Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Whose news is fake and whose is “fake”?

In America, President Trump tweets and snarls regularly about “fake news.”  In Trump’s case, it’s anything that doesn’t match his agenda.

The European Union countries also are going after fake news. News that’s really fake.

And they are finding that the far right, Trump’s base, is guilty. Europe must have its Breitbart and Fox News slanted news equivalents. And the left, too. So who are you to believe?

They are concerned that fake news would affect the European Parliamentary elections. Sound familiar?

In Austria, the vice chancellor and leader of the far-right FPO party, Heinz-Christian Strache, was fined 10,000 euros for having accused ORF journalist Wolfgang Armin of spreading of fake news.

John Knight’s workers have spent decades trying to be accurate. And now Trump labels the New York Times and Washington Post as “fake news.”

Don’t take my word for it, or anyone else’s. Read for yourself this world-wide battle to expose fake news and protect real journalism:

FakEU roundup: Officials are calling on journalists in the fight against fake news

By Alexander Damiano Ricci · March 28, 2018

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The politics of fake news

Last week, the president of the German Federal Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, invited journalists and bloggers to discuss the spread of misinformation at his Bellevue residence in Berlin. Steinmeier called for traditional media and recognized information sources to stand out as “islands of trustworthiness” in the public sphere. Meanwhile, however, a new study conducted by the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung investigated the role played by traditional media outlets in the spread of fake news. The authors claimed that well-established media outlets, such as Bild and Die Welt, created fake news that were later exploited by right-wing politicians via social networks.

In France, during the “Assise du journalisme” — an annual  event gathering French media professionals — the Minister of Culture, Françoise Nyssen, revealed further details about the upcoming bill aimed at tackling the diffusion of fake news during elections. Under the law proposed by the government, news items shall be considered a “threat” if they are “evidently false” and benefit from “artificial” and “massive diffusion,” Nyssen said. Skeptical remarks on the law have been expressed on Europe1, Sud Ouest and Public Senat, whereas a thorough analysis of the challenges of defining fake news from a judicial point of view was published in La revue européenne des médias et du numérique. On March 28, two Senate committees discuss the contours of this legislative agenda.

The UN rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, rebuked Italy’s efforts to combat fake news through a reporting mechanism answering to the police and set up by the Ministry of the Interior. Meanwhile, even professionals of the agricultural sector are engaging in discussions about digital misinformation. A professor in the University of Molise’s Agriculture department warned that quality of information is key in industrial sectors influenced by heavy economic interests, such as the food industry.

In its annual report, the European data protection supervisor warned that disinformation could critically influence the 2019 European Parliamentary electoral campaign. The “principle of electoral transparency is not satisfied if voters do not have the right to freely access, receive and share informations on the electoral process and candidates,” said one of the supervisors, Carlo Buttarelli. “The rights of the latter are threatened by online manipulation,” he added. Shortly after, speaking to a crowd at the Foro de Nueva Economia in Madrid, the director-general of communication of the European Parliament, Jaume Duch, also warned that EP elections were particularly vulnerable to the threats of false news because European topics are less well-known. Meanwhile, Mariya Gabriel, commissioner for the digital economy and society told Le Figaro that, as part of its wider offensive against fake news, the EU should double its funds allocated to the digital economy.

In Austria, two weeks ago, the vice chancellor and leader of the far-right FPO party, Heinz-Christian Strache, was fined 10,000 euros for having accused ORF journalist Wolfgang Armin of spreading of fake news. In a similar row, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused the French media outlet Médiapart of having spread fake news against him in 2012, in relation to the ongoing Libyan-campaign finance case. Médiapart promptly replied to the accusations.

Producing and tackling fake news

The BBC created an interactive game called BBC iReporter aimed at teens and tweens. The Berlin-based Digital Game Culture Foundation will hold a 48-hour Game Jam to brainstorm on the development of news games. In France, Franceinfo and France Culture will join forces to tackle misinformation. The two public radio broadcasters will kick off a special podcast series on false news about science on April 30.

