education, they don’t seem to be going for depth. They’re trying to cover the bare minimum and move on. African American history needs to be taught in depth. It’s particularly important for Black boys who are seeing themselves on television either as ball players or drug dealers. It’s sad because they are not given a journey or a narrative.”

Real history, real change

Teaching Black history in schools is also a great way to improve race relations, said Bush, whose mother is African American and father is White.

“The only way racism can be overcome is when people understand what’s been done to the oppressed,” he said. “If you teach everyone real history, you will see real change.”

The recent push to teach anti-racism and ethnic studies in public schools is essentially about highlighting the experiences of those whose voices have not been heard so far, Lyons-Moore said.

“In a history class, anti-racism would involve looking at multiple perspectives and understanding the way different people look at the same events,” she said. “There are many things we don’t discuss at school. We don’t teach about lynchings or how the U.S. Postal Service used to make postcards from pictures of lynchings. This is a part of our history we cannot deny.”

Teaching Black history or anti-racism is neither about making White people look bad nor about portraying Black people as victims, Lyons-Moore said.

“It’s really an opportunity to understand each other in a way we haven’t before,” she said. “How do we understand it? How do we see it in our laws, policies and norms? How can we put forth solutions? And above all, how do we keep history from repeating?”

-on June 18, 2021 at 10:35AM by Deepa Bharath

[shirlleycoyle]

This Company Wants to Help Your Boss Monitor Your Brainwaves at Work

The MN8 electroencephalography device looks like any set of sleek wireless earphones. Its buds can rest unobtrusively in the ear's concha for a whole workday and that, its makers at San Francisco-based Emotiv say, is the point. You and everyone around you forgets you’re wearing a device that is monitoring your brainwaves for signs of stress, focus, and attention.

The purpose of the headset, after all, is for companies to collect brain data from their employees.

The MN8 is the centerpiece of an Emotiv program promoted as a way to create safer, more efficient workplaces by monitoring the brain signals of workers and then using that data to retool the workday. The company has promoted it at a forum sponsored by Fortune Magazine and among the well-heeled at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos.

Neuroscientist and Emotiv president Oliver Oullier said the data has led companies to adjust the scheduling of tasks needing high attention, improve the training process, start work days later (because morning traffic was shown, predictably, shown to heighten stress).

“We provide hardware and algorithmic solutions that have a track record of being used to inform programs that have led to allowing people to work less time, decrease absenteeism, decrease accidents and improve their productivity,” Oullier told Motherboard in an email.

Electroencephalograms (EEG) use electrodes, small metal discs that communicate with brain cells when placed on the scalp, paving a path to several kinds of information. When used in lab environments, the electrodes interact with stress hormones to create a measure of a person’s stress level. The brain also sends out electromagnetic waves of various types that correlate with attention and alertness, picked up by EEG.

Emotiv's MN8 headset. Courtesy of Emotiv

Emotiv claims that all its clients sign agreements that they will not promote, demote, sanction, or fire any employees based on brain data. Emotiv would not share the wording of that agreement with Motherboard. The company also refused to name the companies with whom it has partnered, but said that its clients include businesses in the supply chain, healthcare, software, gaming, automotive and transportation industries. Oullier sells it as a more individualized and refined tool in the chase for corporate efficiency, better than "blackbox personality and cognitive tests or wellness questionnaires that organizations generally blindly trust."

Employee monitoring tools are rarely introduced without criticism—especially when they claim to interface with the human brain. Earlier this month, Elon Musk was met with skepticism and mockery after a live demo introducing Neuralink, the tech billionaire's foray into brain-enhancing implants. 

Similarly, some neurologists question the claim that EEG technology like the kind used by Emotiv has advanced to the point where meaningful data about workplace performance could come from two sensor electrodes utilized by corporate managers, especially when scientists using more sensitive equipment struggle for clean data.

“I’m skeptical,” said Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “[Electrodes] have limits, particularly outside the lab environment, that can contaminate data.”

Nevertheless, Emotiv has a long history of promoting electrode-coated headsets for use beyond scientific settings. Its products range from five-electrode-channel headbands to a 32-channel design resembling a swim cap. Its Epoc device is often used for a computer-brain interface, and Oullier hopes will allow a person to easily control a machine with their mind. Emotiv sells its EEG tech to gamers and executives trying to gain insight from their own brain data for a performance advantage. 

Emotiv claims that data from past users is collected to help train algorithms, which are carefully-protected intellectual property, improving its software's ability to analyze brainwaves. In 2019, the company released the MN8 as an EEG device that could be worn inauspiciously in a workplace.

Oullier said that, as part of the agreement between employers and Emotiv, employees are not required to participate in this program, though, again, the company would not share the specific language of the agreement with Motherboard. “The data is owned by the employee and they are empowered to share or not share their data,” he stated. “Data shared with HR are anonymized and aggregated to safeguard the employee.”

Besides that agreement, the company ultimately has little control over how the technology is used in the workplace. And given that the stated goal of brainwave-monitoring in the workplace is efficiency, it’s easy to see a future scenario where a warehouse packer is denied morning shifts because a brain-monitoring device shows their attention peaks in the evening, or a manager presents color-coded brain scans to point out an employee's low focus level at the last all-hands. Paula Brantner, an employment attorney in Silver Springs, Maryland, sees such a device as “part of a continued encroachment in the workplace of workers.’”

She noted that several companies have brought in workplace monitoring systems, all with the promise of safety and efficiency, and gotten pushback. In 2018, Amazon patented a wristband that could track the location of workers’ hands in relation to objects they pack. The company said speculation that this would allow it to monitor workers’ every movement was “misguided,” and claimed the wristbands would scan objects for the worker, saving them that monotonous task. A few companies have allowed employees to be implanted with subdermal microchips, eliminating some irritating identification checks, but stoking fears that microchipping employees like pets would become a new normal.

“In most states, employees don’t have the right to say no to these things,” Branter told Motherboard.

Joyce Smithey, an employment lawyer in Annapolis, Maryland, said that resistance to employee monitoring via new technology withers after its implementation. “In the last 20 years, we have accepted more and more monitoring as employers are given more and more ways of doing it,” she said. “We used to be worried about email monitoring. Now there are phones and cameras. Everyone seems to be accepting of it.”

Brainwave data presents a unique complication, she said, in that it could be considered medical information, protected by the Americans With Disabilities (ADA) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) acts. “It’s from electrodes. It’s biometric. It could reveal a disability,” said Smithey.

EEG is a diagnostic tool for epilepsy, tumors, brain damage, sleep disorders and more. Even if a device could not diagnose a disorder, “the ADA protects the appearance of disability,” said Smithey. A manager, perhaps overestimating their aptitude as an amateur neuroscientist, could assume an employer had a condition based on brainwave data and give them less work and responsibility. This would violate the ADA, said Smithey.

Oullier has tried to reassure that outside organizations are helping to guide Emotiv’s efforts on workplace improvement. In a November 2019 Fortune Magazine forum, he said, “We’ve worked with the World Economic Forum, the OECD and the National Academy of Medicine to make sure that what we do is legal, ethical and to improve people’s life [sic].”

Some of the organizations dispute the claim they have “worked” with EMOTIV.

A spokesperson for the National Academy of Medicine told Motherboard, “I checked with my colleagues about this, and we couldn’t confirm a formal relationship between NAM and Emotiv.”

A representative for the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was unsure what Oullier is referring to. 

David Winickoff, OECD’s secretary for the Working Party on Bio-, Nano- and Converging Technologies (BNCT) said that Emotiv CEO Tan Le was the keynote at a 2018 workshop it hosted. “I also had a one-on-one meeting with the president, Olivier Oullier to discuss possible collaborations in a general way,” Winickoff added. “He also provided comments on one of our reports. I wouldn’t say that we have ‘worked together’ in any significant way.”

The World Economic Forum, which hosted Oullier as a speaker, did not respond to an email inquiry.

When asked about the discrepancy between his public statement and the responses from OECD and NAM, Oullier wrote, “[W]e have actively participated in and made significant contributions to this conversation at a global level with many organizations over the past decade.” He did not go into specifics. 

Neurology experts consulted by Motherboard questioned how much useful information two sensor electrodes, administered outside a lab by corporate managers, could reliably pick up.

Gathering data this way is not as simple as slipping an electrode-embedded device on a person’s head. Muscles in the head send out electric signals that obscure signals. “If you move your jaw, that’s a big signal,” said Desimone, the MIT neurologist. “Those muscles are all controlled by electricity. You just have to constantly separate them out” from the final results of the test. There is even a term for interfering instances of eyes blinking: ocular artifacts.

Also, subjects’ physical characteristics, like thick skulls or bountiful hair, create challenges and require adjustments, said Desimone.

And these are hindrances in a controlled lab environment, where trained neurologists and lab technicians usually use EEG caps of a dozen or more electrodes.

Desimone said he doubts a device like the MN8 would get usable information on something like attention and stress because scientists and developers are still struggling to create take-home EEG equipment for simpler purposes. Despite the obvious value, there are no widely used snap-on consumer products to monitor the tiredness of long-haul drivers or measure sleep quality.

“We still need people to come into the lab for sleep studies,” he said, “and that’s an easy one, stages of sleep are well-defined and people are asleep so they are not trying to deceive the device or twitching or moving their face too much.”

Lesley Fellows, a professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University, said EEG scans generally don’t give deep insights to a person’s level of concentration. “I imagine that kind of simple electroencephalogram could give you the same information about drowsiness, arousal and sleepiness as you would get if you were looking at the person. That would be my guess.”

“Are their eyes droopy? Do they seem bored?” she added.

Fellows said face-monitoring cameras would be better at recording signs of stress and inattention as EEG hardware.

Oulliller said his company’s products are not meant to replicate the kind of data gathered in a lab. “The modernization of EEG systems to provide mobile and wireless data collection capabilities within a contextualized environment is not (and never meant to be) a replacement for clinical systems and in-lab data collection,” he wrote. 

When asked how a user knows his system works, Ouillier said that consumers could trust the EMOTIV brand.

“[F]or a lot of services and tech, users have to trust blindly what the seller claims,” he wrote. “With us it’s different, there are scientific databases… Feel free to have a look at EMOTIV in academic databases such as google scholar.”

An independent review released this year found that Emotiv’s Epoc devices, which have 14 electrodes, were used in 382 academic studies since 210. A vast majority, 277, were for brain-computer interface. There is no publicly viewable study showing how well the miniature MN8 measures for stress and tiredness. 

Desimone advised not to trust any device that hadn’t been tested with controlled research by a neutral outside researcher.The makers of commercial brainwave technology sometimes hook consumers with flashy or futuristic-seeming elements before being tested through scientific rigor, he said.  

“They just want something that looks good,” said Desimone. “That’s been my impression of the consumer market for these things.” 

This Company Wants to Help Your Boss Monitor Your Brainwaves at Work syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[shashiemrf]

Surface Mount Technology Equipment Market Leading Segment, Demand and Growth Analysis over 2022

The global surface mount technology equipment market is on an upward growth trajectory and is expected to reach USD 4 Bn by the end of the forecast period of 2016-2022, reveals Market Research Future (MRFR) in a minutely analyzed research report. The market has been observing persistent growth on account of the ever increasing demand for smart gadgets and need for miniaturization of products and higher accuracy. Rapid replacement of the traditional through-hole method by surface mount technology is a growing trend in various countries which is propelling the market growth. Surface mount technology equipment finds its application over different industry verticals which include automotive, consumer electronics, healthcare, aerospace, and others which boosts the market growth primarily. The automotive industry is one of the most significant end users of the surface mount technology equipment. Electric cars generally have a high number of electric components as compared to traditional vehicles and surface mount technology equipment are very efficient in handling the complex electronics components without any malfunction. Thus, the growing automotive industry and rising production of electric vehicles augment the growth of the market. High usage of surface mount technology in consumer electronics owing to need for miniaturization and growth in the electronics industry fosters the market growth. Escalating need for printed circuit boards in smartphones and the smart card industry reflects positively on the growth of the market. On the downside, the high cost of surface mount technology equipment is restraining the market growth. Moreover, surface mount technology equipment is not suitable for high power or high voltage parts such as power circuit which too acts as a limiting factor. All of these factors in conjunction will help the market capture a CAGR of 8% over the forecast period. SegmentationThe global surface mount technology market has been segmented based on equipment, end user industries, and components. By equipment, the market has been segmented into Pick and place, Coating equipment, Solder equipment, Cleaning agents, and Rework and repair equipment. By end use industries, the market has been segmented into telecommunication, consumer electronics, automotive and medical. By components, the market has been segmented into passive surface mount devices, transistor & diodes, and integrated circuits. Access Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/surface-mount-technology-equipment-market-2248Regional AnalysisThe global surface mount technology equipment market spans across the regions of Asia Pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific is at the forefront of the global market. Countries such as China, India, and Japan are leading the market owing to the abundance of skilled labor in the region and the growing penetration of high tech devices which require miniaturization. Also, high demand for consumer electronics from the populous countries of India and China also boost the market growthCompetitive LandscapeThe notable players in the global surface mount technology market include CyberOptics Corporation (U.S.), Mycronic AB (Sweden), Nordson Corporation (U.S.), Orbotech Ltd. (Israel), Fuji Machine Manufacturing Co., Ltd.(Japan), Assembly Systems (Germany), and Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation (Japan).Industry UpdatesIn July 2018, Vishay Intertechnology, Inc., introduced two new series of surface mount automotive Grade power LEDs. The LEDs are ideal for automotive interior and exterior lighting, traffic signals and signs, LCD switches and for general use. In July 2018, Calgary-based Blackline Safety Corp. announced an investment of USD 1 Million in surface mount technology equipment. The investment will allow the company to reduce their overall costs for which they have expanded their premises. Table of Content:1 MARKET INTRODUCTION1.1 INTRODUCTION1.2 SCOPE OF STUDY1.2.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE1.2.2 ASSUMPTIONS1.2.3 LIMITATIONS1.3 MARKET STRUCTURE 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY2.1

