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Important Information
An inspiration! @0liviajulianna raised >$2M for abortion rights groups after she was verbally attacked Rep. Matt Gaetz — secure.actblue.com
It’s okay to be furious. It’s okay to be heartbroken. Whatever you are feeling, you are not alone. We must channel this energy to mobilize and take action. Support Abortion Funds Nationwide.
Register to Vote
If you’re eligible to register online, we’ll help you! Otherwise, we’ll help you fill out your form and send it to you in the mail pre-filled with your information along with a return envelope.
A Constitutional Crisis Is Brewing in Pennsylvania
RT @marceelias This is how Republicans are planning to steal elections in the future. By refusing to count lawful votes and then certifying incomplete and inaccurate results, Republicans hope to create a veneer of legitimacy around an illegitimate outcome.
Jan. 6 defendant Jeremy Brown is running for Florida’s House Unopposed from jail
RT @bowedbookshelf Jeremy Michael Brown, a retired Special Forces soldier charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct on restricted Capitol grounds, is apparently running for FL state House of Rep — unopposed — from jail. He’s Republican.
Breaking Agreement to Use a Condom Is a Sex Crime, Canada High Court Rules — www.nytimes.com
It’s a crime to renege on a promise to wear a condom during sex without a partner’s knowledge or consent, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled.
UK heatwave: Weather forecasters report unprecedented trolling — www.bbc.com
HT @PENamerica Meteorologists from the BBC and elsewhere faced abuse as they reported on the UK’s record heat.
Innovation
Token to play — Digiday — digiday.com
Digiday launched a special project called Token to Play, which includes 10 stories exploring the challenges and opportunities associated with NFTs in media, marketing, and gaming & esports. #NFT
Crypto enthusiasts want publishers to move into Web3 with DAOs, but it’s not yet a successful business model — digiday.com
Decentralized autonomous organizations are considered by some to be the new business model, but how is the DAO model being applied to the media industry — and more importantly, should it?
Beyond the hype, here’s how publishers are actually using AR and VR
digiday.com
With the U.S. augmented, virtual and mixed reality market worth $28 billion in 2021 and projected to reach more than $250 billion by 2028, publishers have a strong incentive to invest more in these technologies.
2022 MTV VMAs introduce ‘Best Metaverse Performance’ category — mashable.com
MTV announces new ‘Best Metaverse Performance’ category for the 2022 VMAs. BTS, BLACKPINK, and Charli XCX are among the nominees. #metaverse
The Tao of TikTok — rishad.substack.com
MT @rishad The five lessons every individual and company can learn from the most impactful media company today and how it has disrupted everything.
Technology
Inside TikTok’s Attempts to ‘Downplay the China Association’ — gizmodo.com
MT @stokel I got hold of internal documents advising TikTok staff how to respond to press or creator questions. Three of the first four lines in the Master Messaging document? “Downplay ByteDance, downplay China, downplay AI.”
TikTok is not the enemy of journalism. It’s just a new way of reaching people
RT @michellemanafy “Broadcasting and journalism industries that pride themselves on reacting quickly and giving the audience what they want should avoid format snobbishness.” @stokel @guardian
Retirement House Is On A Mission To Change People’s Ideas Of Aging Through TikTok — www.buzzfeednews.com
They know you’re laughing at them because they’re older people doing youthful things. They’re just happy you’re laughing.
Commercial image-generating AI raises all sorts of thorny legal issues
DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s image-generating AI, is now a paid product. That brings all sorts of legal issues, including whether owners of images in the training data are entitled to compensation. Artwork that’s “demonstrably derived” from a “protected work” (i.e. a copyrighted character) has generally been found by the courts to be infringing, even if additional elements are added #Copyright
Live And Immersive Is The Next Frontier For Fan-Favorite Franchises For Musicians, Movies, Artists And More — www.forbes.com
HT @FoSTorg An interesting round-up of some creative immersive IRL experiences using media franchises
How community became a key marketing tool for DTC brands
HT @FoSTorg Brands and creators want customers to be active, engaged fans — and to spend more money.
Fans Attending MLB Games This Season to Receive NFT Tickets as Digital Memento
www.sporttechie.com
MLB and Candy Digital will release commemorative NFT tickets for games throughout the upcoming season.
Up in smoke: Artist Damien Hirst to burn 4,851 paintings in NFT project — cointelegraph.com
Damien Hirst will burn thousands of paintings as part of his year-long The Currency NFT project.
After getting slammed by the Kardashians, Instagram CEO puts out a video to explain changes to the app
www.cnbc.com
Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared a video on Twitter Tuesday explaining recent changes to the social media platform.
