Is science a match for sensationalism?

Tactics and strategies for engaging the public on climate change, vaccines Scientists have been battling for the hearts and minds of the public for centuries, and not always winning. To avoid being burned at the stake by the Catholic Church for heresy, Galileo had to deny that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than […]

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Italy’s Il Post hits 50,000 subscribers

Digital native differentiates itself with scrupulous precision, transparency Luca Sofri is a personality in Italian media. He has been a print journalist with several major publications and a television and radio commentator. But that was not enough to make his digital news startup financially sustainable. He experimented a lot in the past 12 years, glimpsed […]

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Juan Andrés Muñoz

Recalling 25 years of news in Spanish

CNN en Español, and one of its pioneers, celebrate an anniversary What follows is my translation of Ismael Nafría’s interview of Juan Andrés Muñoz, digital director of CNN en Español, on its 25th anniversary. The original interview, in Spanish, appeared on Nafría’s newsletter, Tendenci@s, on April 11, 2022. I have edited the original for length […]

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Reasons for optimism #7: The movement for trustworthy information

Fact checkers globally offer alternatives to the flood of lies and misinformation Why write about “reasons for optimism” when so much is going wrong in our politics, economy, and environment? Optimism gives us confidence that we can make things better. As I like to say, it’s another day of opportunity. Much of what I read […]

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Reasons for optimism #6: Jared Diamond and other cautious optimists

Leaders in academia, business, journalism are collaborating on urgent global crises Why write about “reasons for optimism” when so much is going wrong in our politics, economy, and environment? Optimism gives us confidence that we can make things better. As I like to say, today is another day of opportunity. Jared Diamond, whose bestsellers have […]

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Fact-checkers need a marketing mentality

Let your users tell you what they value and are willing to pay for The International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute held its Global Fact 8 conference this past week. I was on a panel that discussed the question, “Fact-checking as a product: Why can’t we sell it?”. The moderator was Gilberto Scofield Jr., […]

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Economists ask, Does advertising actually work?

Groundbreaking research questions the value of this $500 billion global industry My apologies to the Freakonomics Radio podcast for borrowing their headline. But it summarizes perfectly a question on the minds of business people for more than a century. The question is especially relevant for the digital advertising business, which promised to be more measurable, […]

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