RESEARCH NETWORK SOLUTION2.2 PRIMARY RESEARCH2.3 SECONDARY RESEARCH2.4 FORECAST MODEL2.4.1 MARKET DATA COLLECTION, ANALYSIS & FORECAST2.4.2 MARKET SIZE ESTIMATION 3 MARKET DYNAMICS3.1 INTRODUCTION3.2 MARKET DRIVERS3.3 MARKET CHALLENGES3.4 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES3.5 MARKET RESTRAINTS 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5. MARKET FACTOR ANALYSIS5.1 PORTER’S FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS5.2 SUPPLY CHAIN ANALYSIS 6 SURFACE MOUNT TECNOLOGY EQUIPMENT MARKET, BY SEGMENTS6.1 INTRODUCTION6.2 MARKET STATISTICS6.2.1 BY EQUIPMENT6.2.1.1 PICK AND PLACE6.2.1.2 COATING EQUIPMENT6.2.1.3 SOLDER EQUIPMENT6.2.1.4 CLEANING AGENTS6.2.1.5 REWORK AND REPAIR EQUIPMENT6.2.2 BY END USER INDUSTRIES6.2.2.1 TELECOMMUNICATION6.2.2.2 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS6.2.2.3 AUTOMOTIVE6.2.2.4 MEDICAL6.2.3 BY COMPONENTS6.2.3.1 PASSIVE SURFACE MOUNT DEVICES6.2.3.2 TRANSISTOR & DIODES6.2.3.3 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS6.2.4 BY GEOGRAPHY6.2.4.1 NORTH AMERICA6.2.4.2 EUROPE6.2.4.3 ASIA-PACIFIC6.2.4.4 REST OF THE WORLD 7 COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS7.1 MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS7.2 COMPANY PROFILES7.2.1 CYBEROPTICS CORPORATION (U.S.)7.2.2 FUJI MACHINE MANUFACTURING CO., LTD.(JAPAN)7.2.3 MYCRONIC AB (SWEDEN)7.2.4 ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS (GERMANY)7.2.5 NORDSON CORPORATION (U.S.)7.2.6 HITACHI HIGH-TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION (JAPAN)7.2.7 ORBOTECH LTD. (ISRAEL)7.2.8 APPLIED IMAGE, INC. (U.S.)7.2.9 KBC ELECTRONICS, INC. (U.S.)7.2.10 OHMITE MANUFACTURING CO. LLC (U.S.)7.2.11 OTHERSGet Complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/surface-mount-technology-equipment-market-2248About UsMarket Research Future (MRFR) is an esteemed company with a reputation of serving clients across domains of information technology (IT), healthcare, and chemicals. Our analysts undertake painstaking primary and secondary research to provide a seamless report with a 360 degree perspective. Data is compared against reputed organizations, trustworthy databases, and international surveys for producing impeccable reports backed with graphical and statistical information.We at MRFR provide syndicated and customized reports to clients as per their liking. Our consulting services are aimed at eliminating business risks and driving the bottomline margins of our clients. The hands-on experience of analysts and capability of performing astute research through interviews, surveys, and polls are a statement of our prowess. We constantly monitor the market for any fluctuations and update our reports on a regular basis.Media Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com

[random-notes-and-jottings]

How Capitalism Drives Cancel Culture

Beware splashy corporate gestures when they leave existing power structures intact.

The delete button over a tumbrel

Story by Helen Lewis

JULY 14, 2020

GLOBAL

Tumbrels are rattling through the streets of the internet. Over the past few years, online-led social movements have deposed gropers, exposed bullies—and, sometimes, ruined the lives of the innocent. Commentators warn of “mob justice,” while activists exult in their newfound power to change the world.

Both groups are right, and wrong. Because the best way to see the firings, outings, and online denunciations grouped together as “cancel culture,” is not through a social lens, but an economic one.

Take the fall of the film producer Harvey Weinstein, which seems inevitable in hindsight—everyone knew he was a sex pest! There were even jokes about it on 30 Rock! But it took The New York Times months of reporting to ready its first story for publishing; the newspaper was taking on someone with deep pockets and a history of intimidating critics into silence. Then the story went off like a hand grenade. Suddenly, the mood—and the economic incentives—shifted. People who had been afraid of Weinstein were instead afraid of being taken down alongside him.

The removal of Weinstein from his company, and his subsequent conviction for rape, is a good outcome. But the mechanism it revealed is more morally ambiguous: The court of public opinion was the only forum left after workplace protections and the judicial system had failed. The writer Jon Schwarz once described the “iron law of institutions,” under which people with seniority inside an institution care more about preserving their power within the institution than they do about the power of the institution as a whole. That self-preservation instinct also operates when private companies—institutions built on maximizing shareholder value, or other capitalist principles—struggle to acclimatize to life in a world where many consumers vocally support social-justice causes. Progressive values are now a powerful branding tool.

But that is, by and large, all they are. And that leads to what I call the “iron law of woke capitalism”: Brands will gravitate toward low-cost, high-noise signals as a substitute for genuine reform, to ensure their survival. (I’m not using the word woke here in a sneering, pejorative sense, but to highlight that the original definition of wokeness is incompatible with capitalism. Also, I’m not taking credit for the coinage: The writer Ross Douthat got there first.) In fact, let’s go further: Those with power inside institutions love splashy progressive gestures—solemn, monochrome social media posts deploring racism; appointing their first woman to the board; firing low-level employees who attract online fury—because they help preserve their power. Those at the top—who are disproportionately white, male, wealthy and highly educated—are not being asked to give up anything themselves.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the random firings of individuals, some of whose infractions are minor, and some of whom are entirely innocent of any bad behavior. In the first group goes the graphic designer Sue Schafer, outed by The Washington Post for attending a party in ironic blackface—a tone-deaf attempt to mock Megyn Kelly for not seeing what was wrong with blackface. Schafer, a private individual, was confronted at the party over the costume, went home in tears, and apologized to the hosts the next day. When the Post ran a story naming her, she was fired. New York magazine found numerous Post reporters unwilling to defend the decision to run the story—and plenty of unease that the article seemed more interested in exonerating the Post than fighting racism. Even less understandable is the case of Niel Golightly, communications chief at the aircraft company Boeing, who stepped down over a 33-year-old article arguing that women should not serve in the military. When Barack Obama, a notably progressive president, only changed his mind on gay marriage in the 2010s, how many Americans’ views from 1987 would hold up to scrutiny by today’s standards? This mechanism is not, as it is sometimes presented, a long-overdue settling of scores by underrepresented voices. It is a reflexive jerk of the knee by the powerful; a demonstration of institutions’ unwillingness to tolerate any controversy, whether those complaining are liberal or conservative. Another case where the punishment does not fit the offense is that of the police detective Florissa Fuentes, who reposted a picture from her niece taken at a Black Lives Matter protest. One of those pictured held a sign reading who do we call when the murderer wear the badge. Another sign, according to the Times, “implied that people should shoot back at the police.” Fuentes, a 30-year-old single mother to three children, deleted the post and apologized, but was fired nonetheless.

In the second group, the blameless, lies Emmanuel Cafferty, a truck driver who appears to have been tricked into making an “okay” symbol by a driver he cut off at a traffic light. The inevitable viral video claimed that this was a deliberate use of the symbol as a white-power gesture, and he was promptly fired. Cafferty is a working-class man in his 40s from San Diego. The loss of his job hit him hard enough that he saw a counselor. “A man can learn from making a mistake,” he told my colleague Yascha Mounk. “But what am I supposed to learn from this? It’s like I was struck by lightning.”

The phrase is haunting—not being racist is not going to save you if the lightning strikes. Nor is the fact that your comments lie decades in the past, or that they have been misinterpreted by bad-faith actors, or that you didn’t make them. The ground—your life—is scorched just the same.

It is strange that “cancel culture” has become a project of the left, which spent the 20th century fighting against capricious firings of “troublesome” employees. A lack of due process does not become a moral good just because you sometimes agree with its targets. We all, I hope, want to see sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination decrease. But we should be aware of the economic incentives here, particularly given the speed of social media, which can send a video viral, and see onlookers demand a response, before the basic facts have been established. Afraid of the reputational damage that can be incurred in minutes, companies are behaving in ways that range from thoughtless and uncaring to sadistic. For Cafferty’s employer, what’s one random truck driver versus the PR bump of being able to cut off a bad news cycle by saying you’ve fired your “white-supremacist employee”?

Let’s look at another example of how woke capitalism operates. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, and the protests that followed, White Fragility, a 2018 book by Robin DiAngelo, returned to the top of The New York Times’s paperback-nonfiction chart. The author is white, and her book is for white people, encouraging them to think about what it’s like to be white. So the American book-buying public’s single biggest response to the Black Lives Matter movement was … to buy a book about whiteness written by a white person.

This is worse than mere navel-gazing; it’s synthetic activism. It risks making readers feel full of piety and righteousness without having actually done anything. Buying a book on white fragility improves the lives of the most marginalized far less than, say, donating to a voting-rights charity or volunteering at a food bank. It’s pure hobbyism.

Why is DiAngelo’s book so popular? Again, look at economics. White Fragility is a staple of formal diversity training, in universities from London to Iowa, and at publications including Britain’s right-wing Telegraph newspaper, as well as The Atlantic. The client list on DiAngelo’s website includes giant corporations such as Amazon and Unilever; nonprofits such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Hollywood Writers Guild, and the YMCA; as well as institutions and governmental bodies such as Seattle Public Schools, the City of Oakland, and the Metropolitan Council of Minneapolis.

In the United States, diversity training is worth $8 billion a year, according to Iris Bohnet, a public-policy professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School. And yet, after studying programs in both the U.S. and post-conflict countries such as Rwanda, she concluded, “sadly enough, I did not find a single study that found that diversity training in fact leads to more diversity.” Part of the problem is that although those delivering them are undoubtedly well-meaning, the training programs are typically no more scientifically grounded than previous management-course favorites, such as Myers-Briggs personality classifications. “Implicit-bias tests” are controversial, and the claim that they can predict real-world behavior, never mind reduce bias, is shaky. A large-scale analysis of research in the sector found that “changes in implicit measures are possible, but those changes do not necessarily translate into changes in explicit measures or behavior.” Yet metrics-obsessed companies love these forms of training. When the British Labour leader, Keir Starmer, caused offense by referring to Black Lives Matter as a “moment” rather than a movement, he announced that he would undergo implicit-bias training. It is an approach that sees bias as a moral flaw among individuals, rather than a product of systems. It encourages personal repentance, rather than institutional reform. Bohnet suggested other methods to increase diversity, such as removing ages and photographs from job applications, and reviewing the language used for advertisements. (Men are more likely to see themselves as “assertive,” she argued.) Here is another option for big companies: Put your money into paying all junior staff enough for them to live in the big city where the company is based, without needing help from their parents. That would increase the company’s diversity. Hell, get your staff to read White Fragility on their own time and give your office cleaners a pay raise.

This, however, would break the iron law of woke capitalism—better to have something you can point to and say “Aren’t we progressive?” than to think about the real problem. Diversity training offers the minimum possible disruption to your power structures: Don’t change the board; just get your existing employees to sit through a seminar.

If this is a moment for power structures to be challenged, and old orthodoxies to be overturned, then understanding the difference between economic radicalism and social radicalism is vital. These could also be described as the difference between identity and class. That is not to dismiss the former: Many groups face discrimination on both measures. Women might not be hired because “Math isn’t for girls” or because an employer doesn’t want to pay for maternity leave. An employer may not see the worth of a minority applicant, because they don’t speak the way the interviewer expects, or that applicant might be a second-generation immigrant whose parents can’t subsidize them through several years of earning less than a living wage.

All this I’ve learned from feminism, where the contrast between economic and social radicalism is very apparent. Equal pay is economically radical. Hiring a female or minority CEO for the first time is socially radical. Diversity training is socially radical, at best. Providing social-housing tenants with homes not covered in flammable cladding is economically radical. Changing the name of a building at a university is socially radical; improving on its 5 percent enrollment rate for Black students—perhaps by smashing up the crazy system of legacy admissions—would be economically radical.

In my book Difficult Women, I wrote that the only question I want to ask big companies who claim to be “empowering the female leaders of the future” is this one: Do you have on-site child care? You can have all the summits and power breakfasts that you want, but unless you address the real problems holding working parents back, then it’s all window dressing.

Along with anti-racism and anti-sexism efforts, LGBTQ politics suffers a similar confusion between economic and social radicalism. The arrival of Pride month brings the annual argument about how it should be a “protest, not a parade.” The violence and victimization of the Stonewall-riot era risk being forgotten in today’s “branded holiday,” where big banks and clothing manufacturers fly the rainbow flag to boost their corporate image. In Britain and the U.S., these corporate sponsors want a depoliticized party—a generic celebration of love and acceptance—without tough questions about their views on particular domestic laws and policies, or their involvement in countries with poor records on LGBTQ rights. Some activists in Britain have tried to get Pride marches to stop allowing the arms company BAE to be a sponsor, given its arms sales to Saudi Arabia, an explicitly homophobic and sexist state. When Amazon sponsored last year’s PinkNews Awards, the former Doctor Who screenwriter Russell T. Davies used his lifetime-achievement-award acceptance speech to tell the retailer to “pay your fucking taxes.” That’s economic radicalism.