Debating fake news: op-eds, commentaries and academic debates

According to a Eurobarometer survey, more than 80 percent of the European population perceive fake news as a threat to democracy and as a problem in their country (IlSole24Ore). Meanwhile, Fiorenza Gamba (University of Geneva) and Thomas Widmer (University of Zurich) claim that the Swiss confederal system should be seen as an institutional check on the spread of misinformation. As the Helvetic political system is split up into districts, it becomes more difficult to target candidates with fake news and hate speech, compared to cases of the “personalized political systems,” such as those of the U.S., France and Italy. Meanwhile, the Swiss newspaper Le Temps depicted the The New York Times as an “antidote to fake news.”

On Die Welt, Jim Heintz argues Russia was behind fake news long before Vladimir Putin’s emergence. In another historical perspective, BBC documentarist Phil Tinline analyzed strategic disinformation as a phenomenon spanning several decades of international politics.

Ioana Manolescu (Institut national de recherche dédié au numérique, INRIA) and Erica Scherer, director of innovation at France Télévisions, discuss the role of media in the diffusion of fake news. Scherer recalls that the lack of trust traditional media are suffering from made it possible for fake news to spread. On the other hand, Manolescu calls for media to take up the challenge of providing thorough analysis of the social reality instead of just fact-checking false claims.

Fact-checks from around Europe

In France, AFP and Les Décodeurs verified claims made by former President Nicolas Sarkozy related to the ongoing investigation on Libyan funds and campaign financing. Sarkozy’s declarations on the matter were deemed to be false.

In Spain, El Objetivo checked the truthfulness of claims made by Noelia Vera, an MP of the leftist alliance Unidos Podemos, on the numbers of “forced” Spanish “economic migrants.” According to Vera, some 800,000 Spanish citizens left the country due to the economic crisis that hit the country in the years following the financial breakdown of 2007-08. However, official data contradict her numbers.

In the UK, The Ferret blasted promotional material shared on social media channels by the pro-independence group Business for Scotland. The organization falsely claimed Scotland was the “only UK nation to have exported more than it imported, every year since records began.”

 

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Carol Eubank innovated Woman of the Year

BJ Marketing Communications Department retiree Carol Eubank received the 2018 Women’s History Project’s Woman of the Year Award Wednesday in the innovation category.

Carol Eubank
It’s an early birthday present. She was born March 26.

The Women’s History Project web site didn’t specify what Carol innovated to get the award. But she has been extremely busy since her retirement from Ol’ Blue Walls at 44 E. Exchange Street.

Other 2018 winners are:

Janice Stahl – Inspiration

Lashawrida L. Fellows – Perseverance

Kathy Schedley Pingstock – Courage

Allyson Strickland – Woman to Watch

Lanie Ward – Integrity

Carla Weiss – Faith

Woman of the Year Awards celebrate women who have made a difference in the community.

In Carol’s case, she has been involved in the Green Historical Society and its preservation work.

Carol, a 1957 Coventry High grad, lives in Portage Lakes, where she also is a key player in the Portage Lakes Historical Society.

Carol is active in the Portage Lakes Kiwanis Club. She wrote portagelakesopoly, a game, for the Kiwanis.

I crossed paths with Carol several years ago at the Greystone, the building in downtown Akron constructed for the Masons that is a venue for entertainment and other activities.

When BJ retirees pop into Summit County from their retirement hideaways, Carol usually is involved with planning parties or dinners for the homecoming reunions.

Former BJ home writer Mary Beth Breckenridge, who was there to witness Carol receiving the award, shares Carol's March 26 birthday.  Mary Beth began working for Howard Hanna Real Estate after her departure from Ol’ Blue Walls.

Marketing manager Sue Lindeman, Carol’s good friend, also attended the awards ceremony.

Carol also, befitting her name, usually is around when BJ types go Christmas caroling.



In other words, she’s woman of the year every year.
Newspapers making more money from readers than advertisers

The times they are a-changin’ 

Title of Bob Dylan song


Particularly for newspapers. In a surprising way.

