Layoffs at Tronc’s New York Daily News nearly decimated the newspaper’s staff, leaving some to claim the nation’s biggest city a local news desert. How can it be that local news is dying in a city of more than 10 million people?
Elizabeth Grieco, Nami Sumida & Sophia Fedeli, Pew Research Center: “About a third of large U.S. newspapers have suffered layoffs since 2017”

David Folkenflik, NPR: “Tronc slashes ‘New York Daily News’ staff by half”
Jenna Amatulli, Huffington Post: “Tronc fires New York Daily News social media team, but they tweet the last laugh”
Neetu Chandak, The Daily Caller: “Cuomo willing to offer state help to turn around NY Daily News layoffs”
Harry Siegel, New York Daily News: “Why we need local journalism: Look around at how vulnerable we are right now”
Ken Doctor, Nieman Lab: “News tariffs are a Black Swan event that could speed up the death of U.S. newspapers”
Kyle Pope, Columbia Journalism Review: “Who suffers when local news disappears”
Paul Fahri, Washington Post: “The city that never sleeps finds that it’s running out of reporters to report”
Journalists adopt startup culture
Note: Video contains explicit language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAc41N2QRU
Corey Hutchins, Colorado Independent: “The Denver Post’s politics desk implodes. Three of its team will write for the Sun.”
Corey Hutchins, Columbia Journalism Review: “The Colorado Sun puts civil-backed startup against The Denver Post”
Christine Schmidt, Nieman Lab: “Chance the Rapper, Chance the Philanthropist, and now Chance the Publisher”
Robert Feder: “Chance the Rapper to relaunch Chicagoist”
Robert Channick, Chicago Tribune: “Chance the Rapper announces purchase of Chicagoist website in newly released song”
Using news coverage in political ads
Joey Parker, KMIZ: “Truth Alert on new Proposition A commercial”
Dan Bischof, News Media and the Law: “Politicians sometimes cross the line in using news copy to advance their campaigns” (2001)
What stays on Facebook?
Farhad Manjoo, New York Times: “What stays on Facebook and what goes? The social network cannot answer”
Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica: “Why is InfoWars allowed on Facebook? Zuckerberg: because it doesn’t cause ‘harm’”
Josh Constine, TechCrunch: “Facebook would make a martyr by banning InfoWars”
Oliver Darcy, CNN: “Facebook’s rhetoric on misinformation doesn’t match its actions”
Alex Hern, The Guardian: “Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks on Holocaust denial ‘irresponsible’”
Ezra Klein, Vox: “The controversy over Mark Zuckerberg’s comments on Holocaust denial, explained”
Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post: “Mark Zuckerberg is a horror show. But there’s a glimmer of truth hidden in his latest blunder.”
Alex Shephard, The New Republic: “Can Facebook bear the weight of conservative media?”
Follow up: WhatsApp limits Quick Forward
Kurt Wagner, Recode: “Whatsapp will dramatically limit forwarding across the globe the stop the spread of fake news, following violence in India and Myanmar”
Whatsapp blog: “More changes to forwarding”
Daniel Funke, Poynter: “Whatsapp is limiting message forwarding to cut down on fake news”

Twitter: Not a place for ‘nuanced discussion’
Maggie Haberman, New York Times: “Maggie Haberman: Why I needed to pull back from Twitter”
Adam Tinworth, One Man & His Blog: “Twitter’s ‘them and us’ problem”
Andrew Buncombe, The Independent: “Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admits platform not a place for ‘nuanced discussion’ as top ‘New York Times’ reporter quits after abuse”
Luke O’Brien, Huffington Post: “How Pizzagate pusher Mike Cernovich keeps getting people fired”
On the tech beat
James Ball: “We need a new model for tech journalism”
Danny Crichton, TechCrunch: “The death and life of the tech press”