Activists regularly challenge criticisms of “cancel culture” by saying: “Come on, we’re just some people with Twitter accounts, up against governments and corporate behemoths.” But when you look at the economic incentives, almost always, the capitalist imperative is to yield to activist pressure. Just a bit. Enough to get them off your back. Companies caught in the scorching light of a social-media outcry are ike politicians caught lying or cheating, who promise a “judge-led inquiry”: They want to do something, anything, to appear as if they are taking the problem seriously—until the spotlight moves on.

Some defenestrations are brilliant, and long overdue. Weinstein’s removal from a position of power was undoubtedly a good thing. But the firing of Emmanuel Cafferty was not. For activists, the danger lies in the cheap sugar rush of tokenistic cancellations. Real institutional change is hard; like politics, it is the “slow boring of hard boards.” Persuading a company to toss someone overboard for PR points risks a victory that is no victory at all. The pitchforks go down, but the corporate culture remains the same. The survivors sigh in relief. The institution goes on.

If you care about progressive causes, then woke capitalism is not your friend. It is actively impeding the cause, siphoning off energy, and deluding us into thinking that change is happening faster and deeper than it really is. When people talk about the “excesses of the left”—a phenomenon that blights the electoral prospects of progressive parties by alienating swing voters—in many cases they’re talking about the jumpy overreactions of corporations that aren’t left-wing at all.

Remember the iron law of woke institutions: For those looking to preserve their power, it makes sense to do the minimum amount of social radicalism necessary to survive … and no economic radicalism at all. The latter is where activists need to apply their pressure.

[michaelbennettcrypto]

Bitcoin Price Crash Fails to Cripple Retail Demand

Bitcoin’s eccentric performance last week had it shed roughly $80 billion from its global market valuation. But investors are not giving up on the world’s first decentralized digital asset. The bitcoin-to-dollar exchange rate rebounded by an astonishing 72 percent after bottoming out temporarily at $3,852. The pair traded near the $7,000-top early on Friday as it brought nearly $43 billion back into the system. While it corrected by circa $300 ahead of the New York morning bell, traders were already convinced about an extended price rally. Scott Melker, a crypto trader with a huge social media following, looked through one of his technical charts to confirm a bull trend. The popular analyst projected the $6,000 price floor as an area where demand for bitcoin is typically up, stating that the cryptocurrency could jump above $8,000 if it manages to hold the said support. $BTC I would still love to see a retest of the 6K level as support. It would confirm the uptrend without leaving it behind to be tested further down the road. pic.twitter.com/AXSNmxAxXq — The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) March 20, 2020 Outside the retail circles, institutional players too appeared persuaded about an extended bitcoin price rally. Naeem Aslam, the chief market analyst at AvaTrade, reiterated Mr. Melker’s technical stance in a note Friday morning, saying that bitcoin’s upward momentum could continue as long as its price stays above the $6,000 mark. “And,” he added, “if the price crosses the 200-day moving average on a daily time frame, it would be a huge buy signal.” Bitcoin’s jump above the long-term moving average in 2019 had led its price upward by circa 190 percent. Safe Haven Narrative Online exchanges, which allow traders to buy and sell bitcoin, logged a spike in daily trading volumes on Friday. According to data aggregator CryptoCompare, leading platforms including Coinbase, Binance, BitFinex, and BitStamp reported an average of 12 percent growth in their intraday trade traffic. Executives associated with cryptocurrency firms pitted bitcoin’s volume and price growth as evidence that investors are considering it as safe-haven. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO/co-founder of Binance, retweeted a tweet that projected bitcoin’s bullish case against the central banks’ ongoing stimulus measures against the Coronavirus pandemic. Federal Reserve just printed $700B European Central Bank just printed €750B Bank of England just printed £400B Bank of Japan just printed ¥12T People’s Bank of China just printed ¥550B South Korea just printed ₩11.7T This is why Bitcoin was created. — Vis (@Vis_in_numeris) March 19, 2020 Bitcoin bulls believe that the central banks’ effort to tackle economic crises with additional fiat liquidity could drive money into the cryptocurrency market. They treat Gold – a traditional hedging asset – as their benchmark for Bitcoin, which they popularly call “digital gold.” Gold has proven to be a defacto post-crisis beneficiary. Therefore, bitcoin should follow suit. Ryan Watkins of crypto data aggregator Messari noted that bitcoin “maybe” the only monetary asset in the world with a “credible assurance of an absolutely fixed supply.” “In a world with zero percent interest rates, quantitative easing, and modern monetary theory this assurance may be more important than ever,” the researcher wrote. Retail investors are not leaving the bitcoin market anytime soon, even as the Coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of stopping. from Cryptocracken WP https://ift.tt/2WxNSen via IFTTT

[kathleenseiber]

This material makes beautiful, potentially useful rainbows

A new study explains the science behind microscale concave interfaces, structures that reflect light to produce beautiful and potentially useful optical phenomena.

“It is vital to be able to explain how a technology works to someone before you attempt to adopt it. Our new paper defines how light interacts with microscale concave interfaces,” says engineering researcher Qiaoqiang Gan, who notes that future applications of these effects could include helping autonomous vehicles recognize traffic signs.

The research appears in the journal Applied Materials Today.

Visible (left) and infrared (right) images of a sign created using microscale concave interfaces to form the word STOP and other elements. The infrared image was taken using a LIDAR camera. (Credit: Jacob Rada/U. Buffalo)

Gan, professor of electrical engineering in the University at Buffalo’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, led the study, which focuses on a retroreflective material—a thin film that consists of polymer microspheres laid down on the sticky side of a transparent tape. The microspheres are partially embedded in tape, and the parts that protrude form microscale concave interfaces, or MCIs.

White light shining on this film is reflected in a way that causes the light to create concentric rainbow rings, the new paper reports. Alternately, hitting the material with a single-colored laser (red, green, or blue, in the case of this study) generates a pattern of bright and dark rings. Reflections from infrared lasers also produced distinctive signals consisting of concentric rings.

The research describes these effects in detail, and reports on experiments that used the thin film in a stop sign. The patterns formed by the material showed up clearly on both a visual camera that detects visible light, and a LIDAR (laser imaging, detection, and ranging) camera that detects infrared signals, says co-first author of the study Jacob Rada, a PhD student in electrical engineering.

“Currently, autopilot systems face many challenges in recognizing traffic signs, especially in real-world conditions,” Gan says. “Smart traffic signs made from our material could provide more signals for future systems that use LIDAR and visible pattern recognition together to identify important traffic signs. This may be helpful to improve the traffic safety for autonomous cars.”

“We demonstrated a new combined strategy to enhance the LIDAR signal and visible pattern recognition that are currently performed by both visible and infrared cameras,” Rada says. “Our work showed that the MCI is an ideal target for LIDAR cameras, due to the constantly strong signals that are produced.”

A US patent for the retroreflective material has been issued, as well as a counterpart in China, with Fudan University and the University at Buffalo as the patent-holders. The technology is available for licensing.

Gan says future plans include testing the film using different wavelengths of light, and different materials for the microspheres, with the goal of enhancing performance for possible applications such as traffic signs designed for future autonomous systems.

Additional coauthors of the study are from Fudan University, the University at Buffalo, Texas Tech University, Hubei University, and the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. A grant from the US National Science Foundation partially funded the work.

Source: University at Buffalo

The post This material makes beautiful, potentially useful rainbows appeared first on Futurity.

This material makes beautiful, potentially useful rainbows published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[brettzjacksonblog]

Bitcoin Price Crash Fails to Cripple Retail Demand

Bitcoin’s eccentric performance last week had it shed roughly $80 billion from its global market valuation. But investors are not giving up on the world’s first decentralized digital asset. The bitcoin-to-dollar exchange rate rebounded by an astonishing 72 percent after bottoming out temporarily at $3,852. The pair traded near the $7,000-top early on Friday as it brought nearly $43 billion back into the system. While it corrected by circa $300 ahead of the New York morning bell, traders were already convinced about an extended price rally. Scott Melker, a crypto trader with a huge social media following, looked through one of his technical charts to confirm a bull trend. The popular analyst projected the $6,000 price floor as an area where demand for bitcoin is typically up, stating that the cryptocurrency could jump above $8,000 if it manages to hold the said support. $BTC I would still love to see a retest of the 6K level as support. It would confirm the uptrend without leaving it behind to be tested further down the road. pic.twitter.com/AXSNmxAxXq — The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) March 20, 2020 Outside the retail circles, institutional players too appeared persuaded about an extended bitcoin price rally. Naeem Aslam, the chief market analyst at AvaTrade, reiterated Mr. Melker’s technical stance in a note Friday morning, saying that bitcoin’s upward momentum could continue as long as its price stays above the $6,000 mark. “And,” he added, “if the price crosses the 200-day moving average on a daily time frame, it would be a huge buy signal.” Bitcoin’s jump above the long-term moving average in 2019 had led its price upward by circa 190 percent. Safe Haven Narrative Online exchanges, which allow traders to buy and sell bitcoin, logged a spike in daily trading volumes on Friday. According to data aggregator CryptoCompare, leading platforms including Coinbase, Binance, BitFinex, and BitStamp reported an average of 12 percent growth in their intraday trade traffic. Executives associated with cryptocurrency firms pitted bitcoin’s volume and price growth as evidence that investors are considering it as safe-haven. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO/co-founder of Binance, retweeted a tweet that projected bitcoin’s bullish case against the central banks’ ongoing stimulus measures against the Coronavirus pandemic. Federal Reserve just printed $700B European Central Bank just printed €750B Bank of England just printed £400B Bank of Japan just printed ¥12T People’s Bank of China just printed ¥550B South Korea just printed ₩11.7T This is why Bitcoin was created. — Vis (@Vis_in_numeris) March 19, 2020 Bitcoin bulls believe that the central banks’ effort to tackle economic crises with additional fiat liquidity could drive money into the cryptocurrency market. They treat Gold – a traditional hedging asset – as their benchmark for Bitcoin, which they popularly call “digital gold.” Gold has proven to be a defacto post-crisis beneficiary. Therefore, bitcoin should follow suit. Ryan Watkins of crypto data aggregator Messari noted that bitcoin “maybe” the only monetary asset in the world with a “credible assurance of an absolutely fixed supply.” “In a world with zero percent interest rates, quantitative easing, and modern monetary theory this assurance may be more important than ever,” the researcher wrote. Retail investors are not leaving the bitcoin market anytime soon, even as the Coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of stopping. from CryptoCracken SMFeed https://ift.tt/2WxNSen via IFTTT

[joshuajacksonlyblog]

Bitcoin Price Crash Fails to Cripple Retail Demand

Bitcoin’s eccentric performance last week had it shed roughly $80 billion from its global market valuation. But investors are not giving up on the world’s first decentralized digital asset. The bitcoin-to-dollar exchange rate rebounded by an astonishing 72 percent after bottoming out temporarily at $3,852. The pair traded near the $7,000-top early on Friday as it brought nearly $43 billion back into the system. While it corrected by circa $300 ahead of the New York morning bell, traders were already convinced about an extended price rally. Scott Melker, a crypto trader with a huge social media following, looked through one of his technical charts to confirm a bull trend. The popular analyst projected the $6,000 price floor as an area where demand for bitcoin is typically up, stating that the cryptocurrency could jump above $8,000 if it manages to hold the said support. $BTC I would still love to see a retest of the 6K level as support. It would confirm the uptrend without leaving it behind to be tested further down the road. pic.twitter.com/AXSNmxAxXq — The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) March 20, 2020 Outside the retail circles, institutional players too appeared persuaded about an extended bitcoin price rally. Naeem Aslam, the chief market analyst at AvaTrade, reiterated Mr. Melker’s technical stance in a note Friday morning, saying that bitcoin’s upward momentum could continue as long as its price stays above the $6,000 mark. “And,” he added, “if the price crosses the 200-day moving average on a daily time frame, it would be a huge buy signal.” Bitcoin’s jump above the long-term moving average in 2019 had led its price upward by circa 190 percent. Safe Haven Narrative Online exchanges, which allow traders to buy and sell bitcoin, logged a spike in daily trading volumes on Friday. According to data aggregator CryptoCompare, leading platforms including Coinbase, Binance, BitFinex, and BitStamp reported an average of 12 percent growth in their intraday trade traffic. Executives associated with cryptocurrency firms pitted bitcoin’s volume and price growth as evidence that investors are considering it as safe-haven. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO/co-founder of Binance, retweeted a tweet that projected bitcoin’s bullish case against the central banks’ ongoing stimulus measures against the Coronavirus pandemic. Federal Reserve just printed $700B European Central Bank just printed €750B Bank of England just printed £400B Bank of Japan just printed ¥12T People’s Bank of China just printed ¥550B South Korea just printed ₩11.7T This is why Bitcoin was created. — Vis (@Vis_in_numeris) March 19, 2020 Bitcoin bulls believe that the central banks’ effort to tackle economic crises with additional fiat liquidity could drive money into the cryptocurrency market. They treat Gold – a traditional hedging asset – as their benchmark for Bitcoin, which they popularly call “digital gold.” Gold has proven to be a defacto post-crisis beneficiary. Therefore, bitcoin should follow suit. Ryan Watkins of crypto data aggregator Messari noted that bitcoin “maybe” the only monetary asset in the world with a “credible assurance of an absolutely fixed supply.” “In a world with zero percent interest rates, quantitative easing, and modern monetary theory this assurance may be more important than ever,” the researcher wrote. Retail investors are not leaving the bitcoin market anytime soon, even as the Coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of stopping. from Cryptocracken Tumblr https://ift.tt/2WxNSen via IFTTT

[emedhelp]

Big Pharma Losing Money As Patients Switch From Opioids To Cannabis

Cannabis is helping chronic pain patients, resulting in Big Pharma losing money.