Advertising used to provide up to 80% of a newspaper’s revenue. Now newspapers are making more money on circulation (subscriptions) than on advertising.

Wow!

That’s the word from the annual World Press Trends survey released by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.

Readers, not advertisers, are the big source of revenue. A reversal of a century-old business model.

There’s a catch, as there are with most statistics. It’s not that circulation went up; it’s mostly static. It’s that advertising revenue has gone down so much that it freefell below the readers’ subscriptions payments.


 

 

 

 

 

 

World Parress Trends: Newspaper Revenues Shift To New Sources

2015-06-01

A profound shift in the newspaper business model, evolving for years, is finally here.

Global newspaper circulation revenues are larger than newspaper advertising revenues for the first time this century, according to the annual World Press Trends survey released Monday by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

"The basic assumption of the news business model -- the subsidy that advertisers have long provided to news content -- is gone," said Larry Kilman, Secretary General of WAN-IFRA, who presented the survey at the 67th World Newspaper Congress, 22nd World Editors Forum and 25th World Advertising Forum in Washington, D.C. "We can freely say that audiences have become publishers' biggest source of revenue."

Newspapers generated an estimated US$179 billion in circulation and advertising revenue in 2014 -- larger than the book publishing, music or film industries. Ninety-two billion dollars came from print and digital circulation, while 87 billion came from advertising, the survey said.

"This is a seismic shift from a strong business-to-business emphasis - publishers to advertisers - to a growing business-to-consumer emphasis, publishers to audiences," said Mr. Kilman.

Throughout the 20th century, advertising brought up to 80 per cent of revenues in some markets. The ratio varies from market to market: in some European and Asian markets, advertising might bring 40 per cent of revenues.

But the survey showed that newspaper advertising revenues are falling nearly everywhere, while circulation revenues are relatively stable.

"Print used to be one of few traditional marketing channels and often the one that was the most ubiquitous for branding and logical choice for all marketers," said Mr. Kilman. "This direct relationship of mutual dependence no longer exists. Advertisers nowadays have more than 60 different advertising media channels available to them."

"However, in 2015 it is clear that the story of the newspaper industry is not one of doom and gloom and decline. Newspapers around the world are successfully proving their value to advertisers despite booming competition. They are discovering new markets and new business models that are today as pertinent to news production as advertising and circulation revenues. From print newspaper businesses, they have transformed into true multiplatform news media businesses."

Though newspapers are now ubiquitous on all media platforms, the measure of their reach and influence continues to be mired in the 20th century, largely relying on print circulation and a variety of separate, non-standardized measures of digital reach. The challenge for the industry is to measure reach of newspaper content on all platforms with new metrics.

The World Press Trends survey includes data from more than 70 countries, accounting for more than 90 per cent of the global industry’s value. The data is compiled through an enormous undertaking by dozens of national newspaper and news media associations and generous support from global data suppliers: Zenith Optimedia, IPSOS, ComScore, the Pew Research Center, RAM, and the ITU.

The survey, presented annually at the global summit meetings of the world’s press, revealed:

The Future is Mobile

Eight out of 10 smartphone users check their device within 15 minutes of waking up. It’s a fight for audience’s attention and mobile has it.

-- Globally consumers spend an average of almost 2.2 hours per day with mobile (97 minutes) and tablet (37 minutes), which together account for 37 per cent of media time, ahead of television (81 minutes), the desktop (70 minutes), radio (44 minutes), and print (33 minutes), according to the InMobi mobile media consumption report.

-- App usage represents about half of mobile engagement, with leading media now seeing 30 per cent or more of their monthly audiences coming exclusively from mobile platforms.

-- For the first time, desktop audience numbers are falling. Time spent using smartphones now exceeds web usage on computers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy. For 19 of the top 25 US newspaper sites, mobile traffic exceeded desktop by at least 10 per cent, according to Pew Research. Those who use only mobile devices to consume newspaper digital content increased 53 per cent in March 2015 from the same month a year ago, according to a report from the Newspaper Association of America.