A new New York Times interactive feature spits out headlines of stories the subscriber has read arranged in a poetic jumble.
thefineprintnyc.com
When subscribers started seeing the option to see their “Story Portrait” on the footers of Times web pages, they found something quite similar to artist Brion Gysin’s newspaper cut-ups from 1959.
They revolutionized podcast advertising. Subscriptions are next. — digitalcontentnext.org
HT @BoSacks Not every reader wants to subscribe, but that doesn’t mean they are unwilling to pay. For the co-founders of Acast, that’s an opportunity.
An increasing number of publishers are using robot journalism to expand coverage and fill gaps. “This is a new revenue stream.” — whatsnewinpublishing.com
Norwegian regional publisher Bergens Tidende is growing subscriptions with automated content. ”We achieve about 1,000 new subscriptions per year making the automated real estate content our most popular reader service,” says Jan Stian Vold, Project Lead. “This is a brand new revenue stream that doesn’t impact on the capacity of the newsroom.” #journalism
Meta officially cuts funding for U.S. news publishers
As the company moves forward with sweeping changes to the Facebook experience, news has become less of a priority. #newsbusiness
Report: in 2020 and 2021, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon bought gold that was illegally mined in Brazilian indigenous lands for their products and servers
Via @filipeesposito
Chartbeat bought by Cuadrilla Capital
RT @michellemanafy Chartbeat, a content insights platform that’s used by web publishers to measure and analyze traffic, was purchased by Cuadrilla Capital, an investment firm focused on enterprise software businesses
‘The entire lab smelled like barbecue sauce’: Applebee’s launches 4 lip glosses that taste like chicken wings — www.fastcompany.com
The collection is called Saucy Gloss, and it tastes exactly like wing sauce. #BrandStunts
Amazon to raise Prime prices in Europe as retailer wrestles with costs
Amazon.com Inc will raise fees for its delivery and streaming service Prime in Europe by up to 43% a year on September 15 as it moves to counter higher costs days before it reports quarterly financial results.
Publishing & Media
How Do Algorithms Help (and Hinder) Book Sales? — catapult.co
As a marketing professional, @cindyfazzi mastered the art of SEO. As a novelist trying to sell books, it was more complicated. Read Cindy’s tips for writers here. Via @CatapultStory
The Pros and Cons for Content Creators Posting Pricing and Rate Sheets — www.thetilt.com
Should you post your rate sheets publicly? It’s a decision that content entrepreneurs should make after weighing the pros and cons. #freelancers
Is the Book Sales Boom Finally Over?
RT @HotSheetPub Publishers Weekly recently compiled NPD BookScan data on sales in major categories, comparing 2021 to 2022. All categories are in decline except adult fiction, where sales are driven in part by BookTok. Sales remain strong vs 2019. @PublishersWkly
OverDrive’s Sora, the reading app for schools, clocks 100 million downloads — 87% ebooks — that the APA won’t have counted
HT @paulkbiba
Books Are Magic Opening 2nd Location — twitter.com
RT @booksaremagicbk Big news! We’ve been dying to spill the beans about our second location, and we couldn’t hold it in anymore: Books Are Magic is coming to Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights this fall!
Obama shares summer reading list featuring Yanagihara and St John Mandel — www.thebookseller.com
Former US president Barack Obama has once again released a 14-strong list of book recommendations to read this summer, continuing a tradition from his time in the White House.
Beyoncé: a literary guide — www.penguin.co.uk
MT @PenguinUKBooks From feminist polemic to poetry and sci-fi, the themes of Beyoncé’s work can be unearthed in books. To mark the release of #RENAISSANCE, we’ve compiled the ultimate Bey reading list. #teamPRH
10 Standout Graphic Novels by AAPI Creators — www.slj.com
What Is Publishing Doing to Combat Censorship? — bookriot.com
How Educators Can Respond to Book Banning
teachmag.com
The tide of intolerance is rising, and once again the reactionary camp wants to throw literature on the pyre, at least metaphorically.
Book-banning is on the rise, as part of the far-right’s assault on democracy— www.latimes.com
RT @PENamerica If book banning isn’t new, why should we be worried by the current surge of book challenges and removals happening across the country? PEN America’s @jzfriedman and CEO @SuzanneNossel share insights in @hiltzikm’s column for @latimes:
The Spread of Book Banning — www.nytimes.com
Explaining the increasing politicization of the book banning debate.
A Classroom Without Books: Florida Teachers Told To Remove Classroom Libraries for Review — bookriot.com
Following the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Florida teachers have been told to pull their classroom libraries until each title has been approved.