The news that cannabis is effective in treating most types of pain is shaking business and political institutions. Politicians and investors must come to grips with Big Pharma losing money due to the rise of cannabis.

The findings could have huge consequences for medical practice and public policy. For example, cannabis could reduce the number of accidental overdoses and providing avenues for critically ill patients to re-enter the workforce. This is according to a study, which took place in the University of California, Berkeley, and was published in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research (2017).

The results also hint at a new world order for American politicians from both parties. Politicians who have long been in the pocket of large drug makers. The discovery shows Big Pharma losing money, which could signal a re-examination of today’s political give-and-take. This could end decades of the outsized influence drug companies hold over American public policy and healthcare.

What the Research Shows About Patients Switching to Cannabis

The study addressed the theory that medical cannabis could be used as a substitute for opioid-based pain relievers. To do so, researchers surveyed 2,897 medical cannabis patients about their experience with green therapy and how it impacted their pain and lives.

It found a whopping ninety seven percent of respondents said cannabis worked very well. So well, in fact, that they were able to decrease their opioid intake. And ninety two percent said they preferred consuming cannabis to popping opioid pills. Another ninety three percent said they would prefer consuming cannabis to other medication if it were medically available to them.

That’s a remarkably strong response which ultimately results in Big Pharma losing money. In fact, it’s potentially devastating to drug makers’ bottom lines. More findings include other staggering figures. For instance, eighty one percent of respondents to the study testified that consuming cannabis alone was better for pain than combining cannabis and opioids together.

Let that sink in. Cannabis does the job better, for the vast majority of patients, when it’s used without other medications.

Fewer Opioid Prescriptions Means Big Pharma Losing Money

Drug companies ought to be fearful of cannabis. That’s bad for the political prospects of cannabis legalization, but great news for medical patients. The only thing that’s preventing Big Pharma from losing even more money is the illegal status of medical cannabis in so many areas of the country.

An analysis by New Frontier Data (2017) estimates that cannabis could replace up to $4.9 billion worth of prescription medications in 2016 if it were legal across the U.S.. That figure addresses the consuming of cannabis for conditions beyond pain, including nine issues that cannabis have been proven to treat effectively. Conditions like PTSD, sleep disorders, , , , and .

Today’s savings would be even higher — and higher still if the lives saved from opioid overdoses enter the equation. From 1999 to 2017, deaths from prescribed opioid drugs quadrupled, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Maybe not coincidentally, opioid prescriptions also quadrupled during the same time period. Although the amount of pain Americans reported stayed about the same, the CDC reported. That’s a pretty clear sign America is overmedicating its ill — and much to their detriment.

How Cannabis can Help

There is a bright spot in all this bad news about opioid addiction and death. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (2014), found states that passed medical cannabis laws had significantly lower numbers of opioid-related deaths.

So not only do patients prefer cannabis over opioids when given the option, that choice also results in fewer deaths. Public policy circles call that a win-win scenario.

The study also found patients enrolled in Medicare Part D needed far fewer prescriptions after medical cannabis laws were passed. Such laws led to an average reduction of 1,826 daily doses of opioid-based painkillers annually per physician. That’s another way to show Big Pharma will lose a lot of money if access to the legalization of medicinal cannabis spreads across the U.S..

The Public Policy Ramifications 

Overall, medical cannabis has three major effects on a population: It lowers the opioid mortality rate, results in lowered opioid use, and leads to a decrease in traffic fatalities. Those are three major public policy victories that benefit local communities, states, and the nation as a whole.

Part of the reason this works so well is by providing greater access to natural, effective medicine with fewer side effects. Another reason it works is that medical cannabis laws have a way of changing the stigma associated with consuming weed.

But medical cannabis laws do something else. These create a situation in which Big Pharma is losing money. And that makes cannabis a target for drug companies. Still, this is a green wave that has an unstoppable momentum at this point. It’s only a matter of time.

The post Big Pharma Losing Money As Patients Switch From Opioids To Cannabis appeared first on RxLeaf.

[jccamus]

Platforms and Publishers: The End of an Era

Platforms and Publishers: The End of an Era https://ift.tt/2OH87Rj

This report is part of an ongoing, multi-year study by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School into the relationship between large-scale technology companies and journalism.

This research is generously funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Foundations, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Abrams Foundation, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.

Executive Summary

The relationship between technology platforms and news publishers is entering a new moment. In interviews conducted since we published our last report, “Friend and Foe: The Platform Press at the Heart of Journalism,” in June 2018, publishers spoke of what they called the end of a platform “era.” This era, one defined by the belief that the massive audiences platforms offer would lead to meaningful advertising revenue for publishers, was a “bubble” and a “distraction,” they said. This promise has proven to be a broken bargain. Finally, publishers believe “the scale game is over.” 

This acknowledgment, repeated throughout interviews conducted in early 2019, was a significant departure from years past. Throughout much of 2018, publishers were still optimistic that partnering with platforms on scale-based products and initiatives could help sustain the business of journalism—despite years of pushing their content to these platforms without consistent returns on their investment. 

Publishers continue to rely on a variety of platform products, but the ethos of collaboration that infused our research in 2018 has since significantly diminished. More openly than ever before, publishers expressed heightened distrust toward platforms. And while in past interviews they appeared willing to overhaul parts of their businesses to fall in line with platform maneuvers, their priorities were more focused this time around: Post-scale success necessitates regaining control of revenue streams and putting core audience interests above platform demands. 

Last year, we observed strong signals that publishers were looking to bring audiences back to their own properties over “social-first” publishing. In 2019, the trend gained momentum. Many publishers interviewed openly regretted focusing on brand-diluting social content during the scale era, at the expense of undervaluing their core audiences, and have subsequently recommitted to serving their most loyal readers. From a business perspective, this means diversifying reader revenue streams to include, for example, events and membership programs.

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Our key findings from this phase of research are:

The most discernible difference between past findings and those of our most recent interviews is that any hope that scale-based platform products might deliver meaningful or consistent revenue for publishers has disappeared. This does not mean, however, that publishers will no longer work with platforms—an impossible scenario, as the latter are the gatekeepers of the online information ecosystem—but rather that any optimism about the ability of ad-based products to sustain journalism seems all but gone.  

The 2018 Facebook algorithm change de-emphasizing news content on News Feed confirmed a previously theoretical fear: that platforms can turn off “audience taps” on a whim. The fallout from disappearing traffic forced publishers to train their focus on the core audiences that some admit they had previously taken for granted. Rather than chasing clicks and shares on social media, publishers recommitted to serving their most loyal readers (or trying to: The transition is proving treacherous for those most dependent on advertising dollars). 

In previous reports, publishers used the word “diversification” to reference diversifying ​platform​ strategies—in other words, putting resources toward a variety of platform products. In this round of interviews, however, publishers spoke of diversification almost exclusively in the context of squeezing revenue from their own properties in as many ways as possible. This often involves reader revenue (membership or subscriptions) and new products to drive that revenue (newsletters), events, branded retail products, sponsored content, affiliate links, agency services, and, of course, traditional advertisements.

After years of contradictory public statements, platforms have lost credibility with many publishers. Our interviewees were more skeptical than ever of platforms’ commitment to helping journalism and often framed platforms’ journalism initiatives as mere PR moves.   

Unlike in the past when publishers were eager to participate in new platform products, they now have a heightened bar for signing on. Due to years of disappointing returns on investments, many publishers described no longer feeling a “fear of missing out” when it comes to platform opportunities. Instead of crafting strategy around platform products and hoping for revenue, publishers are planning around revenue, and from there determining which platform products might provide a means to that end.  

Publishers’ owned audiences increasingly determine editorial. Instead of commissioning stories around what performs best on platforms and measuring success by audience size, publishers are focused on serving their core audiences, regular readers likely to become a source of revenue. The platforms are a secondary consideration. That being said, those publishers most dependent on ad revenue are more likely to find themselves still prioritizing clicks, and therefore chasing what’s trending on platforms.  

As more news organizations turn to direct contributions from audiences, interviewees from various newsroom types repeatedly spoke of platform products not as money makers but as marketing vehicles to capture readers at the top of an engagement funnel, with an eye toward eventually converting them into paying readers.

A conversion-focused strategy requires thinking about audience data and metrics in a new way, setting different goals and benchmarks, and seeking more granular insights. As publishers seek to regain control of their audiences, they are segmenting them with the aim of better focusing on serving their core readers, while strategizing around converting more casual readers. Some reader categories we heard included: “drive-by,” “grazers,” “most loyal fans,” and, of course, “subscribers.” 

Sensing the opportunity to insert themselves into this funnel process, platforms have been quick to unveil new subscription products that offer to take “friction” out of “conversion.” Google offers Subscribe with Google and Facebook rolled out a paywalled version of Instant Articles. Just as publishers previously had to weigh the pros and cons of ad-based platform publishing products, they are now facing similar decisions over which platform-led subscription products to use—and how.

 The increased public scrutiny of big platforms’ effects on society and democracy has led to new ethical considerations for publishers and their audiences. Some newsroom employees wonder whether their companies should accept platform money, and if leading their audiences to platform properties makes them complicit in a harmful information ecosystem.

  While it is tempting to frame this new phase as empowering for publishers, the power dynamics at play still do not bode well for the future of the online media industry. With this in mind, what will a post-scale world look like for online news publishing? 

One hint comes in the form of the latest platform product rollout, the Facebook News tab. A total departure from Facebook’s first major publisher product, Instant Articles—which required publisher content to live on the platform inside the News Feed and whose revenue potential was ad-based—News tab stories will be presented in a dedicated and differentiated news section, curated by human editors and aided by an algorithm. Publishers will choose whether users read entire stories there or are redirected from a preview to their own sites. Regardless of that choice, some publishers will be paid for their participation.

Payments vary from outlet to outlet, but so far they’ve been reported to reach as high as seven figures. Participating publishers range from the Chicago Tribune to The Atlantic to Fox News, and even includes The New York Times, which was quick to abandon Instant Articles in 2017 but described the News tab as a “truce.” 

Meanwhile, Google and Facebook have kickstarted investments they say will total 300 million dollars apiece over the next three years into news initiatives, particularly those aimed at grants and trainings for local newsrooms. In Google’s case, the company has done what was practically unimaginable when our research began: directly fund the creation of new local newsrooms. 

This strategic shift from news products toward news initiatives renders these platforms more patrons than partners of journalism. Thus, as platforms become the de facto policy makers of an information ecosystem not designed with journalism as top of mind, a line between platform and publisher that’s always been blurry is being erased.  

Regardless of labels, what remains constant is the distribution of power. There are those who make the rules and those who adapt to them.

Introduction

Since our last report was published in June 2018, the shift in the journalism landscape has been seismic. Advertising revenues have continued to plummet and newsrooms across the country have experienced mass layoffs. In turn, publishers have scrambled to adapt their business models and priorities in an ever-changing and volatile media ecosystem—one still dominated by platforms despite the large-scale public reckoning with their effects on society and democracy. 

For the majority of publishers in our study, Facebook has been integral to their publishing operations for years now, and had an outsized effect on their audience and revenue numbers. In the months after Facebook’s January 2018 algorithm change to deprioritize publisher posts on the News Feed in favor of updates from friends and family, publishers began to realize the extent of the drop in traffic. Slate reported, “For every five people that Facebook used to send to Slate about a year ago, it now sends less than one.” 

Publishers’ anticipatory angst about how the change would affect readership and therefore revenue numbers proved to be well founded, even as their worries had been swiftly dismissed early last year by Facebook’s head of global news partnerships, Campbell Brown. She said, “If anyone feels this isn’t the right platform for them, they should not be on Facebook.” 

But for those already deeply invested in the platform, it was devastating to watch as audience numbers for publisher posts on Facebook and referral traffic to publisher-owned websites crashed throughout the year, bringing advertising revenue down with them.  

The lesson of platform unreliability, particularly when it comes to revenue, has never been more clear to publishers. Building on the pivot toward reader revenue that we highlighted in our last report, dozens of publishers have since put up paywalls or launched membership programs, including Vox, Quartz, TechCrunch, and New York Magazine. Even once-digital-darling BuzzFeed is re-strategizing as the platforms on which it built its business evolve in unexpected directions.

BuzzFeed is one of many newsrooms to suffer from sweeping layoffs, with more than 200 of its employees losing their jobs in the past year. Meanwhile, The Outline, Refinery29, Mic, and Vice have cut more than 400 jobs since September 2018, with Mic effectively shutting down. This is all in addition to cuts in legacy newsrooms like CNN and Meredith Corp., which have slashed more than 300 jobs in that time. Some of the most significant layoffs have taken place at national local chains like Gannett and McClatchy, which axed more than 850 jobs this year alone. A Bloomberg article estimates journalism jobs lost in 2019 to be around 3,000. 