"When it comes to new revenues, we have been talking about the year of mobile for the last 10 years," Mr Kilman said. "It has finally happened. In 2014, desktop Internet usage globally decreased in favor of mobile. And mobile app usage is becoming the majority of all digital media activity in the United States."

 

Monday, March 12, 2018


Tremendously trumping Trump

Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large, does the best skewering job of a Donald Trump speech that I've ever read.

Trump rambled on like a North Korean or Latin America dictator for an hour while trying to pump up the election chances of Pennsylvania State Rep. Rick Saccone (R)


Saturday, March 10, 2018


Thrity and Cinda hold their own with a talented crowd of authors

Thrity with Lisa Ko (left), Celesta Ng
Former BJ reporter Thrity Umbrigar and former BJ ads-taker Cinda Williams Chima took part in the Tucson Festival of Books.

Thrity participated under the headings of “Crossing the Line” and “Extraordinary Bonds.”

All three “Crossing the Line” authors dealt with adoption novels, the bond between parent and children, the intersection of race, class, privilege and power.

New Yorker Lisa Ko (“The Leavers”) and Pittsburgh/Shaker Heights’ Celesta Ng (“Little Fires Everywhere”) were the other authors.  All are talented women of color, with Thrity (“Everybody’s Son”) being a native of India and Bombay.

The other “Extraordinary Bonds” author with Thrity was Lisa Wingate, who has published 30 novels, the latest being “Before We Were Yours.”


Cinda (“Flamecaster”), sister of BJ Art Advertising retiree Mike Williams,  was in the Young Adult division.

She was in the Shadows and Quests Into the Unknown Worlds discussion with Daniel Jose Yoder (“Shadowshaper Cypher”).

Cinda worked in the classified phone room as an ad taker/proofer in the '70s.
 
Nearly 200 authors took part in the two-day event.

Thrity also teaches creative writing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Thrity left India at the age of 21 to attend Ohio State University.

 

Thrity began her reporting career with The Lorain Journal. Two years later, in 1987, she came to the BJ.

 

She left the Beacon to attend Harvard on a Nieman Fellowship, wrote “Bombay Time” and her author career took off.

 

Friday, March 09, 2018

BEST ROUND OF GOLF IN MY LIFETIME
 
No Mulligans, either!!!!

 
Hill Top golf course in The Villages, Florida.

 
Drive #3 hit "Carts" sign, deflected toward the pin.

 
2nd shot on #4, the water hole, hit raised part of cart path, deflected toward the pin.


When the golf gods are on your side, just roll with it!
 
I've been playing golf for 75 years and I finally got a 30! At the age of 85!!!

 
Played with Paula and her brother, Tom, my partner in the Ohio senior leagues at Kent’s Sunny Hill and Cuyahoga Falls’ Brookledge, who can verify that I took NO mulligans.


 No 3-putt greens after FIVE 3-putt greens the day before at El Diablo.

 We teed off first, no one in front of us, no one for 3 holes behind us, so we set our own pace. Temperature was about 45 when we teed off, which explained why the course wasn’t crowded. But there was no wind, which helped. Skies were blue and sun was brilliant.
 
So was my golf game ... finally!
 
Sometimes the bear gets you; today, I got the bear!

 
Now if my luck can rub off on my Mountaineers tonight against Texas Tech in the Big 12 tournament I can die a happy man with Paula by my side.

 
This felt like the next best thing to sex. I do not know what I was doing differently, but the nectar of the gods was in my body.

 
I feel like I drank a gallon of moonshine!


 
As the shirt I wore said, "Mountaineers Climb Higher." Wow! Do NOT awaken me.

I want to save this euphoria.

 
We will be in Paula's house till late April when we return to our Ohio home in Tallmadge, an Akron suburb. We are in Florida for our usual four winterizing months.

We will take the auto/train from Samford, Florida to Lorton, Virginia, then drive the 2012 Honda Accord to Tallmadge.

Hot damn! Oh, what a feeling!
 
John Olesky (BJ 1969-1996)
 
I've waited a LONG time for this day!!!
 
