By Matt Carroll <@MattCData>

Feb. 26, 2017: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.

1. Facebook vs journalism, redux: The media’s obsession with Facebook hit another high point last week, with partisans weighing in on both sides of the divide. Emily Bell of Tow led those who want Facebook (and a handful of others) to fund journalism, with an endowment fund, while David Winer, in a blistering reply, neatly summed up the opposition with one word: Pathetic.

A few others:

• Mathew Ingram of Fortune asks why media companies deserve help for problems of their own making, while a skeptical Charlie Beckett on Medium argues it’s simply not going to happen.
• While Steven Waldman in the NYT sides with Emily, saying Facebook owes journalism big time and needs to open its fat wallet.

2. How to spark innovation in newsrooms?: All newsrooms want innovation (or at least pretend they do). Here’s two different approaches: Sam Ford, formerly of Univision, wants the entire newsroom to be “the lab,” while Aleszu Bajak of Northeastern U writes about how newsrooms are depending on outside partners to help with immersive projects.

3. Meet the “enemies of the people”: A wonderful, inspirational column about the people who slave in newsrooms to create great real journalism — and adopt dogs, get ill, and fret over misspellings in print. In other words, just people. Great stuff by Mike Wilson of the DallasNews.

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Matt Carroll is a journalism professor at Northeastern University.

By Matt Carroll <@MattCData>

Feb. 19, 2017: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.

2. A digital news reader’s bill of rights: Reporters and editors have been arguing about how to change the world of digital news for decades. But have some pity on the poor reader, who has to put up with brutally slow load times, misleading hedlines, and stories that can’t figure out what they are about. So Andrew Dunn, on Medium, came up with a interesting, first draft for a reader’s bill or right. It’s worth reading.

3. Anger, not reasonableness, drives the spread of news on social: Jason Tanz of WIREDwrites an insightful (and short) analysis of how we’ve gone from a media that emphasized dry facts and middle-of-the-road reporting to a media that emphasizes extremes and emotion.

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Matt Carroll is a journalism professor at Northeastern University.

By Matt Carroll <@MattCData>

Feb. 12, 2017: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.

1. What happens when a mid-sized city loses its paper: Spoiler alert: It’s not pretty. Take a case-study of Guelph, a Canadian city of 100,000, which lost its paper. Some other news sites have tried to fill the hole, but enterprise reporting clearly took a hit, say observers. A grim example of the growing news deserts. By Ricardo Bilton for Nieman Lab.

2. Wikipedia bans Daily Mail — deserved rebuke or slippery slope?: The volunteer editors of Wikipedia banned the Daily Mail, the Brit rag that peddles “dubious, salacious and sensational” stories — and, occasionally, gets something right. Will Oremus of Slate argues this is a good thing because of the paper’s terrible reputation, even as he notes other bans of publications, notably one by a sub-Reddit that was much more controversial.

3. Holding on tight to print: Who doesn’t think that print is slowly dying?Well, media critic Jack Shafer of Politico keeps arguing that print is showing surprising strength — maybe it’s future is not so dark, after all. Which is a totally insane way to think, says Aron Pilhofer, a newly-minted journo prof at Temple, and formerly of The Guardian and the NYT. Retreating back to print isn’t just a bad idea — it’s suicide, he writes. An interesting read.

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Matt Carroll is a journalism professor at Northeastern University.

By Matt Carroll <@MattCData>

Feb. 4, 2017: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.

1. Stuck at the center of a fake news conspiracy theory: Doris Truongof the Washington Post took pictures of the notes left by Rex Tillerson at his DC confirmation hearing. Wow, what a horrible person. Oh wait. She didn’t. Too late: Thousands of outraged people slammed her — for something she didn’t do, at an event she didn’t even attend. What it’s like inside the fake news whirlwind.

2. Two interesting pieces from The Backchannel Team: How thousands of college kids are powering a clickbait empire:Odyssey, a story platform you probably never heard of, is paying college kids to grow this rapidly expanding site. The issue: They’re getting paid next to nothing, while the company reaps the benefits. Good piece by Jane Porter. And Facebook Live is the Right Wing’s new Fox News: A fascinating piece about how a new generation of conservative sites are latching on to the rising tide of Facebook Live to reach the growing faithful, much like an older generation used talk radio. By Alexis Sobel Fitts.

3. Designing news for those who are burned out: Feeling a little … overwhelmed by all the news these days? Do your fear another story about Trump will drive you into a quivering, whimpering ball behind the couch? Well, Melody Kramer, writing for Poynter, feels your pain. And she has some interesting thoughts about how media sites can help their readers battle news fatigue.

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Matt Carroll is a journalism professor at Northeastern University.