The precarity of digital media businesses in a platform-dominated internet has led to an industry-wide resurgence of labor organizing. In the last two years, newsrooms from The New Yorker, Vox, Slate, Fast Company, Refinery29, and even the podcast company Gimlet have unionized. But union campaigns have not been easy. Joe Ricketts, the billionaire owner of DNAinfo and Gothamist, shut down both local news organizations after their employees voted to unionize. At Vox Media, management did not agree to certain contract demands until more than 300 employees staged a walkout. A similar walkout by BuzzFeed News employees followed tense negotiations. The union has since been recognized. The latest effort to meet resistance is at Hearst Magazines, where staff at several of its publications are trying to unionize.

Given this environment, new platform product rollouts over the last year were met with an unprecedented level of caution. When Apple introduced Apple News+ (a personalized digital subscription newsstand of sorts) in March, it did so without the participation of The New York Times and The Washington Post, which the platform had reportedly tried and failed to recruit for inclusion. Though Apple did successfully get The Wall Street Journal aboard, many news organizations remained wary after getting burned by just about every other similar platform product promising meaningful revenue. Apple’s revenue sharing proposal, in which the company would keep 50 percent and all participating publishers would split what remained, was swiftly criticized. New York Times CEO Mark Thompson warned against the product days before it hit the market, drawing a comparison to Netflix.

“Even if Netflix offered you quite a lot of money . . . does it really make sense to help Netflix build a gigantic base of subscribers to the point where they could actually spend $9 billion a year making their own content and will pay me less and less for my library?” he asked. Already, Apple News+ is reportedly struggling to attract subscribers, and Apple may bundle the product with its others, like Music and TV+.

Since our last report, Google and Facebook have started to fund various news initiatives, particularly those aimed at local coverage. This is a 180-degree shift from how these platforms treated local news at the outset of our research in 2016, when new products like Instant Articles and Snapchat Discover were aimed at or reserved for national or household-name publications alone. In fact, in early 2019, the race to support local news resulted in a game of one-upmanship among platforms. In January, Facebook earmarked 300 million dollars to local news, and in March held its first local news summit to meet with publishers about the local news crisis and their wants from the platform. That same month, Google introduced a boot camp for eight local subscription publishers, similar to one Facebook hosted last year.

In May, Google announced that its Digital News Initiative, which has previously been focused only in Europe, would fund efforts in the United States. Unsurprisingly, the aim was “on projects which generate revenue and/or increase audience engagement for local news.” Then in September, Facebook announced the first recipients of its “Community Network” grants, which are meant to “support initiatives that connect communities with local newsrooms.” In sum, the money that Facebook, Google, and the Knight Foundation, which works closely with and receives funding from both platforms, have pledged toward local news is roughly one billion dollars, to be delivered over the next several years. 

Another trend to surface over the last year is the pronounced shift in platforms’ eagerness to engage in editorial practices—whether by actually producing journalism or by selecting stories or publishers to feature. LinkedIn now has a full newsroom. Twitter started more carefully curating its Moments tab, with annotations accompanying collections of tweets that are written by a team of human editors. Apple worked with select partners for a special Midterm Elections section in Apple News. And in March 2019, Google announced that for the first time it would directly fund the creation of new local news websites launching in the US and the UK.  

Facebook remained reluctant, until this spring, to treat news in some hands-on way, as distinct from all other content. That all changed in April when Mark Zuckerberg announced he was considering paying for “high-quality news” and separating it into its own news feed—plans that were confirmed in June. Intervening with human judgement about surfacing content is a practice from which Facebook had run fast and far after it disbanded the team that curated news for Trending in 2016. But it seems the platform has again decided that leaving its news ecosystem to algorithms is unsustainable. Facebook hired a team of journalists to curate its new News tab, aided by algorithms, and is offering some publishers millions of dollars to license their content.

The shift toward becoming more hands-on was necessitated, at least in part, by a seemingly endless string of PR crises. After long resisting direct action against the rise of white nationalism, hate speech, and harassment on its platform, this spring Facebook published a post on “standing against hate” and banned Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos. In May, Twitter was pushed to start rerouting users in search of anti-vax information on its platform, instead showing them “reliable public health information.”

Facebook, in particular, has taken a series of steps that could reshape the company from its core in the coming months. In January, struggling to moderate problematic content with technology alone, the platform announced it would create an “oversight board for content decisions.” In March, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a post on building “a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform” and then redesigned the platform the following month to be “more trustworthy.” In June, the company announced it would roll out “a new global currency powered by blockchain technology.” This digital currency, expected in 2020, will be called Libra. Its launch, however, remains uncertain as it hits up against potential US regulatory restrictions.  

There is no telling how publishers will fare in the coming years as platforms undergo perhaps their most dramatic transformations since their foray into publishing products in 2015. However, one thing is certain: Despite facing increasing antitrust scrutiny and calls for regulation, platforms are more powerful than ever. Over time, they have come to control the online information ecosystem and, increasingly, in the case of Facebook and Google, are among the news industry’s top funders. 

It is in this context that many of the publishing executives and employees we interviewed described the “end of an era.” But as is clear in the report, this does not mean the end of their cooperation with platforms. It refers, rather, to the end of optimism that scale and ad-based platform products will bring about meaningful revenue and audience growth. From the rise of paywalls and reader revenue initiatives to the diversification of revenue streams through live events and podcasts, publishers are attempting to regain control over the future of their businesses. 

Methodology

We conducted 42 interviews with individuals from 27 news organizations (representing national and local legacy outlets, national and local digital natives, broadcast, audio, and magazine), six platform companies, and one foundation. These interviews were carried out primarily over the phone, lasting 30 to 90 minutes, and were recorded and transcribed. Interviewees were promised anonymity and confidentiality, and guaranteed that their responses would not be identifiable in the final results. The conversations were semi-structured and centered mostly around editorial, audience, and revenue-related platform strategies. Because the focus of this research was publisher reactions to the evolving platform ecosystem for news, the bulk of our interviews were conducted with publishers.

For the purposes of this research, we define a publisher as any organization that regularly publishes accounts and analyses of current events using a staff of journalists and editors. The size and reach of publishers in our sample varied (hyperlocal, local, regional, national, or global), as did their production formats (print, audio, video) and revenue models (membership, subscription, and/or advertising).

We use the term “platform” to refer to technology companies which maintain consumption, distribution, and monetization infrastructure for digital media—though each is distinct in its architecture and business model. Google, for example, is a search engine, while Facebook is a social network. In both cases, the majority of each company’s revenue comes from advertising. Meanwhile, Apple makes money from hardware sales, proprietary software, licensed media, and hosted apps. All have used their technology, however, to create products for news publishers to find audiences and monetize readers within their own ecosystems. Our interviews with publishers focused primarily on Facebook (and Instagram), Google (and YouTube), Twitter, Apple, and Snapchat.

Publishers on the End of an Era

In our June 2018 report, we wrote that both platforms and publishers had repeatedly begun to use “words like ‘partner’ and ‘partnership’ to describe their increasingly close relationship.” Still, we labeled this relationship an “uncomfortable union,” given that it was not one in which publishers enjoyed equal power or influence.

There was, in 2018, still hope that working in tandem on ad-based products and initiatives represented an opportunity to make meaningful money—an expectation that existed in spite of publishers’ continued puzzling over the inability to earn consistent revenue from these platform-native products. With no guarantee of return on investment, publishers pushed more and more of their journalism to third-party platforms. 

Indeed, the most discernible difference between then and now, observable across historical interviews we’ve conducted over four years, is diminished hope that these platform products might deliver substantive revenue for publishers. This year, one of the most striking themes to emerge from our interviews was publishers’ tendency to answer questions about the current state of their relationship with platforms as if conducting a postmortem.

 Phrases we heard throughout our interviews included:

“It was an era”

“The platform moment”

“The platform stuff was a distraction”

“It was a bubble”

“The scale game is over”

“Post-scale world”

Already, a warning issued in our first report has come true: “If the monetization of material given to social platforms by news organizations does not improve, it will exacerbate the crisis in sustainable journalism at the local and regional level. If the tools and design of platforms do not have civic purposes as well as commercial purpose, this is an inevitability rather than a possibility.”

A broken bargain

When publishers refer to the platform era, game, moment, or bubble, they are describing a simple equation that was, until very recently, the platform promise: The platforms had audiences in the hundreds of millions and billions, and should publishers choose to publish their content through platforms’ publishing products—placing ads against that content—the unrivaled number of eyeballs would bring publishers a level of revenue that made it worthwhile to forfeit the direct editorial control and audience relationships that publishers now understand to be key to their success. 

The era was all about scale. For publishers, it meant putting platform demands first. Facebook, in many ways, defined this era. It was the platform that most aggressively laid out the promise of massive exposure—and advertising revenue to follow. Though initially the vehicle was Instant Articles, Facebook continued to “pivot” to formats, like video, through which it might still deliver on the basic premise that had been set out. 

It eventually became apparent to news organizations that even with upfront cash deals to use Facebook products or create content for them, in the cases of Live and Watch specifically, there was little meaningful money to be made through these “partnerships.” One publisher said, “The reason why publishers and these platforms got into bed with each other originally was that there was a basic bargain”—publishers would provide content in exchange for audience and, by extension, revenue—but “the bargain has broken down.” 

Then came Facebook’s 2018 News Feed algorithm change to deprioritize news. While publishers were still puzzling over issues like a lack of robust and reliable audience data from Facebook, the severity of the “Facebook-pocalypse” made clear the worry was no longer that publishers couldn’t quite “see” their platform audiences, it was that huge chunks of those audiences could disappear overnight.

“Eighteen months ago, Facebook sent somewhere between 35 and 45 percent of many of our sites’ total visitation. In that period of time, it has gone from that to seven percent,” one publisher told us in early 2019. “It’s just, the bottom fell out.” 

Stories like this one became commonplace. For example, in June 2018, Will Oremus reported that Facebook traffic to his (then) publication, Slate, had “plummeted a staggering 87 percent, from a January 2017 peak of 28 million to less than 4 million in May 2018.” 

Though the algorithm change occurred a full year before our latest round of interviews in early 2019, it remained top of mind for a majority of our interviewees, almost as if it had confirmed the death of a broken model. One executive reflected, “Certainly the era of high growth, traffic growth, and just continuing to reach new scale is over. Everything that Facebook has done for us—I think in some ways we took for granted, but also just believed that it would be there. And when that ended, there was a little bit of a reckoning.” 

The emergence of a ‘post-scale world’

Language situating a platform era or moment in the past should not be taken too literally, of course, especially given that platform companies (namely Facebook and Google) have too tight a stranglehold on the information ecosystem for publishers to realistically abandon them. That being said, underwhelming return on investment from collaboration with platforms finally led publishers to definitively adjust their priorities. 

One person told us, there’s “less optimism around what the platforms can deliver for us” and “a lot less trust in Facebook, specifically.” Another said that the “little glimmers of hope” that remained last year have given way to “the recognition that you shouldn’t be too reliant on [platforms], and that any hope of having any kind of direct commercial benefit from them is probably misguided.”

While in past interviews publishers spread their agenda, and were much more willing to overhaul parts of their businesses in line with platform maneuvers, our conversations were much more streamlined this time around. Publishers mostly talked about two areas of focus: controlling their own revenue models and putting audiences first—platforms second.

Reclaiming Control of Earning Potential

Interviewees across the board talked with more urgency about the need to “stand on their own two feet,” and spoke assertively about “standing up more for themselves” and “calling [platforms’] bluff[s]” instead of shapeshifting in tandem with the whims of tech companies as many had previously.

Publishers are convicted in their efforts to wrestle back control of both how they publish and how they bring in revenue. Specifically, this has meant a renewed focus on their owned-and-operated properties, precisely because they are the only places where they have control over audience experience, data, and revenue. 

Diversification across publisher properties

While the term “diversification” is one that has cropped up repeatedly over the years, in past interviews it was most commonly used to reference diversifying ​platform​ strategies—as in, not putting all of your resources toward one platform or platform product. 

More recently, however, publishers spoke of diversification almost exclusively in the context of exploring the variety of ways they can squeeze revenue from their own properties: reader revenue (memberships or subscriptions) and new products to drive that revenue (newsletters), events, branded retail products, sponsored content, affiliate links, agency services, and, yes, advertisements. While the scope of such diversification varies greatly from one outlet to the next, many interviewees repeatedly described a concerted drive to identify a meaningful mix.  

A digital director from one organization told us:

“The basic premise of platforms for publishers has changed significantly​. The second-order effect of monetizing traffic that came from posting your story to Facebook—this past year has proven that that model ​cannot​ sustain. There’s no way that any publisher who is reliant on Facebook, and increasingly on Google, will have a sustainable business model. There’s no correlation, in almost every case, to actual money. A digital media brand that relies on advertising is almost impossible. Almost zero chance of succeeding today.”

Reader revenue reigns

Reader revenue is a crucial part of the diversification mix and has only continued to gain traction. Even among the 12 outlets whose distribution strategies the Tow Center has tracked since 2016, the three digital natives—BuzzFeed News, HuffPost, and Vox—have all launched membership initiatives in the past year. 

(L–R) Membership-based reader revenue initiatives introduced at BuzzFeed News, HuffPost, and Vox in the past year.

Subscription and membership models are poised, publishers hope, to give them control over their route to sustainability and insulate them from the platforms’ often-experimental changes (algorithm shifts, abrupt pivots in format priorities, withdrawal of payments, etc.). There were some encouraging signs in this area.

