In This Issue: Peloton Is A Media Company Now / Proposed Zoom & Teams Legislation / Proposed Zoom & Teams Federal Compatibility Legislation / Spotify-Substack Partnership Launches / Fake Websites All The Way Down / Most Popular Television Shows Of The Streaming Era / TikTok Launching Photo-Only App / ”I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” / “How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.” / Pat Sajak’s Final Wheel Of Fortune Episode Airing In June / Ed Piskor RIP
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
Happy Tax Day, o American readers of Context Collapse.
Today’s links below:
-Neal
Peloton Is A Media Company Now: “Around the time Peloton was fumbling its treadmill recalls, Dancing With the Stars fans were pissed. Some dude named Cody Rigsby had made it to the finale, and frankly, who the frickin’ hell was Cody Rigsby?
Proposed Zoom & Teams Federal Compatibility Legislation: “A new proposal from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) would require videoconferencing and messaging tools used by the federal government to be able to communicate with each other, even if made by different companies. It would also enforce high security standards for government collaboration tools, including end-to-end encryption.
Spotify-Substack Partnership Launches: “Substack‘s podcast library is coming to Spotify. A partnership between the two platforms will allow Substack users to distribute free and gated shows among Spotify listeners.
Fake Websites All The Way Down: “The ad industry is railing against online publishers that get visitors largely by advertising clickbait headlines around the web, then turn a profit by serving a barrage of ads to anyone who bites.
Most Popular Television Shows Of The Streaming Era: “The most-watched show on TV is NCIS.
TikTok Launching Photo-Only App: “TikTok’s upcoming Instagram competitor app for sharing photos could be named TikTok Notes, according to screenshots posted by users. TikTok also confirmed the app was in development.
”I’ve Been At NPR For 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.”: “There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.
The mindset prevails in choices about language.”
“How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data For A.I.”: “OpenAI researchers created a speech recognition tool called Whisper. It could transcribe the audio from YouTube videos, yielding new conversational text that would make an A.I. system smarter.
Pat Sajak’s Final Wheel Of Fortune Episode Airing In June: “Pat Sajak‘s final run on Wheel of Fortune is quickly coming to a close. After more than four decades as host of the iconic game show, Sajak’s final episode will air on Friday, June 7, Deadline has confirmed.
Sajak’s farewell episode, which tapes today, will serve as Wheel‘s Season 41 finale.”
Piskor was best known for his acclaimed 12-issue comic book series Hip Hop Family Tree, which catalogs the artistic origins and cultural legacy of hip hop and utilizes a style informed by the aesthetic of 1970s comic book offset printing.” (Editor’s Note: I interviewed Piskor in 2018—genuinely talented cartoonist with that most rare of things: a unique visual aesthetic that was 100% his.)
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