Sex-ed textbook rejected by Miami school board after parents invoke ‘Don’t say gay’ bill
In a 5–4 vote, the Board decided not to adopt the textbook, a move that leaves the district with no sexual education curriculum for at least 4–8 months.
The Accessibility Domino Run — epubsecrets.com
EPUB is just one of many branches in a larger accessibility domino run. While this is where you may begin your efforts, it is not the only section that needs to be engineered.
Grow your podcast audience from scratch: 15 practical strategies to get you started — thefix.media
RT @EstherKeziaT Some really good tactics and tips to help grow podcasts here from @TheFixMedia’s @davidtvrdon
The Power of Our New Pop Myths — www.wsj.com
Why do we keep watching Spider-Man when we know the narrative arc? According to this, it’s the value of universality in storytelling. No matter how much the world changes, what we need from our stories is constant.
Publishers aim to serve readers looking inward and upward.
Bangladesh: Budget 2022–23 and the fate of our publishing industry
MT @thenewpubstd Bleak times ahead for the Bangladesh publishing sector, And a story unfolding across large swathes of the globe. #Bangladeshbookmarket #Bangladeshpublishing #SouthAsiabookmarket
SAGE Publishing is set to shut its book publishing division in India
HT @thenewpubstd In a letter to its employees, the company said it would continue its journal publishing and import and sale of global titles #Indiapublishing #Indiabookmarket
“This is a digital business masquerading as a print business:” As the dust settles on the Dotdash Meredith merger, what’s the outlook for its print magazines?
RT @EstherKeziaT “The obvious question is whether Dotdash’s enviable growth path as a digital publisher will have been accelerated or obstructed by having thousands of employees (more than 50% of its 4,000 headcount) engaged in the production of print magazines”
Syndication deal brings together Money and McClatchy — www.poynter.org
Money, the personal finance magazine that converted to digital-only, will be the syndicated provider of that category to McClatchy. Contrary to the unusual hedge fund narrative, McClatchy is increasing its editorial investment. #magazines #BrandExtensions
Maybe don’t illustrate your stories about lethally hot weather with fun beach pics — www.niemanlab.org
RT @michellemanafy As heat waves become more common, more intense, and more lethal, the contrast between news articles that spell out the impact of extreme heat and their accompanying “fun in the sun” photos becomes more jarring. @SarahScire
The Future of the Daily Newspaper — localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu
As newspapers cut print editions, dailies are becoming more like weeklies, and vice versa, and business models are diverging. (And in Arkansas, giving customers iPads!)
Why Is It So Hard to Buy a Copy of the New York Times? — www.curbed.com
Try to find a copy of the New York Times in Manhattan these days. It’s harder than you’d expect. Most bodegas no longer carry it. #newspapers
Geling Yan Says a Movie Fails to Credit Her. The Film World Shrugs. — www.nytimes.com
Geling Yan says that she is owed a screen credit for the Chinese film “One Second” — and that companies bringing it to Western audiences are complicit in censoring her.
Comcast shares slide after the cable giant fails to add broadband subscribers for first time ever
Resources & Opportunities
NaNo WNDB Auction
Help We Need Diverse Books spread the word about NaNoWriMo & WNDB Summer Fundraiser! @NaNoWriMo @DiverseBooks #StoryIsPower
Hosted & moderated by Beth Phelan. August 1, 2022: 8AM — 8PM ET for childrens & YA fiction/nonfiction. August 2, 2022: 8AM — 8PM ET for adult fiction/nonfiction and for artists & illustrators using #DVart
Sea Island Writers Retreat 2022 — siwr2022.org
23 Science Fiction Writing Contests to Enter in 2022 and 2023
HT @paulkbiba
Graphic Novel Book Buzz Part 2 — ala-events.zoom.us
Latinx Designers and Art Directors
MT @LatinxinPub Are you a Latinx publishing professional that works as a designer or art director? We’re working on building a resource list of Latinx designers so Latinx artists and illustrators can connect with you! Please fill out the form to connect!
South Asian Kidlit Illustrators
RT @darshanakhiani Kidlit editors and art directors: Are you looking for South Asian illustrators? I have a downloadable .pdf file on my website. Fantastic illustrators ranging from comic style, watercolor, digital, paper-cut, and more! #southasiankidlit #diversity
The Bronx is Reading Bookstore Crowdfund
@bronxisreading Let’s Bring a Children’s Bookstore to the Bronx!
Barnes & Noble Educator Appreciation Days 7/30–8/7
MT @BNBuzz Educators will receive 25% off eligible purchases, plus 10% off Cafe consumables, 10% off NOOK GlowLight Plus/3/10″ w Lenovo/4 and 4e! 🍎