For example, an interviewee from a relatively young, membership-funded nonprofit described how their outlet had been “insulated” from the most damaging repercussions of major platform shifts because “diversification or diversity has always been an important part of our DNA both on the audience acquisition side and on the revenue side.” This, they contended, “probably has a lot to do with buffering us against a lot of the dramatic changes that other publishers are seeing.” 

One person from a membership-funded outlet argued that the continuation of this trend seems inevitable:

“It’s much clearer to everyone that . . . the end game has got to be sustainable readership. If you don’t have a revenue plan—beyond ad impressions and display ads—that is trying to move all of that reach into something more substantive in terms of readers giving [money] to you, whether it’s subscription or through donations, then what’s the point?”

Publishers describe a heightened bar for partnering with platforms

Those publishers who have taken steps toward becoming more self-sufficient claim to be far more cautious about ceding power back to platforms by (re)entering into partnerships. “The barrier to entry is higher because we have a general sense that the more we control our own fate, the better,” one said. 

Another interviewee described “control” as being central to a “robust review” of their outlet’s use of platform-native products: “A lot of it was really about just recognizing what things were within our control and what things weren’t​.” Conducting this review, they continued, “led to a natural shift away from a lot of the collaboration that we have done with Facebook previously. And as Facebook sort of fell in the industry, there was less focus on building things on Facebook and thinking about that as something that was a key part of our focus.”

As publishers better solidify their own needs and priorities, they are also able to identify whether, and which, platform products are a good fit. Time and again interviewees described being more circumspect in their platform dealings, outlining a requirement for platforms to reach a far higher bar before they will enter partnerships or opt in to third-party product solutions.

Recurring reasons for this new approach can be broadly grouped into four categories:

Diminished fear of missing out

Years of underwhelming return on investment from platform partnerships and products

Deeper knowledge about the considerable ongoing costs of integrating with and supporting third-party products (e.g., engineering costs, etc.)

New and incompatible business models

  1. Publishers feel less FOMO about platform opportunities

Previously, there was a strong fear of missing out among publishers that could only look on enviously at those who got the earliest opportunities (sometimes coupled with financial incentives) to partner with platforms on glitzy new products from Snapchat Discover to Facebook Instant Articles. This was particularly palpable during our earliest interviews in 2016.

Now, however, concerns about feeling left out seem to have all but disappeared. In a surprising turn of narrative, the most optimistic of publishers with whom we spoke in our latest interviews tended to be those working at outlets that were long left out of, or had managed to limit their reliance on, products from third-party platforms. 

In our earliest interviews, publishers either felt like haves or have-nots, as smaller, nonprofit, or local newsrooms felt excluded from platform relationships, products, or initiatives. 

While many of those outlets that were overlooked in years past couldn’t have anticipated the recent platform turn toward an all-in effort funding local news, some described the fallout of the platform-publisher relationship as one mess they didn’t have to clean up. One publisher suggested feeling spared, saying, “We didn’t have money to throw at it. In this case that worked out because . . . we didn’t see some of the higher returns that some of the other outlets did that ended up informing larger overall strategy and how dependent they got on the platforms.” 

Another publisher said there was a time when platforms were the “end all, be all,” adding that “in the past, me and other publishers, especially smaller and local ones, we all wanted better relationships with the platforms. We got frustrated when they were unresponsive.​ I think we all realized that it’s so unpredictable, and that you can’t rely on any one platform and need to diversify.”

2. A far greater need for evidence of ROI

Stung by years of underwhelming return on investment (ROI) and unfulfilled promises of dollars tomorrow, many publishing executives told us they now require far more compelling evidence that platform partnerships will be fruitful for their businesses. As one local publisher put it, “A year ago . . . [our attitude was], ‘Hey, why not? Let’s give it a shot. [It’s a] 50/50 call, but let’s find out.’ I would say now somebody would have to show me pretty clearly that the benefit was likely, rather than 50/50, for me to make the change.”

One person from a major global news outlet said their “very sensible approach to the platforms” boiled down to one simple question: “What are we trying to achieve and how does each platform fit into that or does each platform fit into that? If they do, let’s partner with them; if not, let’s not waste our time.” 

Another person from a local nonprofit was even more specific about their requirements: “If we’re having a conversation with a platform that does not involve revenue or retention, it’s not a conversation that’s worth having, to be honest.”

3. The cost of supporting underwhelming third-party products

Many of the most prominent platform-native news products have been around for some time. Apple News, Snapchat Discover, and Facebook Instant Articles launched in 2015, while Google AMP arrived a year later.

Years of experience with these products have taught publishers that the ongoing costs of integrating platform products extend far beyond the initial outlay for joining. Multiple interviewees identified this as a major consideration when deciding whether to adopt new platform products or continue to use existing ones.

One publisher shared their experience dealing with the expensive, time-consuming effects of juggling multiple platform products: “We redid our [website’s] article page last year, which was a huge undertaking. After we finished rebuilding the page on our site, we had to rebuild it on all of these other platforms. It probably took us two months to rebuild our template on Apple. It took us two months to rebuild Google AMP.” 

They continued, “In any project you undertake, each of these platforms adds complexity and development time. Complexity requires people. It really is just about trying to figure out if the ongoing costs of participating are worth the returns​.”

This publisher, who was assessing the extent to which platform products could figure into their outlet’s upcoming paywall, described the stages of their platform integration in recent years as: 1) “initial effort” 2) “limping along” and, finally, 3) a “new lens”—through which they could assess the business case for continuing to invest resources into these products.

“We have years of data, so we look at the monetization of​ the platform and we look at the cost to continue to participate. Because we’ve gone well past the ​initial effort​, and then we had several years where those things just ​kept limping along​. Now we’re looking at all of that with ​the new lens​ of: How will this play into or does it play into our consumer strategy, and where can that be a benefit or a drawback to us?”

4. New and incompatible business models

Platform-native publishing products from the most ubiquitous companies like Facebook and Google have long been optimized for keeping users on-platform and serving digital ads quickly. So, in other words, these news outlets are pivoting to business models with which those platform products are not necessarily compatible. For example, one local publisher described how a shift to reader revenue had made him more cautious about being talked into using platform products:

“Now that we’re doing so well with membership, and we see how crucial that [model] is to our future, I’m wary of anything that could make that unstable at all. And so there’s more of a barrier for the platforms to hit for me to make a change. You’ve got to prove you’re not gonna blow this up, because this is really working for us​. ​And before [adopting a membership model] there was nothing that was working so well that the risk was that large.” 

This person added that, having abandoned AMP and Instant Articles due to their incompatibility with the business, “There is something lovely about feeling like I have much more control of my own fate than was the case before.”

This, of course, is an area to watch closely, as platforms have rolled out products for reader revenue-supported publishers such as Subscribe with Google and a paywalled version of Facebook Instant Articles. Publishers interviewed did not not yet have enough experience with these products to provide an assessment of their utility. For now, it’s fair to say that platform products, including these newest ones, are seen as tools in a larger toolkit. They may be one mode to a multi-pronged end for publishers, with any resulting revenue earned considered a bonus. 

Some publishers still don’t enjoy the luxury of refusing help or ‘going it alone’

Publishers’ flexibility in relation to their use of platform products continues to be largely determined by their business model and the health of their owned-and-operated properties, as has been the case since our earliest interviews. Publishers eager to be less reliant on platform products shared different obstacles holding them back, ranging from higher CPMs on Instant Articles or larger audiences on Apple News as compared to their own mobile or web sites.

An interviewee who moved from a publication focused on advertising and scale to one operating a membership model described the extent to which these contrasting business models impacted the importance placed on following the tech platforms’ lead:

“All I did [before] was talk to the platforms all the time. [. . . ] I don’t want to undermine how important they are because we do get a fair amount of traffic from them. But they don’t lead our strategies in the way that they used to at [the previous publication]. They’re a soccer ball on the field and people run with it in one direction and everybody chases it. Everybody’s playing soccer and we’re watching, and have vested interest in the game, but we are not running after the ball. We’re doing our own thing on the side.”

Some interviewees described this ongoing attachment as a “continued dance” and “never-ending game.” An audience engagement manager captured the prevailing mood as “skepticism rather than optimism, but not a retreat.”

While better-resourced publishers intent on shifting revenue strategies away from platforms reported changes in the nature of their interactions with previously high-touch platform representatives, describing them as “less frequent, less urgent, and less tense,” a social media manager from a local publisher with an ad-heavy revenue model outlined a decidedly different experience: 

“It just frustrates me because I feel like they’re giving us just enough where we’re not fully letting go and trying to pursue a different strategy. They’re feeding the beast just enough to keep [us] hooked onto Facebook. So here I am with a social media team that is getting smaller and smaller every year. And my Facebook traffic keeps shrinking, but . . . I’m still forced to make sure they do spend a ton of time posting to social media . . . when there’s a million other things that maybe we could be experimenting with, or finding time for some innovation, or freeing that team up for more strategic initiatives instead of just posting to Facebook all day. But we’re hooked just enough where I can’t tell them, ‘No, you don’t have to post to Facebook all day, every day anymore.’”

Similar sentiment was voiced by an interviewee from a digital native still reliant on dwindling eyeballs and therefore ad revenue from Facebook, who said, “Before, we were still seeking a partnership . . . but now it’s like we’re wounded animals and wondering if they’re going to shoot us or try to give us just enough medical help to keep us alive so we can continue to serve them.”

Publishers ramp up skepticism about platforms’ commitment to journalism

Despite—or possibly because of—the introduction of numerous, high-profile initiatives to fund news, we heard stronger sentiment than ever that platforms do not have journalism’s best interests in mind and cannot be trusted no matter what they promise.

When it came to assessing platform motivation, Facebook was the subject of particular scorn, due in large part to its ubiquity and tendency over the years to pivot its product focus far more often than other platforms. In fact, many complaints we heard about “platforms” boiled down to primarily a dissatisfaction with Facebook. “Facebook have never really been genuinely engaged with the idea that news has any value for their platform. I think they’re really focused on [giving money to] local news in the US because that’s the political hot topic [right now],” one person said. Another called their recent journalism efforts “PR.”

The precarious nature of direct payments from platforms—whether in the form of grants from Facebook or Google to smaller newsrooms, or seven-figure deals to larger newsrooms to use products such as Facebook’s News tab—was another area where multiple interviewees claimed to have become more clear-eyed, typically characterizing them as welcome but unreliable bonuses. 

An interviewee whose organization had recently been in receipt of one such offering described their reaction as, “This is fantastic. But also this is not going to save our business. And I can’t count on this to renew.”

Yet another publisher representative from a national newspaper conglomerate said, “We absolutely need the money that they’re giving us to innovate, or have a shot at growing our audience, or even figuring out a path to a subscription strategy. So, I am thankful for the money, but I think there’s also some resentment . . . from people who work in [our] social media [departments] who are like, ‘I’m just tired of being at your beck and call’ kind of thing.”

The Shifting Platform-Publisher-Audience Dynamic

In our first report from this research project, published in 2017, Carla Zanoni, then of The Wall Street Journal, said that successfully utilizing platforms hinged on “your ability as a publisher to engage with [the] audience and build a long-standing relationship that extends beyond the platform.”

But developing a new audience on-platform, and figuring out how to monetize that audience, meant grappling with the question of “who owns the relationship with the user,” and “who controls that relationship and that data,” said Cynthia Collins of The New York Times.  

Nearly two and a half years ago, these were prescient points—especially at a time when, as we noted then, “scale is everything, from number of likes and shares to ultimate reach.” Many publishers were fixated on how to access a huge universe of potential readers at the expense of their most loyal ones. According to a local publisher, that meant chasing trending content and operating in a way that left their local readers feeling “distant.”

By the time we published our second report in June 2018, publishers were reckoning with the ramifications of treating audiences not as individuals, but as a number.  

One publisher told us then, “News organizations lost the idea of the audience as a real user, somebody that you had to work to acquire. Now there is this turn to understanding that our mission needs to be stronger. We need to be more respectful of our audience, because we need to have a direct relationship with them. They are not just a couple of billions that show up in analytics, but real people who care about news or who want a reliable and trustworthy news experience.”

Numerous interviewees in this latest round suggested that the drastic withdrawal of Facebook traffic, and associated “end of the scale game” that was just beginning to emerge in our 2018 report, led to one of the most significant learnings from the fallout of this platform “era”: Anything that distracts a publisher from focusing on their most loyal audiences is a losing strategy.

“The platform stuff was a distraction. It was a good lesson, an objective lesson in: Listen to your audience,” one publisher said. Another told us that the immense pressure and urgent stress “really forced us to focus on the core—the people that ​did​ continue to come back—and to think about how we shift our thinking from just pure scale to really engaging with those core loyal users.”

One publisher nicely summed up their (re)prioritization of audiences as “seeking you out in some way, versus just running into you.” They added, “If you rewind three, four, five years ago, the drive-by audiences, the scale that you could drive through these platforms, in some ways could blind you to the fact that you’re not necessarily building your own community or audience. It really changes the strategy, which I think is a good and healthy thing for brands.”

Platforms are now (generally) secondary to audience when making editorial decisions

In our 2017 report, we noted that journalism with high civic value was discriminated against by an ecosystem that favors scale and shareability. Still, as platforms introduced new formats for publishing, which happened at a particularly rapid pace back then, publishers adopted them quickly. And this decision began to affect editorial strategies with questionable results. One publisher told us then, “We are telling stories that other outlets aren’t telling, which is almost to our detriment in the world of viral news. When it comes to the way Facebook and Twitter currently surface trending content and breaking news, it’s not about the story that no one has. It’s about the story that everyone has.”

