“Stung by changes to Facebook’s news feed, publishers are reportedly ‘falling in love with Apple News’ — though the affection may not always be mutual,” Pete Brown writes for Columbia Journalism Review. “Unlike its rivals, Apple News employs human editors who curate news in addition to its algorithmic feed. When Apple first advertised for these positions, the company specified that the editors must “’be able to recognize original, compelling stories unlikely to be identified by algorithms.'”
“But humans, like algorithms, are prone to habit, and Apple News may have fallen into a pattern that Facebook and others have been trying to avoid: editorial bias,” Brown writes. “A new Tow Center analysis of almost 7,000 recommendations made in newsletters and tweets by the US and UK arms of Apple News shows a strong tendency by editors to favor a small group of big players and less inclination to promote regionally focused news outlets — a class of publisher that New York Times Editor Dean Baquet put at the center of ‘the greatest crisis in journalism’ in a speech at the Freedom of the Press Awards.”
“It is the Times itself that has dominated newsletter recommendations from Apple News’s US editors, while the Daily Telegraph is held up as the gold standard by their UK counterparts,” Brown writes. “On average, these outlets have received one of the five places in their country’s newsletters every other week. Across the 78 US newsletters reviewed by Tow, just 14 of the 390 articles recommended — under 4 percent — came from newsrooms that fit this study’s broad definition of a regionally focused publisher.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The best way to consume “news” is to cast a wide net.
As always, readers of “news” need to consider the sources and interpret what they are are being told accordingly. The more disparate sources you can find, the better. And we don’t mean different newspaper, network, website brands that are all owned by the same conglomerate. Determining the actual ownership of your “news” sources is an investment that requires a bit of time, but it is very enlightening. — MacDailyNews Take, June 17, 2015
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SEE ALSO:
New York magazine editor Lauren Kern named first Editor-in-Chief of Apple News – May 25, 2017
Who’s going to ‘curate’ Apple News? – August 13, 2015
The Apple News app is doomed – July 30, 2015
The future’s not looking too bright for Apple News – July 30, 2015
Apple hiring team of journalists for News app; a ‘jaw-dropping’ development says publisher – June 15, 2015
Apple News is fast, responsive, enjoyable, and it might become your only news app – July 15, 2015
Apple News shows that Apple wants to bolster and profit from ads, not eliminate them – July 10, 2015
Apple News to have human curation – and that raises issues – June 15, 2015