Contents:
Introduction
Rapid Antigen Tests
Misreading That Pew Poll
Two Supreme Court Cases
Measles Outbreaks & RFK, Jr.
California’s Culturally & Financially Seismic 2023, Part 1 of 2
Other COVID News
Multitudes of reporters for well-established news institutions including the Los Angeles Times were laid off this month, after many were laid off early last year. Corporate employees are laid off all the time, so what makes these pink slips different? Below is an incomplete answer to that query.
Introduction: The first newspaper on this continent, a century before the colonies wrested independence from the British, ran items on an infectious disease alongside gossip about the King of France. Presumably, the personal item on King LouisXIV propelled the Boston-published paper to be passed along and shared among colonists, who also got to update themselves on smallpox transmission rates, empowering them to assess their own health risks.
Excerpts from Publick Occurrences, Sept. 25, 16901:
On a sex scandal involving the King of France: “France is in much trouble (and fear), not only with us but also with his Son, who has revolted against him lately, and has great reason if reports be true, that the Father used to lie with the Sons Wife.”
On a disease epidemic: “The Small-pox which has been raging in Boston, after a manner very Extraordinary is now very much abated …. The number of them that have dyed in Boston by this last Visitation is about three hundred and twenty …. It seized upon all sorts of people that came in the way of it, it infected even Children in the bellies of Mothers that had themselves undergone the Disease many years ago.”
On the first Thanksgiving: The Christianized Indians in some parts of Plymouth, have newly appointed a day of Thanksgiving to God for his Mercy in supplying their extreme and pinching Necessities under their late want of Corn & for His giving them now a prospect of a very Comfortable Harvest.
The British-aligned Massachusetts governor shut down Publick Occurrences after a single issue. But Americans wanted quality information, and in 1704 a colonist John Campbell launched into circulation the Boston News-letter. Campbell though was “careful not to print anything that could be construed as libelous or that otherwise would offend the Governor and the council” and faced no competition until 1719, at which point newspapers slowly began to proliferate.
News organizations in the 21st century are funded by subscriptions and advertisements along with some donations.
If the flow of capital seems stuck2 3 4, it could follow the flow of advertising which is more opaque now that it’s ever been, even though Meta corporation provides a searchable ad library. Digital ads are dynamic; they’re loaded on-the-fly and selected by an electronic ad exchange based on news consumer’s indi-targeting personal data. That’s different from digital and paper and billboard print ads, which are macro-targeted to a publication’s average demographic.
Dynamic digital ads are mysterious to the brands that place advertisements. Businesses who advertise have no way of knowing if their ad buys are funding antivaccine misinformation – misinformation which prolongs disease transmission, in turn suppressing the crowd sizes at restaurants and music clubs, perhaps harming the very businesses who purchased ad space – because digital ad platform corporations don’t currently provide reports before or after listing which stories or sites those ads were placed in.
Parties on both sides of the ad business – publishers of news and content, in addition to buyers of ad space – are calling for change:
Sep 2023 Commentary: Is It Time For A Media-Buying Bill Of Rights? (Media Post) - “...should U.S. planners, buyers and their clients also have certain inalienable rights? That’s a question that was put to a group of industry executives on both the buy and the sell sides of the cross-platform television marketplace this week during one of Simulmedia’s periodic Salon events. Specifically, they discussed the merits of advancing a draft of an ‘Advertisers' Bill of Rights’ proposed by Simulmedia CEO (and MediaPost columnist) Dave Morgan to ensure transparency in streaming and linear TV advertising buys.”
The existing way for brands and businesses to avoid funding vaccine misinformation is to filter out where their ads are placed by keyword, such as “COVID” or “climate”. Playing it safe this way bars your business’ ads from funding any information about the infectious disease, whether that content is informative or misleading.
Content exposing a presidential candidate’s doubletalk on vaccine effectiveness will not reach a news consumer unless that person flips the e-edition print replica of the Los Angeles Times or the San Francisco Chronicle on the right day, or loads the New York Times or Washington Post at the right time of day, or subscribes to a niche COVID newsletter in addition to all the other niche newsletters they subscribe to.
Each time an ad or content post appears on someone’s screen – each ad or content “impression” – is the digital equivalent to print publishers’ circulation metric or page view log entry.
And where print magazines and newspapers & even self-hosted websites are privy to what ways they can pay to increase circulation of their content to be discovered by more people, other content creators suspect throttling of their social channel’s content circulation every time they’re prompted to pay for a circulation “boost”. This is distinct from being prompted to buy ads from an ad salesman making cold calls. Whether online throttling is happening isn’t proven in the news item below. But throttling would be akin to one’s in real life (IRL) cafe or restaurant – which draws business and foot traffic to the neighboring shops and businesses – upon introducing a new product for sale, being suddenly blanketed by an ad saleswoman’s tarp, or blocked by her futuristic invisibility cloak. And said tarp or cloak would only be removed once you paid that saleswoman for mysterious increase in advertisements for your cafe, ad purchases you’d not be able to verify were ever placed effectively even if you paid for the advertising boost.
Jan 16 The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same (The Guardian) - “When her cafe started selling coffee online, Facebook and Instagram seemed to throttle its reach – unless it bought advertising and boosted the social media company’s own profits. It felt like algorithmic blackmail: pay our toll or we won’t promote you.” “Other cafe owners I spoke to made the same complaint.”
The Los Angeles Times, which laid off 120 staff members this week due to under-performing digital subscription member goals, might be interested in where their “subscribe now for just $0.99” ads appeared. But that information isn’t available to most brands at this time.
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