Over the years, platforms continued to shape both the style and substance of publisher content. As we wrote in last year’s report, there was still an appetite to “play” with platform formats and products, and for experimentation, as publishers were still trying to figure out editorial that would perform on platform and count as important journalism. One digital native publisher asked then, “How do we match up what we consider important journalism with extreme audience optimization”—or, in others words, platform scale. “Those things don’t always click.” 

The answer, it turns out, is that “those things” seldom do. In an effort to untangle editorial decisions from platform scale strategies, in our most recent interviews publishers described varying degrees of liberation. One publisher pursuing reader revenue said their editorial thinking is now shaped “more around our audience strategy and who we’re trying to reach. The platforms are secondary.”

Another person said they are “thinking politically and ambitiously about what we need to do to get our audience. What should we be focusing on as topics or viewpoints for our editorial brand?” One interviewee, based at a local, subscription-based outlet, described the win-win of adopting a stronger audience-centric approach, saying, “Our top subscribers read stories that are really local. They are generally investigative or enterprise. It actually is the kind of journalist’s dream of what you think people want from a newspaper.”

Connecting the dots between the triumvirate of business model, audience, and editorial, an interviewee from a global publisher with a membership model argued that their model enabled them to prioritize quality over quantity:

“If you need to create highly engaged users with your brand . . . it means you can take different decisions about the content you commission and you can be much more focused on building quality and trust, rather than creating content that drives one-time readers. If your focus is on engagement to drive reader revenues, it changes your approach to the sort of journalism you’re commissioning—maybe less stuff, but publishing better stuff. I think it’s quite a healthy change really.”

At times, contrasting responses from interviewees brought the connection between business model and editorial freedom into sharp focus. One local publisher described how a change in business model, pivoting away from digital ad revenue, had directly impacted their willingness, or need, to regurgitate viral stories: 

“The truth of the matter is, when you’ve decided membership and events are where you’re going to make 80 percent of your money, then virality is only of some [limited] value. It’s limited because you get a bunch of ad revenue out of it but no members​, or ​the likelihood is it’s a story that would go viral nationally and thus you’re not going to get a lot of [local] members or anybody to come to an event.”

On the other hand, a local publisher that remains tied to platform economics and digital ad revenue described a continued focus on trending stories in pursuit of page views. They described feeling “still stuck on the Facebook and Google train,” and expressed frustration that corporate pressures to hit a “massive page view goal” dictated that they “have a whole team of people that do nothing but stare at CrowdTangle all day, see what’s going viral on Facebook and then aggregating that content. We’re doing follow-up stories on what’s going viral and what’s trending, which kind of dilutes your local feel.”

This person shared a particular anecdote that illustrates how top-down directives to pursue scale for advertising revenue resulted in cutting smaller, but potentially monetizable, beats. Citing their publication’s food section, the interviewee said, “We looked back and thought, ‘Oh my God, we cut all these beats purely off of one factor, and that’s page views.’ We didn’t consider, ‘Do they drive loyalty and retention? Do people subscribe off of these stories more than the other ones? We don’t know. We didn’t do the analysis. We don’t have the data. We weren’t tracking it.” 

They went on to describe how their shrinking editorial staff had resorted to taking matters into their own hands, conducting experiments to try and ascertain “what verticals may drive more repeat visits and then maybe drive more conversions in the long run.”

Platform products as marketing vehicles to capture readers atop the engagement funnel

Facing the end of the scale era has forced many publishers to take a more nuanced approach to audience data. One publishing executive described the change in thinking as follows:

“We used to be more of a one metric-focused company. It used to just be about, ‘How many visitors do we have?’ and that’s all we cared about and talked about—to really thinking about them in cohorts, thinking about engagement, and thinking more deeply about how you move people from one place to another. It is going from one metric to many metrics.” 

Another publisher said, “Now I’m much more focused on: What is the loyalty behind those different audiences? How often are you coming? How many pages per visit are you seeing?” 

Multiple interviewees described segmenting their audiences based on their levels of engagement with the brand, categorizing via labels such as “drive-by,” “grazers,” “most loyal fans,” and, of course, “subscribers.”

In this vein, as more and more news organizations turn to direct contributions from audiences in the form of memberships and subscriptions, many interviewees from various newsroom types invoked the marketing language of “funnels” with remarkable frequency when describing a new platform-publisher-audience dynamic.

It was in this context that they frequently returned to talk reminiscent of our earliest interviews, citing platforms as “distribution channels to put content in front of audiences.” The difference now, however, is that instead of just spraying content every which way and hoping for eyeballs, publishers are forming strategies around how to hook readers at that point of platform contact and reel them in, down the funnel. 

Most interviewees referred to platforms in terms of their position at the top of the funnel because of their unmatched reach and centrality to so many aspects of people’s everyday lives. One said their newsroom “talks about the platforms as a form of acquisition.” 

An audience manager from a local nonprofit told us, “The platforms are a big part and will be a big part of [reaching people] as long as people are there living their lives, getting information, conversing about the information that they’re getting with their friends and families and hopefully with us. It’s simply that we need to figure out and be strategic about the next steps.”

Those next steps after discovery—at the top of the funnel when audiences are exposed to and become aware of a brand—are engagement, conversion, and retention. Another person said, “We are increasingly obsessed with what happens in the middle of the funnel,” referencing the phase of engagement when audiences can begin to develop a habit and brand loyalty, before conversion, which happens at the bottom of the funnel when they decide to support the outlet by becoming a subscriber, member, or donator. Having converted users, the final stage in this model is retention.

This process of engaging, converting, and retaining audiences demands considerably more of news organizations than simply inducing readers to click, share, or react to a post on a third-party platform. It was in this context that some interviewees lamented how platform products redefined the term “engagement.” Referencing CrowdTangle’s metric of “overperformance” (based on Facebook interactions), one complained that they see stories “quote-unquote over-perform on Facebook ​all the time​ and all they are are people sharing things without reading the stories.”

An audience manager from a local nonprofit went further, speaking in depth about the importance of reclaiming the term so that it centered around the publisher-audience dynamic rather than the platform-audience dynamic: 

“The overarching thing for me is the importance of engagement. I really think it was such a bad trend where newsrooms were obsessed with ‘engagement’ and kept talking about it in terms of all these social interactions. Those were really metrics that were helpful for these platforms in terms of them trying to build their own platforms and ensure their users were addicted or obsessed with those apps, but not super helpful to publishers in the long run. I think finally publishers are looking at that word ‘engagement’ and understanding that it’s much more about a relationship with a reader. For that to exist you have got to think beyond an interaction or platform. We have to think about retention and where do I move next with this person and how do I keep in contact with this person.”

Ethics

In our previous rounds of interviews, when asked about the ethics of partnering with platform companies, publishers did not draw a connection between broader platform controversies and their own newsrooms. This time, however, as negative press about platform companies is front and center in the public consciousness, interviewees described pushback from both their newsroom employees and readers about the potentially problematic nature of their alliances with platforms.

Guilty by association? 

Growing platform scrutiny—by journalists, legislative and regulatory authorities, and even the general public—has intensified significantly since our research began. Platforms have become hotbeds of rampant misinformation, hate speech, extremist viewpoints, and foreign interference. Further, platform companies have endured a host of security and privacy breaches, which compromised user data. Calls to break them up—both inside the US and outside—are growing louder. Less than 30 percent of US respondents said they trust major technology companies “most of the time” or more, according to a 2018 Pew Research study. 

In this environment, it is unsurprising that some interviewees reported pushback from their audiences about their complicity in continuing to use of these platforms. One publisher said, “When Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress we had a ton of stories about that and we’d post them on Facebook. We’d see our readers saying, ‘We don’t want to read you on Facebook’ or ‘How is it that you are doing this reporting about some of the unethical things that this company is doing but you’re still using them as a platform?’”

They added, “Our membership group . . . [moved] off Facebook because people didn’t want to have to join Facebook or they had deleted their Facebook and didn’t want to have that as a barrier to interacting with this membership community.”

Although in this case the publisher did take action in response to audience feedback, others have not felt they had that luxury. Another interviewee noted that while they are aware of audience concerns, platforms remain vital distribution mechanisms for reaching those very readers with need-to-know information. “We really want to be using them as little as possible because of all the criticism,” this person said, “but we’re definitely not in a position where we’re going to turn away from it because it does so much. I think we don’t really see an alternative to using them.” 

There were rumblings of concerns within news organizations, too. One social media editor said of journalists in the newsroom, “It mostly comes up when I ask for them to do something and they’ll say, ‘Is anything changing because I’m uncomfortable being a part of this.’ They have to login through a Facebook account and there’s certain people who don’t want a Facebook account because of what’s going on.” But, they said, the conversations end there, and no action is taken. “Facebook is not as popular as it once was but it still has millions and millions of active users. We’re still just going until something explodes.”

Beyond Facebook, another interviewee wondered where the line could be drawn, noting that scandals are not exclusive to any one platform. “If you do walk away from Facebook, are we then saying it’s worse than things like Reddit, which has its problems, or Twitter, which certainly has its problems, or things like Apple, which is a little bit evil, too? What about Google? Google is terrible with fake news,” this publisher said. “We can’t just disappear off the internet. . . . We talk about it but I don’t know how confident we are that we’re going to do anything differently.”

Still, this person continued to grapple with their complicity in drawing audiences back into platforms. “It’s weird because you have a business team that has technology reporters who delete Facebook,” they said. “If we post our content on a company site that is not good to people are we not encouraging people still to use that product? Facebook is bad but this is still a place where you can find us. We’re encouraging people to use it and we report on how bad it is, yet still post on it.”

Others voiced an alternative perspective. For example, one interviewee spoke with strong conviction about the need for accountability journalism about tech platforms to reach the users of those very platforms:

“What we haven’t done is step back from publishing journalism on [Facebook] and the really clear reason for that is it would be absurd if we were publishing news stories about the relationship with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and all of the issues that go along with that and the people who were using that platform weren’t able to read that journalism.”

On accepting ‘free’ platform money

The publishing industry as a whole is grappling with whether to accept the hundreds of millions of dollars pouring in from Facebook and Google journalism initiatives.

One person whose cash-strapped news organization had received a large sum in free Facebook ad credits described their attitude as, “Of course we’re going to take your money, because without it we wouldn’t be able to innovate, and we wouldn’t have as many opportunities as we have right now.” It’s a sentiment that recurred often across our interviews. 

One journalism funder who works with both Facebook and Google at first told us flatly: “Take the money; it’s money.” But as they continued, they began to wonder about the optics and possible ethical implications of taking platforms at their word that these supposed philanthropic offerings come with no strings attached: 

“If it was tobacco money or alcohol money, then don’t take it. Oil money or . . . from a gun company, there’s an ethical thing about that. Maybe some people would argue that Facebook is becoming that, especially just this week with this thing they installed on people’s phones to track teenagers’ activity and pay them for it. I mean, I guess they told people they were doing this and had to obviously get them to install it on their phone. It’s not like they’re giving malware.

“[But] it doesn’t look great. Is Facebook linked with tobacco or gun companies just yet? I mean, if you truly think that then maybe don’t take the money. Some people on our board have questions like, ‘Are we sure we want to be working with Facebook?’ It’s not always like that, but then, in the end they’re like, ‘But they’re offering us [millions of] dollars. Yeah, I guess we should take it.’”

The funder concluded, “You don’t want to be reliant on them. That would just be my caution,” adding, “we can’t build a business around having these tech companies fund journalism. That’s what concerns me when some people say they should give us more money and billions to journalism. Is that their role, to be the subsidy for journalism? That seems wrong somehow.”

The Platform Response

With a few exceptions, the platforms we spoke to agreed that platform-publisher relationships have become more strained in recent years. One platform representative said, “I think there’s less optimism, and there’s more frustration. I think there’s more strategic misalignment which makes it far harder for both parties to try and come together [so that it] doesn’t feel like one is benefiting off the other.”

Another one told us, “I think in 2018 the relationship became a little bit more antagonistic and as a result of that a lot of my colleagues who were doing partnership management with news publishers were responsible for a little more sentiment management than pure marketing.”

A move toward offering subscription ‘solutions’ 

Unsurprisingly, though, platform companies have continued to develop a range of products and services to insert themselves into every step of publishers’ newest focus: reader revenue. The Google News Initiative website has a page dedicated to showcasing how Google’s “set of technologies and solutions is designed to help news publishers engage users across the funnel,” promising to “Expand reach,” “Drive conversions,” and “Engage subscribers and members.”

At the bottom of the funnel, the big three (Apple, Google, and Facebook) all claim their solutions can take “friction” out of the final step of “conversion.” Apple has rolled out Apple News+, a subscription service through which participating publishers split what’s left of the 10 dollars a month users pay once Apple takes its 50 percent, based on readers’ dwell time; Google rolled out Subscribe with Google (for which it takes a 5 to 15-percent cut); and Facebook has launched a paywalled version of Instant Articles. 

In a June 2019 blog post, Facebook product manager Sameera Salari announced the company’s Instant Articles paywall product had been opened up to “all eligible publishers.” Salari’s post, titled “Supporting Subscriptions-Based News Publishers,” outlined numerous ways in which Facebook products could be used throughout the process of converting readers into paying supporters. One new product being tested, named News Funding, was said to be “focused on helping publishers build closer relationships with their readers” and “designed for local and niche publishers interested in using a Facebook-based membership model.”