I should either play the lottery or retire from golf, huh?

 

Monday, March 05, 2018


Doggone it, Stuart is a hero!

 
The Mad Hatter to the rescue!

Stuart Warner and wife Deb Van Tassel Warner were walking their dog, DeeDee, near their home in Phoenix, Arizona when they spotted a puppy swimming in the Western Canal.

The dog had plopped into the water 3 or 4 feet below its onshore takeoff spot. Keep in mind that Stu had his shoulder replacement surgery in July 2017.

Not a problem for Rescue Man!

Well, let Debbie, former BJ Features Editor and PD and Arizona editor, tell it:

“My hero, Stuart Warner! Nothing like starting the day off with some drama.

“On our morning walk with DeeDee, we spotted a creature swimming in the Western Canal. It turned out to be a puppy. No telling how long he had been in there.

“He came over to the bank when we saw him. It was a 3- to 4-foot drop from the bank into the water.

“We called the Humane Society but they took their sweet time getting there even though they were right around the corner from where we were.

“Stu finally got down on his belly, reached down as far as he could, grabbed the puppy by the scruff of his neck and pulled him out.”

Again, I remind you, Stu had shoulder replacement surgery eight months ago.

Debbie continues:

“Humane Society FINALLY arrived and brought his body temperature back up, found he was micro-chipped and were locating his owners.

“Oh, but Stu did drop his keys in the canal during the rescue.l. It turned out to be a puppy! No telling how long he’d been in there. He came over to the bank when he saw us, about a three-to-four foot drop. We called the Humane Society but they took their sweet time getting there even though they are right around the corner from where we were. Stu finally got down on his belly, reached down as far as he could, grabbed the pup by scruff of his neck and pulled him out. Humane Society FINALLY arrived and brought his body temp back up, found he was micro-chipped and were locating his owners. Oh, but Stu did drop his keys in the canal during the rescue! All’s well that ends well.WWWWWe

“All’s well that ends well.”

Just consider it friendly karma payback for the folks at the Quaker Hilton Hotel in Akron who gave Stu a second key when he walked outside his room and the door slammed shut behind him.

To the folks behind the reception desk it was just another guy dressed only in his tidy whity short who wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Maybe they didn’t recognized him without the ever-present hat, which I suspect was hiding a secret Stu didn’t want anyone to know.

Stu is marshaling the troops for the Arizona New Times these days, investigating the crap out of things that people in power would prefer to stay hidden.

Stu and Deb’s daughter, Denise Warner, is editorial director/digital at Billboard, which has been serving the music entertainment business since 1894.

Emilie Warner Clemmens and Amanda Warner Poynter are their other daughters. Emilie and Amanda live in Lexington, Kentucky, Stuart’s old haunt. The daughters are the parents of four of Stu and Deb’s grandchildren.

Stu and Deb have been married 35 years. They first met on Friday night, May 22, 1982 and moved in together the following Monday.  

They married on September 25, 1982.

Stuart came to the Beacon Journal after 10 years with Knight-Ridder's Lexington newspaper. He was at the BJ from 1979 until 1999. His last Warner’s Corner column was written in 1990 if you don’t count the 175th BJ anniversary column that was a one-day affair.

 

He left the BJ for the PD. By the time he took a PD buyout in 2008, he was writing coach and projects editor, similar to his role at the BJ.

 

Stuart, after four years with the Arizona Republic, in January became editor-in-chief of the weekly Phoenix New Times in Arizona, which has gone online with some impressive investigative reporting.

He is in the Cleveland Press Club Hall of Fame and a former Case Western Reserve full-time lecturer.

 

Stuart and wife Debbie Van Tassel, the whip-cracking department chief during her BJ days, left Cleveland for Arizona in 2013.

 

New Jersey native and Seton Hall graduate Debbie, at the BJ till 1999, was assistant managing editor/features at the PD before going to the Arizona Republic, where she was laid off despite some spectacular success there because money is more valuable than people in today’s newspaper world.

