All Digitocracy

Media & Diversity

The Huffington Post launches second crowdfund campaign to keep Ferguson reporter

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But will readers pay for a second year of Ferguson coverage?

Mariah Stewart

Mariah Stewart, Huffinton Post’s reporter in Ferguson, Missouri.

The Huffington Post, owned by media giant AOL and led by mulit-millionaire Arianna Huffington, says it needs another $40,000 to retain reporter Mariah Stewart to cover Ferguson, Missouri, a city that set off a year of tension after unarmed black teen, Michael Brown, was killed there a year ago.

“For the past year, thanks to readers across the country, we were able to stay in Ferguson, Missouri, even as the cable vans packed up and reporters headed off to the next national event,” readers an email sent to supporters Tuesday evening. “With readers’ help, The Huffington Post plans to stay for another year.”

Two months ago, AllDigitocracy asked Huffington Post editors whether they planned to continue reporting in Ferguson, and if they planned to keep Stewart in the job. At the time a spokeswoman declined to respond to our question, and Stewart said she did not know.

Huffington Post first retained Stewart in August 2014, following Brown’s death and weeks of violence. When Huffington Post launched its first crowdfund campaign to pay for its Ferguson coverage a year ago, editors did so, they said, because the position had not been included in the company budget. There was no reason given for why the position was not fully budgeted in-house for the upcoming year’s worth of coverage.

Stewart has spent much of the past year chronicling the structural inequities affecting the city and its surrounding communities. She has also spent her time producing coverage for The St. Louis American, a newspaper that targets the area’s African American readers.

The new crowdfund campaign will allow Huffington Post to continue this unique partnership with The St. Louis American, Tuesday’s email states.

So far $11,180 has been raised from contributors in the current crowdfund campaign. Supporters have 10 more days to donate.

 

 

Yahoo’s Perfect Opportunity to Cash-In On More Diverse Audiences

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Marissa Mayer

Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

With the sale of half its stake in Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, Yahoo stands to reap up to $8 billion that the internet giant can add to the $3.5 billion in cash it already has on hand. Media watchers are salivating over what Yahoo plans to do with all of that money.

Jeremy Quittner at Inc. Magazine speculates that Yahoo could buy back shares to prop up its own stock price, issue dividends to shareholders, or the tech media company could soon be on another buying spree. In its push to become profitable, Yahoo has made several high-profile content buys including paying $1.1 billion for the social media platform, Tumblr, a year ago and hiring veteran newswoman Katie Couric in November. Yahoo also bought data visualization firm, Vizify, for an undisclosed sum.

Inc.’s Quittner reports Yahoo may be interested in buying popular news startups such as Buzzfeed, Nowthis News and Recode, or social media networks Pinterest or Yelp. That’s all well and good, but Yahoo’s expected windfall also represents an opportunity for the aging internet company to not only diversify its content offerings, but deepen its reach into more diverse markets.  While NBC Universal and AOL Huffington Post acquired portals that reach deeply into Hispanic and African American markets, Yahoo has no such product.

According to the Inc. report, Michael Yang of SanFrancisco-based Comcast Ventures and former Yahoo employee said: “Yahoo is looking at how to increase reach or audience, and monetization or yield on monetization.” What better way than by acquiring startups that narrow-cast to diverse and growing user bases. Where AOL HuffPost and NBC Universal own Black/Latino Voices and theGriot.com respectively, Yahoo could look to buying scrappy start-ups that cater to women of color such as Atlanta-based Clutchmagonline.com or Washington, DC-based WiseLatinaClub.com.

Similarly, since CEO Marissa Mayer explained her company’s new video strategy of producing fewer original series, perhaps Yahoo will consider partnering with smaller cable television networks, such as Magic Johnson’s Aspire TV. Instead of creating programming, Yahoo would license the rights to shows Aspire produces, such as Exhale, the African American version of “The View.” If that’s not doable, then maybe Yahoo can distribute programming by independent filmmakers like Stacey Muhammad‘s powerful web series, “For Colored Boys.”

Communities of color commanded enormous buying power in 2013, and they will continue to outpace the growth of the white market as minority populations surge, according to a report from the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the Terry College of Business at The University of Georgia.

The report shows that Hispanic consumers in the U.S. commanded a $1.2 trillion market in 2013, thanks to high birth rates, immigration and an increase in Hispanic entrepreneurship. In addition, African American consumers added $1 trillion to the 2013 market, Native Americans contributed $96 billion, and Asian consumers supplied $713 billion.

“As minority groups’ buying power continues to outpace the growth of the white market, these groups should see more tailored treatment from advertisers, producers and media outlets,” said Jeff Humphreys, author of the report and director of the Selig Center.

If Yahaoo’s Mayer plans to go shopping again, let’s hope she buys companies that will lift the companies advertising revenue and extend it’s reach. It’s the perfect time to try on a few products and services that are of interest to more diverse audiences, especially when you have money burning a hole in your pocket.

Media Wars: Who Won This Round?

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Howard Kurtz described the drama at TechCrunch as ‘a clash of cultures‘ on Sunday’s ‘Reliable Sources.’

The truth is these two cultures — between what is now commonly labeled as ‘new media’ and ‘old media’ — have been clashing for a while now.

A media war has been quietly brewing for much of the past decade. The battle lines are largely being drawn by those who know a lot about technology and business, but virtually nothing about producing and gathering news. Those constitutionally charged with keeping the American public informed—journalists—are scrambling to figure out ways to change its revenue-generating model so that it can better compete in a changing media landscape.

That all came to a boiling point earlier this month when Michael Arrington, the founder of tech news site, TechCrunch, announced he would launch a venture capital fund with AOL, which purchased TechCrunch a year ago. It was initially reported that Arrington would remain editor-in-chief of TechCrunch at the same time he would be investing in tech companies that were either covered by his website or competed against his investments. Regardless, such a deal flew in the face of traditional journalistic ethics and legacy publications, like The New York Times, cried foul.

In the end, Arrington wound up reluctantly parting company with AOL — and leaving the company he founded — at his boss’ insistence.

My question: Who won this battle? Or did we all lose?

Was it Arrington, who represents the new face of those who traffic in information, as Jeff Jarvis, director of the interactive journalism program at the City University’s Graduate School of Journalism of New York, puts it. While Arrington was forced out by Arianna Huffington, who runs AOL/HuffingtonPost, he walks away with $10 million from AOL to help start his new venture, CrunchFund and can start another blog.

Was it so-called legacy publications that have journalistic standards it adheres to that apparently prevailed with Arrington’s departure?

Or did both sides lose? The public already has a perception that objective journalism is a myth. Arrington’s defense is that he has always been upfront about his potential conflicts of interest and that is what separates him from so-called journalists who pretend otherwise.

I call it a draw considering that the same weekend there seemed to finally be an end to the AOL TechCrunch drama, hackers took over NBC’s Twitter account, undermining traditional media’s efforts to distribute reliable news using new media tools. And the war wages on….

For those who missed it, here are parts 1 and 2 of the ‘Reliable Sources’ War at TechCrunch report:

Part 1:
://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=tech/2011/09/18/rs-tech-columnist-quits-aol.cnn
Part 2:
://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=tech/2011/09/18/rs-swisher-techcrunch.cnn