The New York Times’ 2020 Report

A year ago, The New York Times created the 2020 group, tasked (among other things) with getting the company to $800 million in digital revenue by the year 2020. Now, that group has released a report detailing all the changes the Times needs to make:

We have not yet created a news report that takes full advantage of all the storytelling tools at our disposal and, in the process, does the best possible job of speaking to our potential audience. More of our journalism needs to match what a large and growing number of curious and sophisticated readers have told us they value most — distinctive journalism, in a comfortable form, that expands their understanding of the world and helps them navigate it. Our work too often instead reflects conventions built up over many decades, when we spoke to our readers once a day, when we cultivated an aura of detachment from them and when by far our most powerful tool was the written word. To keep our current readers and attract new ones we must more often apply Times values to the new forms of journalism now available to us.

For The Times to become an even more attractive destination to readers — and to maintain and strengthen its position in the years ahead — three broad areas of change are necessary. Our report must change. Our staff must change. And the way we work must change.

Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

Huge move by Obama on his way out the door:

President Obama on Tuesday largely commuted the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of an enormous 2010 leak that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted the administration, and made WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures, famous.

Source: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence – The New York Times

How a $100,000 Music Video Shoot Went Horribly Wrong

The making of the latest Young Thug music video, “Wyclef Jean,” didn’t go quite as planned. Co-director Ryan Staake was given some pretty specific instructions by Young Thug, but when the artist didn’t show up for the shoot, Staake had to improvise. The result is a hilarious behind-the-scenes look into video-making that includes a mish-mash of different ideas that have no business being edited together.

I can’t say with confidence if any of the shenanigans described in the video are real. But either way, it’s a pretty novel way to roll out a new music video. Watch the final(!) video below:

 

The “Liberal Tears” mug is a scam

Tolulope Edionwe, writing for The Outline: 

The mug links were everywhere. People tweeted pictures of the mug, screencaps of their receipts, and links to the page to buy the mug. Its omnipresence started to feel weird. It seemed like every single MAGA cap owner on Twitter was buying these cups. This is a real craze, I thought. How many of these things were being sold? So I decided to find out, and that’s when things got interesting.

Short version: the company that purports to sell the mug has horrible reviews with a bad track record for actually delivering products, and has apparently used very sketchy, spammy methods to get word of the mug out on the internet.

As tech evolves, so do the scams. Reading the above article, I was reminded of a particularly good Reply All episode in which exploring a “lost and found” website led to something much more sinister. Listen to it below:

Women only said 27% of the words in the top 10 films of 2016

Amber Thomas, writing for freecodecamp, about seeing Rogue One:

I went into the movie theater expecting to see men and women fighting side by side. I left feeling certain that I could count every female character from the movie on one hand. While Jyn was the main character, I was profoundly aware that she was often the only woman in any scene.

It felt strangely familiar to have a lead female character be so outnumbered. Then I realized that Jyn and Princess Leia suffered the same inequality 39 years apart. I was overwhelmed with a need to know exactly how female representation in Star Wars movies has changed. But it seemed unfair to compare movies made today with movies made decades ago. So instead, I decided to look for female equality across the Top 10 Worldwide Highest Grossing Films of 2016.

The whole blog post is worth reading, as her methodology is fascinating (not to mention the findings).