Summarizing, Salari wrote that “Facebook Analytics can be particularly insightful for publishers because it provides omni-channel, people-based insights throughout the funnel—from an article read to a subscription sign-up. This means publishers can measure the behavior of their audiences, with multi-surface users de-duplicated, across Facebook, Instagram, and publishers’ mobile apps and websites.”

Platform news strategies mature

Big tech platforms have have run into major issues around distributing and moderating news content on a product-by-product basis, often without top-down strategies. Recalling an incident in 2015, one platform representative told us, “I remember being in the room with 200 people and they were from all over different bits of [the company]. Someone said, ‘Everyone who works with The New York Times, put your hands up.’ There were like 20 people on different teams and none of them had spoken to each other.” A representative from a different platform said, “It wasn’t a centralized news team. Pre-election, it was fragmented.” 

In the last two years, platforms have made efforts to concentrate their news efforts under cohesive overarching strategies. In 2017, Apple hired its first editor-in-chief and Facebook appointed a new head of news products (who has since left the company). In January 2017, Facebook introduced the Facebook Journalism Project, a program said to be built around three broad pillars: collaborative development of news products, training and tools for journalists, and training and tools for an informed community. In 2018, Google announced the Google News Initiative (GNI), an umbrella program under which all of its news-related efforts would live. Google’s claim that it would commit 300 million dollars to journalism via GNI was matched by Facebook in January 2019. These transitions have had mixed results, with one former platform employee lamenting “a top-down entity that wasn’t there.” She said of the platform’s news efforts, “There was broad commitment absolutely. Do I think that there was consistent commitment from everybody on a specific point of view? Absolutely not.” 

As teams that focus on journalism products and initiatives have grown, platform employees with newsroom experience have helped their companies develop better approaches to publisher relations. As one such employee said, “If you’ve always worked in news, it’s hard to understand all of the knowledge that you’ve built up that people who don’t work in news don’t have. I think that maybe being able to give that context earlier to senior people would have helped us a lot.” 

Many of the platform representatives we interviewed described productive conversations with members of senior management eager to learn more about the inner workings of journalism organizations, a potentially positive sign for publishers. Others however described the missions of news teams as being at odds with those of their companies at large. As one interviewee said, “There’s a small group of people that have all come out of journalism that see themselves as almost like Robin Hood.” In general, top-level interest in journalism seemed to be tied to how much it related to each platform’s mission and bottom line. 

The tricky task of categorizing news 

Platforms on which publisher content coexists with brand- and user-generated content have long struggled with defining who counts as a publisher and what counts as news. Describing her past experience on a news product team, one former platform employee said, “No one knows what news is. Is it defined by something that a top 50 publisher has marked [as such]? Is it anything from The New York Times? They have a recipe section that’s obviously not news. Your mom writes some crazy thing about Donald Trump, that’s not news. But if a public figure on [the platform] then writes a post about Donald Trump or they write policy posts, is that news? No one really knew, and that definition shifted wildly over time.”

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google continue to struggle with defining news—not to mention the even more elusive “high-quality” news, for those platforms that use this barometer when curating. When Facebook introduced its News tab in October 2019 the company was immediately criticized for including Breitbart in a section that Mark Zuckerberg had said would be a destination for “high-quality” and “trustworthy” news.

The rise of influencers—social media users with large and devoted followings who often act like one-person publishers—on platforms like YouTube and Instagram only makes such distinctions more difficult. Multiple interviewees were taken aback by the question of whether their platform treats publisher content differently from influencer content. After noting the importance of “authoritative information” for people seeking news, one platform executive told us that ultimately “anybody can be a creator and anyone can be a publisher.”

As the information landscape becomes more complex, optimism around automated approaches to content moderation and curation is waning. Largely inspired by Apple, platforms now see human editors as vital members of their editorial teams rather than temporary fixes to be eventually replaced with scalable alternatives.

One platform representative whose work focuses on curating both news and user-generated content told us, “What we’re trying to do is . . . use algorithms to . . .  get as far as possible in terms of the identification of useful information and then have the [human] curators layer that makes the final decision.” Another interviewee said, “I think it’s the combination of human editorial and algorithmic curation working really closely together and aligned behind the same principles that actually produces the best quality.” 

The realization that AI will not be a panacea for platform woes has also led to a resignation that platforms will never get everything 100 percent right. As one representative told us, “If I came on and told you we are going to be able to identify all truth and all lies and accurately reflect the entire populations belief about a topic . . . I would definitely be lying to you. This is not scientific. It has to be about some level of judgment and some level of reflection of what we’re seeing on the platform.”

Facebook still takes the most heat 

Most platforms agreed that Facebook has the most strained relationship with publishers due to its many broken promises, inconsistent messaging around journalism, and “move fast and break things” approach to product development. As one platform representative said, “I would way rather be working here than Facebook partly because Facebook made such a deliberate move into the news industry and to the flow of information and then kind of screwed it up as royally as they did.” 

In 2017, Facebook’s mission changed from “make the world more open and connected” to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” This led to an influx of company resources to Facebook Groups and to the News Feed algorithm favoring content from people rather than publishers. 

One reason many cited for Facebook’s mixed record with journalism is the fact that publisher success is not tied to its bottom line or even its mission. As one interviewee said, “Google has done I think a very clear job of aligning their business incentives with this stuff. They know that the more people search for news the more that it supports their bottom line. If you look at Facebook, what actually drives the core business is the strength of its social grasp. That really relies on people sharing information about themselves to their family and their personal network. So news is a really important piece but it is not something that actually drives core usage or retention . . . News is something that feels like an active responsibility but it’s not necessarily tied to a strict business line.” 

One former platform executive told us she thought the Facebook relationship will “get worse for larger-scale publishers who are very vocal and drive the narrative” and “better between Facebook and local publishers,” given that the platform has “pledged and committed to” funding initiatives particularly aimed at offering what we would have once referred to as “have-not” publishers money to flourish outside of the information ecosystem that Facebook itself controls. Though referring to Facebook’s 300 million-dollar journalism pledge, she jokingly added, “I think you need more like 30 billion dollars.”

What’s next?

Platform representatives were cautiously hopeful about the future of the platform-publisher relationship, while staying away from any specific predictions. One former executive summed up the tone of many of our interviews: “I am broadly optimistic but it might be more painful in the interim before we actually get to some alternatives that actually work.”

A few of our more candid interviewees on the platform side shared the sentiment expressed by publishers that the last year felt like the end of an era. One described the future as “highly dependent on whether platforms figure out how to reconcile their needs from publishers with how they incentivize publishers. I think they’re still a bit confused about that and still working that through.” 

She added, “I never want to walk into a journalism conference again and see people going, ‘Oh, Facebook Live, we’re all going to pivot to Facebook Live and make lots of money off of it, and it’s all going to be brilliant, and this is the best thing ever, let’s talk about Facebook Live. Or whatever the new thing will be. I think the publishing industry has hopefully got to a point where they are comfortable with putting their needs first rather than having a sense of FOMO.”

For the moment, the “new thing” appears to be platforms’ willingness to directly pay for the journalism they host in their ecosystems. The longevity and success (or failure) of new products like the Facebook News tab will be barometers to watch as the next “era” unfolds. 

Conclusion

By Emily Bell

As the first decade of the social, mobile web draws to a close, it is clear that the influence of large-scale technology platforms has disrupted but not reformed the field of journalism. Publisher and platform employees interviewed for this report were in overwhelming agreement that it is the end of an era of hopeful exploration and to the fallacy that scale alone will help create sustainable models for journalism.

This is another way of saying that both parties in this experiment recognize that growth in digital advertising is not realistic, and that if the relationship is to be a productive one it will have to deliver more direct subsidy or a clear path to monetize audiences. 

The first five years of developing integrated relationships between news organizations and platform companies has been largely unsuccessful. Newsrooms have not found sustainability, and platforms, particularly Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, have become synonymous with misinformation and abuse rather than high-quality news and entertainment. 

Even in the past year, we witnessed a litany of failures: closures and cutbacks in newsrooms that pivoted to video on the back of false Facebook projections about increasing revenues; a raft of algorithm changes which left news organizations disoriented and platforms scrambling to fix rampant problems with misinformation; and the inescapable fact that while digital advertising revenues boomed for Google and Facebook, they continued a precipitous decline for publishers. Even at the most successful digital publishers such as The New York Times, in late 2019 the percentage of digital advertising as a whole was actually declining, as well as declining in real terms by as much as 14 or 15 percent year on year. 

Many of the concerns outlined by publishers in our very first research published in 2016 were not only borne out by events, but often surpassed the imagined worst-case scenario. Access to user data owned by the platforms has become harder to obtain, the technical debt of servicing platform innovations is often higher than expected, and the financial returns from products have been disappointing. 

From a platform perspective, their suitability to act as gatekeepers to the information commons has been tested to its breaking point. Practices in online content moderation have been exposed as unethical and exploitative, while algorithmic curation has too often been applied in an opaque and chaotic manner. The relationship between platforms and their role in the provision of news services remains ill governed and poorly defined, lacking clear and consistent terms of trade and well-defined ethical standards. 

As publishers put audiences first—and platforms second—those platforms must start to flex to both business and civic concerns over the role they play in an informed society. One of the clearest trends we observed in the past year was the slow acceptance that more human intervention is necessary in shaping the kind of content that circulates across platforms. We heard promises about large increases in moderation teams, although it is hard to know if these promises have yet been met. We also saw the steady growth in platforms developing internal “newsrooms.” Apple and LinkedIn both employ established editorial teams of tens of journalists actively editing and commissioning material for the platforms. 

The implementation of the News tab within Facebook will see the company follow this route, too. The new initiative has already paid certain publishers significant funds for taking part—both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal received multi-year deals of millions of dollars for their participation—even though Facebook already theoretically has access to all the news stories either organization publishes to the web. News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson characterized this new pact as “exactly what the publishers have been asking for,” as he happily chatted with Mark Zuckerberg on stage at the launch of the product in November 2019. But while it might serve a handful of incumbent companies well, it is unlikely to resolve the broader crisis of how high-quality reporting can be sustained at all levels.

Meanwhile, Google and Facebook have also already started to distribute money to journalism and journalism-adjacent organizations as “support” and “grants.” Each organization says it will invest a very modest 300 million dollars (on a global basis) into journalism between 2019 and 2022, with a declared focus on initiatives for local news in the US. Google, in launching local news experiments, is already funding the Compass Project, supporting McClatchy in the creation of three new newsrooms across the country, albeit with “no editorial control.” This new type of direct support carries with it opportunities, but also risk.  

This patronage will define the next phase for platforms and publishers, one where the journalism that appears on social platforms does so as part of a remunerated strategy. This means, then, that those left outside this circle of payment and promotion will have to pay an increasing amount for their own work to be seen. In the very first phase of this research, news organizations told us they were worried that the platforms were “picking winners” among journalism organizations. This is still happening. 

One of the most significant changes over the past 18 months has been both the decline of organizations fashioned to build businesses inside social platforms and the relative stability of legacy or non-digital organizations that cultivated owned and operated sites. This shift is showing up in the staffing and design of newsrooms. Revenue-creating content is not the same as viral content; the listicle is dead for news. It will be worthwhile to track the speed with which social media teams are replaced with “audience growth managers” and other roles which fall under audience and engagement. Here the task is not to distribute all content as widely as possible, but to understand how distribution might bring readers into the news organization’s own properties or convert them into paying subscribers.

The new era of technology companies reshaping journalism will be defined by how each company develops news practices. Their products and relationships with organizations that produce or support journalism will continue to mold journalism in a way that suits the agenda of platform companies. The effect of much more direct involvement in news support takes the platform companies into new territory, and presents publishers with a clear ethical dilemma around how to represent that relationship and safeguard their journalism from corporate influence. 

Arguably companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and even Amazon are already in charge of the next phase of newsroom development as they lead on the development of artificial intelligence applications. Given the potential conflicts of interest, we see it as important that this new phase of interaction between the two fields is carefully scrutinized.

We are moving into an era where platforms will have to change internal culture and external policies to account for their publishing role, and during which they will face stricter penalties and regulation around their activities. As the advertising revenues ebb away and newsrooms are cut to the bone, the diminishment of journalism as a business force is creating a stark imbalance in resources and power between those that are left as reporting organizations and those that are the publishing and distribution platforms of the future. This imbalance makes it even more pressing that policy changes reflect on how to build and sustain robust reporting institutions that are both technically and ideologically independent of such large and diverse companies. 

For policy makers ahead of the 2020 US election, there remains the challenging question of whether or how to draw regulation which positively supports reporting organizations while curtailing the concentrated power of technology platforms. Democratic candidates including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have both identified the power of platforms as an urgent concern, but have as yet underdeveloped plans for how this will support journalism. Nevertheless, it could be that the 2020 election will be as significant for platforms as was the one in 2016 in terms of altering their trajectory and relationship with the information commons.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.

Nushin Rashidian, George Tsiveriotis, and Pete Brown — with Emily Bell and Abigail Hartstone —are the authors of this report. Nushin Rashidian is the research lead on the Center’s Platforms and Publishers project. George Tsiveriotis is a senior research fellow at the Tow Center. Pete Brown is the Center’s research director. Emily Bell is Tow’s founding director, and a leading thinker, commentator, and strategist on digital journalism. Abigail Hartstone served as lead editor on this report.

https://ift.tt/34lF6RT via Columbia Journalism Review November 25, 2019 at 02:34PM