A night of promise and peril

The Muck Rack Weekly newsletter includes some of the most talked about stories in the journalism and public relations communities over the past week, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of Muck Rack.

Media statistic of the week

“Many people don’t pay full price for their news subscription. Most don’t want to pay anything at all” reads the headline of Craig Robertson’s analysis of data around paying for news subscriptions for Nieman Lab.

“This question of how many people actually pay full price for their digital news subscription motivated a question in this year’s Digital News Report 2024,” writes Robertson. “We asked online news subscribers how much they actually paid, and asked non-subscribers how much they would be willing to pay, if anything. Our findings are striking.”

Here are two interesting stats from the report:

• Across 20 countries, 41% said they were paying less than full price for their online news subscription.
• 57% are not willing to pay anything at all. 

Check out the full piece.

This past week in the media industry

MTV News website goes dark

“Wasn’t the web going to be our forever library?” asks Stephen Randall on X after news that all the content on the MTV News website disappeared.

More than two decades’ worth of content published on MTVNews.com is no longer available after MTV appears to have fully pulled down the site and its related content, reports Todd Spangler for Variety. 

“The now-unavailable content includes decades of music journalism comprising thousands of articles and interviews with countless major artists, dating back to the site’s launch in 1996,” Spangler writes. 

“this is wack AF,” tweeted Khal Davenport. 

“I used to print out some of my MTV News articles and interviews, but not all —  this is painful to read. Decades of great music reporting and writing by dedicated #MTVNews staffers, eliminated for no reason,” adds Kara Manning. 

‘A night of promise and peril’

Will you be tuning in to the first presidential debate of the 2024 election season on Thursday evening?

The New York Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum says tens of millions of viewers will be watching.

“The debate is a night of promise and peril ... for CNN,” tweets Grynbaum. 

That’s something that’s a bit different about this debate:

“For the first time in decades, a single television network will have sole discretion over the look, feel and cadence of a general-election presidential debate. Unlike in past years, when an independent, nonprofit commission oversaw the contests, CNN has picked the moderators, designed the set and will choose the camera angles that viewers see.” 

So how did CNN land this ratings slam dunk?

“CNN outmaneuvered its competitors to land the event after Mr. Biden said in May that he would not cooperate with the Commission on Presidential Debates, which had sponsored general-election debates since 1987,” reports Grynbaum. “Instead, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump agreed to meet under the auspices of individual networks; a second matchup is scheduled for September on ABC.”

Chasing the roulette of Google Search traffic

In a fascinating piece for The Verge, Kevin Nguyen deep dives into the “winter of content”—the time on the internet when every website and outlet voraciously covered “Game of Thrones.” 

Here’s a snippet:

“Game of Thrones was one of those things that people couldn’t get enough of. It didn’t matter if our coverage was smarter or better written than what was available on the hundreds of other sites running the same thing. We were all chasing the roulette of Google Search traffic, and the most embarrassing part was that it worked.”

“This is an incredible piece on the Recap Era, but specifically the strange way that online writing form both follows and jets past its own economic context. If @knguyen wanted to write, say, a book about this broad phenomenon, I'd read it!” tweets Phillip Maciak. 

“PTSD triggered reading this. Back in my Vox days, if you farted out anything GoT (or John Oliver or Taylor Swift) you hit your monthly pageview target. Good riddance,” says Danielle Kurtzleben. 

What many freelance writers fear has come true—AI comes for writing gigs

“AI Doesn’t Kill Jobs? Tell That to Freelancers” writes Christopher Mims for the Wall Street Journal. 

He says there’s now data to back it up. 

“They have found that since the debut of ChatGPT and other generative AI models, the number of freelance jobs posted on Upwork, Fiverr and related platforms, in the areas in which generative AI excels, have dropped by as much as 21%,” writes Mims. 

“The most dystopian job trend right now is companies bringing in people to fix AI-generated content that replaced people,” tweets Rani Molla. 

A few more

• Nieman Lab’s Christina Couch has the scoop on why some freelancers are suing the Department of Labor over the right to freelance in light of a new rule issued earlier this year. 
• The Associated Press is launching an independent sister organization to raise at least $100 million to expand state and local news, reports Sara Fischer for Axios. "It will help to sustain what we do, grow what we do, and add new and incremental journalism services for the industry," says the AP’s CEO Daisy Veerasingham.
• “Stop me if you’ve heard some variation of this statistic: More than half of U.S. counties have no or almost no access to a “reliable local news source,” writes Elizabeth Djinis for Poynter. Despite this gloomy stat, there’s some good news—Djinis highlights three “frontline organizations are revolutionizing journalism at every level.” 
• The Verge’s Nilay Patel interviewed Netflix’s co-CEO Greg Peters on the future of the streamer. Give the full interview a listen or check out the transcript. 
• Speaking of streaming, the New York Times’ James B. Stewart and Benjamin Mullin collaborated on this must-read piece in which they interview a dozen executives about the future of streaming.
• “Trouble behind the scenes at Hot Ones, the internet’s favorite talk show,” reports Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw. Here’s what’s happening. 
• Cool news from the Knight Foundation. They’ve launched knightelectionhub.org, “a collection of tools, resources and services for local, state and national newsrooms that want robust election coverage but potentially lack all the resources to provide it for their audiences,” according to reporting from Poynter’s Barbara Allen.

From the Muck Rack team

We’re excited to share that Muck Rack has been recognized as one of Inc.’s Best Workplaces for a second year in a row! 

This annual list celebrates companies that have excelled in creating exceptional workplaces and company cultures.

A few more deets: As part of the submission, employees participated in a survey administered by a third party employee engagement vendor that asked questions about topics including management, engagement, perks, fostering employee growth and overall company culture. 

We received an overall score of 89 and a benefits score of 73, surpassing the average benefits score by 13 points. Ninety-five percent of our employees reported feeling engaged, and when asked to describe their work environment in one word, "flexible" was the top choice.