Debbie had a hand in three Pulitzers, including at the BJ with the Goodyear greenmail saga and A Question of Color; and the Boeing 737 crash in Seattle while she was working for the paper in the rainy city.

Trivia note: Stuart went to Lafayette High School in Kentucky with Mike Wanchic, lead guitarist for the John Mellencamp band.

 Later, Debbie reported:
 
"The dog's owners were located. They live in Tucson. I'm really having trouble wrapping my head around how this puppy came to be swimming in a canal 120 miles away."
 

 

Sunday, March 04, 2018


Loren Tiball's former wife Billie Tibbals passes away

Billie Tsannis Tibbals, once a reference librarian at the BJ and the wife of the copy desk's late Loren Tibbals, passed away February 22.

She was an Akron public schools teacher for 51 years.
Billie Tibbals

 


Former BJer Roger Mezger provided this information:
“Billie Tsannis Barbaris married Loren Tibbals, BJ executive sports editor, in 1959. They were divorced sometime in the 1960s and Tib then married Anne Chisnell Rhinehart. They had a daughter, Lisa, who was about 10 when Tib died suddenly in 1977.
 

"Billie was the niece of a co-owner of a candy store opposite the Beacon Journal and apparently worked at the BJ around the late 1940s-early 1950s. Her first marriage, in 1948, was to Richard Barbaris.

"Anne Tibbals later married Harold Carlson."

 
 
 
 

Former BJer Roger Mezger provides this information about Billie:

 

 

 

 
“Billie Tsannis Barbaris married Loren Tibbals, BJ executive sports editor, in 1959. They were divorced sometime in the 1960s and Tib then married Anne Chisnell Rhinehart. They had a daughter, Lisa, who was about 10 when Tib died suddenly in 1977.
Anne Tibbals later married Harold Carlson.
Billie was the niece of a co-owner of a candy store opposite the Beacon Journal and apparently worked at the BJ around the late 1940s-early 1950s. Her first marriage, in 1948, was to Richard Barbaris.
Former BJ sports editor Ken Krause, helping to keep the Mystic River clean in Medford, Massachussetts, added these details and two photos of Billie at the BJ and as a teacher:
“She was a graduate of Buchtel High School, as Billie Tsannis, and as an eighth-grader at Jennings School she was a correspondent for the Beacon Journal’s Youth Parade section, which presented a roundup of school news.
“She was the ex-wife of Loren Tibbals, the former Beacon Journal sports writer. They married in 1959 and were divorced in 1963. This was her second marriage. She married to Richard Barbaris in 1947.
“In the 1940s and ‘50s, Billie’s father, Tom Tsannis, and her uncle George operated the Beacon Candy Shop, a restaurant and store so-named because it was located across from the Beacon Journal at High and Exchange streets. The brothers previously operated Tsannis Candy Shop on South Case Ave.
“In 2001, Mark J. Price wrote a feature article on the shop with a prominent a photo of Billie Tsannis from 1943, plus three photos showing her and her father making the shop’s popular candy canes.
 


Billie’s obituary:

Billie Tsannis Tibbals

Billie Tsannis Tibbals passed away February 22, 2018.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Thomas and Eftimia Tsannis of the Tsannis Candy Co.; sister, Mary Brokas and long time companion, Harold Peddicord.

Mrs. Tibbals was a former reference librarian at the Akron Beacon Journal. She taught for the Akron Public Schools a total of 51 years. After retirement she volunteered her services at Stewart’s Caring Place. She was a member of Firestone Park Prime Timers and a life time member of the Ohio Country and Western Music Assn., Akron Chapter. She was a recipient of the Jennings Scholar Award for excellence in teaching, was named as a Leader of American Elementary Education and was honored by the Outstanding Teachers of America.

She leaves her extended family, Terry and Linda Peddicord; several nieces and nephews and many friends. As requested by Mrs. Tibbals, immediate burial has taken place at Greenlawn Cemetery.

Billie’s extended family would add that anyone wishing to make a donation in Billie’s memory is welcome to donate to Stewart’s Caring Place Cancer Wellness Center.