What is black and white and red all over: this week on Fresh Powder

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A summary of journalism news and pop culture brought to you by  SNO

Sorry we ditched you last week. (Needed to freshen up.) Here’s what we missed:

The lede

“Boom. I press it,” or President Trump’s in-depth analysis of his tweeting process, reminds me of the phrase “Eat it,” which a friend and I used to yell at classmates in elementary school P.E. after we chucked a dodgeball or spiked a volleyball at someone’s head. I was 11, the dodgeballs were foam and we only played maybe once a month. Trump is the president of the United States and he tweeted 271 times during the second week of October. In an incredible three-part collaboration of journalism, The New York Times explains, with visual aids, “How Trump Reshaped the Presidency in Over 11,000 Tweets”

. . . I love a good journalism how-it’s-made. Times Insider went there on its Trump Tweets story: “Doing a data analysis without actually reading the content of the tweets wasn’t going to give us the kind of detail that we needed.” (Also: This is literally the dark web.)

Seconded

“Unfortunately, the effort to destroy (Katie) Hill was just beginning. On October 24th, the Daily Mail published more intimate photos … At that point, the damage against Hill’s reputation had been done,” and she resigned three days later. Rolling Stone: Gawker Got Shut Down for Posting a Sex Tape. Why Can the ‘Daily Mail’ Publish Nudes of Katie Hill?

TGIF

Facebook rolled out Facebook News last week, which I wouldn’t have known without Twitter. The basics, from The New York Times: “The product is a new section of the social network’s mobile app that is dedicated entirely to news content, which the company is betting will bring users back to the site regularly to consume news on sports, entertainment, politics and tech.” (Zuck’s maybe not a betting man…)

. . . What about my News Feed? “Facebook News is something else. It will rely on a team of journalists, employed by Facebook, who will highlight stories from other, human-run news organizations that Facebook is vouching for. You know, like a newspaper,” writes Peter Kafka, for Recode. (In other words, your two crazy aunts will continue bombarding your News Feed with fake news.)

. . . IMAGINE HITTING “CAPS LOCK” THE NEXT TIME YOU WRITE YOUR NAME AND CALLING IT A REBRAND: From the geniuses at FACEBOOK

#MillennialProblems

Vox: A new study reveals why female journalists are so much less influential on Twitter than men. On the ramifications: “It’s hard to argue that deciding not to tweet at someone is as bad as male members of Congress opting never to take private meetings with female staff, but it sets women up the same way. When women are excluded from the informal customs that advance careers, they’re left behind.”

Deadspin!

“For a lot of people, blogging seems simple, basically unskilled, something any borderline-literate schmuck could achieve, and separated from “real” journalism, even when the membrane is vanishingly thin.” It’s not true, of course; at least, not at the good ones — like Deadspin, until its executives decided their bloggers were all, as the nasty old stigma goes, replaceable. “When media executives are forced to take on that job themselves, following a series of extraordinary self-created crises, they don’t seem to last very long.” (VICE)

. . . Refusing new ownership’s directive to “stick to sports,” several Deadspin writers published blogs like this, and then promptly quit en masse. The New York Times, on how it all unfolded. (And how’s the site been running since then? The only “person” publishing stories to it is an author named “Deadspin.”)

. . . Here’s the leaked company memo that started everything, from The Daily Beast

. . . Your friendly neighborhood reminder of the other great websites at risk of having the same thing happen, simply because G/O Media owns them, too.

. . . “It has come to my attention that everyone is quitting,” host Molly Fischer starts out. Though it doesn’t make any direct links to Deadspin, the weekly podcast “The Cut on Tuesdays” was very much on time in asking, “How do you know when it’s time to quit?”

Thinking ahead

Apple TV+ released its first set of shows, each carrying more weight than usual: To subscribe to another streaming service, or not to subscribe? That is the question. Here’s what Rolling Stone’s Alan Sepinwall said about the “The Morning Show” and Vulture on “Dickinson,” the latest Hailee Steinfeld vehicle.

This also happened last week: Halloween.