For the Record

Spotify Counsel Allegedly Addresses Jones' Rogan Appearance:

In an internal memo leaked to Jane Lytvynenko of BuzzFeed News, Spotify Chief Legal Officer Horacio Gutierrez said the company "[will not] ban specific individuals from being guests on other people’s shows" as long as "the episode/show complies with our content policies," followin on Alex Jones' October 27 appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. The interview, which included Rogan's attestation that the Infowars proprietor "[has] gotten so many things right," marked his first appearance on the podcast since Rogan joined Spotify earlier this year. Jones was deplatformed in his own right by Spotify in 2018 for violating the company's hate speech policies.

City Pages Shuts Down:

Longtime Twin Cities alt-weelky City Pages "will stop publishing and close immediately," Evan Ramstad of the Star Tribune reported Wednesday. Parent company Star Tribune Media, which also owns the daily newspaper, said "it could no longer sustain City Pages after the coronavirus outbreak forced closings and downsizings of the events, nightclubs, bars and restaurants that were its chief advertisers and financial base." Thirty jobs will be eliminated due to the closing. 

Arrest Made in Rohde Case:

Alleged former Taliban commander Haji Najibullah has been arrested and charged with six counts (including "kidnapping, hostage taking, conspiracy and using a machine gun in furtherance of violent crimes") for kidnapping Pulitzer winner David Rohde in 2008, Benjamin Weiser of The New York Times reported Thursday. Rohde, an executive editor for The New Yorker who received the 1996 International Reporting Prize and contributed to the 2009 International Reporting Prize, has declined to comment on Najibullah's arrest. "Najibullah's alleged reprehensible actions over a decade ago earned him a flight to the U.S. yesterday." said William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of the FBI's New York office.

Older Registered Voters and Fake News:

According to researchers at the interdisciplinary 50-State COVID-19 Project, older registered voters "[share] more news overall, and also more stories from fake news sites," Laura Hazard Owen of NiemanLab reported Monday. The researchers found that "Republicans over the age of 65 were the most likely to share stories about COVID-19 from fake and misleading sites" (with 5.3% of shared URLs between January 1 and September 30 stemming from fake domains), although previous research from the consortium indicates that "younger people, regardless of political orientation, are more likely to believe one of 11 pieces of Covid-19 misinformation when compared to older people." 

Forbes Launches Paywall:

Forbes will impose a paywall limiting non-subscribers to four free articles per month, Kerry Flynn of CNN reported Tuesday. Introduced as part of a forthcoming "digital subscription effort" in an internal memo by COO Randall Lane, the paywall will not encompass select content, including the magazine's "lists, public service journalism and Brand Voice articles." Additionally, the subscription plan (which ranges from $6.99 per month to $139.99 for two years) will not include the print iteration of the magazine.

Salt Lake Tribune Moves to Weekly Print Edition:

The Salt Lake Tribune "will stop printing and delivering a daily edition at year's end and switch to a weekly printed newspaper delivered by mail" amid the end of a longstanding joint operating agreement with the Deseret News, according to reporter Tony Semerad. A long-germinating redesign of the newspaper's website also will debut in the next few days. Under the plan, the print edition will house The Tribune's "best enterprise work and in-depth coverage of politics, religion, business, sports, arts and culture" alongside select articles by The New York Times and the Associated Press. "While we mourn the loss of our daily print edition, we eagerly embrace the opportunity of bringing an exciting new weekly product to our readers' homes," said interim Editor David Noyce.

#NoPayForClicks Puts Spotlight on Metrics:

The Sacramento Bee's union's #NoPayForClicks campaign (stemming from reports that the newspaper wants to tie "no more than 30%" of performance review scores to "numerical performance metrics," including page views and time on site) has drawn attention to audience engagement best practices, according to Kristen Hare of Poynter. "We have to be interesting to earn the first click. We have to be useful to get the second one. So, yes, we should focus on 'interestingness' metrics like pageviews and likes, but the money is in the metrics like subscriptions, conversions and even things like sending emails to reporters or providing news tips or story ideas," said Betsy O'Donovan, who co-wrote a study of audience engagement for the American Press Institute last year. "Those things, which are harder to measure well, tell us whether and how people use or value our work."

Twitter to 'Pre-Bunk' Misinformation:

Twitter will place messages at the top of account feeds to "pre-emptively debunk false information about voting by mail and election results, an escalation of the tech company’s battle against misinformation," reported David Ingram of NBC News. "Election experts confirm that voting by mail is safe and secure, even with an increase in mail-in ballots," one of the messages reads. "Even so, you might encounter unconfirmed claims that voting by mail leads to election fraud ahead of the 2020 US elections." Both prompts "will be shown to all users in the U.S.," the company said.

BuzzFeed Projected to Break Even:

BuzzFeed "is on target to break even this year for the first time since 2014" due to "$30 million in cost cuts" intended "to stabilize the company’s finances through the pandemic," Lukas I. Alpert of The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. "In the second quarter we were staring at the abyss, but while there is still a lot of uncertainty, we saw a strong rebound in the third quarter and now things are looking pretty good," said Jonah Peretti, the company's chief executive. "It was a tough, scary year."

Tech CEOs Prepare More Testimony:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey "will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 17" to address concerns stemming from the platforms' alleged "suppression and censorship" of a New York Post article about a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden, according to Jay Peters of The Verge. Alongside Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Zuckerberg and Dorsey also will testify before the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday in a hearing about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.