Dolly Parton has revamped her classic “9 to 5” song for website creation company Squarespace’s Super Bowl ad.
The country legend recently re-recorded the track as “5 to 9” – turning it into an anthem for after-hours passions and dreams. The goal of the spot, created in-house, is to showcase how Squarespace can provide the tools for anyone to turn their side hustle into a business.
The ad depicts more of a traditional office space at a time when many professionals have been working remotely and juxtaposes it with the other types of work possible.
“Workin’ 5 to 9, you’ve got passion and a vision,” she sings “Cause it’s hustlin’ time/ a whole new way to make a livin’/ Gonna change your life/ Do something that gives it meaning/ With a website that is worthy of your dreaming”
Dolly only appears on a magazine cover in the spot – which was directed by Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”) – but she has also released a full version of the new track with a second verse that calls us to “Be your own boss/ Climb your own ladder.”
“A lot of people through the years have wanted to change the lyrics to fit certain things they’re doing,” Parton told the Associated Press. “I really thought that was a wonderful thing, especially for Squarespace. They’re so into people, new entrepreneurs working after hours to start their own businesses. ‘5 to 9’ seemed to be a perfect thing when they pitched it.”
As part of the campaign, Squarespace is also launching a website for Parton’s own side hustle, a line of fragrances.
Last year, Squarespace ran an ad starring Winona Ryder, creating a website in a snowbank on the outskirts of Winona, Minn., the small Midwestern town where the actress was born.
News Media Concerned with Shrinking Local Coverage
The financial distress threatening the future of the local news industry is now a pervasive concern of those working in the media business, and few of them see advertising revenue as the best path forward, according to a new survey by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.
The first-ever Medill Media Industry Survey of nearly 1,400 members of the U.S. news media was conducted by the Medill School.
Asked to rate their concern about the future sustainability of local news, 81.2% said they were very concerned and 17.7 were somewhat concerned. Only 1% were not at all concerned. The highest concern was expressed by people working for newspapers (86.7% very concerned) and digital-only outlets (84.5% very concerned).
Asked what concerned them most about the diminishment of local news, 52.3% said it was fewer watchdogs holding government accountable. Other concerns were less information about local institutions such as schools and law enforcement (23.2%), negative effects on citizens (17.7%) and less information about what people in the community are doing (3.8%).
Studies have found lower voter participation and higher government indebtedness in places that lack a healthy news media environment.
There was no firm consensus among poll respondents on the best way out of the crisis.
Asked which new business model holds the most promising path forward, 26.8% chose conversion from commercial to nonprofit status while 24.8% cited a shift to reliance on reader revenue such as subscriptions, and just 7.1% picked growing advertising revenue. The option that drew the most support was “all of the above,” with 36.4%. “None of the above” was cited by 4.9%.
The high number of respondents choosing nonprofit conversion was eye-opening, considering that it’s a relatively new and unproven approach, at least for the legacy news outlets that are among the most endangered by today’s market forces.
While the news industry has long recognized its financial crisis, journalists have been alarmed to find that the public doesn’t share their anxiety. A Pew Research Center survey in 2018 found that 70% of the public thought their local news outlet was doing well financially, despite widespread evidence to the contrary.
The Medill Media Industry Survey was conducted online from Nov. 30 to Dec. 28, 2020. A list of people working in U.S. media was compiled, then reduced to 15,000 by random sampling. Those 15,000 were invited to participate, and about 9 percent of that sample did so. The survey included managers and journalists from print, digital, TV, radio and magazine outlets. About 43% of the respondents were supervisors.
Poynter Network Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), part of the Poynter Institute, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Poynter announced recently.
While an increasing number of journalists and press freedom organizations have been nominated for the peace prize in recent years, no news organization has won that particular honor.
In 2020, Nobel prize prognosticators predicted that the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, or another news organization could win, but the peace prize ultimately went to the World Food Programme. Lawmakers, academics, members of government, and others may nominate people or organizations for the prize, and the number of nominees may reach into the hundreds; those are narrowed to a shortlist of 20 to 30 nominees, from which the winner is chosen. Being a high-profile nominee is not a guarantee of being shortlisted, as right-wing Norwegian lawmakers nominated former President Donald Trump twice for the peace prize, but he did not win.
The IFCN was launched in 2015 to support the increasing number of fact-checking initiatives cropping up worldwide at the time. The organization monitors trends and policies around fact-checking, promotes universal fact-checking standards, and provides fellowships and training for fact checkers. The Poynter Institute provides ongoing training, information, and resources in order to support journalists worldwide.
Twitter Launches Forum to Combat Misinformation
Twitter unveiled a feature this week meant to bolster its efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation by tapping users in a fashion similar to Wikipedia to flag potentially misleading tweets.
The new system allows users to discuss and provide context to tweets they believe are misleading or false. The project, titled Birdwatch, is a standalone section of Twitter that will at first only be available to a small set of users, largely on a first-come, first-served basis. Priority will not be provided to high-profile people or traditional fact-checkers, but users will have to use an account tied to a real phone number and email address.
While Birdwatch will initially be cordoned off to a separate section of Twitter, the company said “eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on Tweets for the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.”
Demos of the product viewed by NBC News showed a separate area in which tweets are discussed and rated in a format that combines elements of both Reddit’s and Wikipedia’s moderation tools.
Birdwatch users are able to flag tweets from a dropdown menu directly within Twitter’s main interface, but discussion about a tweet’s veracity will remain exclusively in the Birdwatch section. Twitter says it does anticipate some users linking directly to Birdwatch discussions underneath high-profile and controversial tweets, just as some users would link out to fact-checking sites.
Participants in Birdwatch are able to rate others’ notes, as a mechanism to prevent bad-faith users from gaming the system and falsely labeling true tweets as false. Those ratings are then assembled into a Birdwatch profile separate of a Twitter profile, not unlike Reddit’s user-rating system.
Twitter said it hopes to build a community of “Birdwatchers” that can eventually help moderate and label tweets in its main product, but will not be immediately labeling tweets with Birdwatch suggestions.
Twitter has faced increased pressure over the last year to address rampant misinformation on the platform. Aside from removal, it has relied on labeling, or adding context below tweets that spread misinformation.
In March, facing a deluge of misinformation about the pandemic, it began removing “misleading and potentially harmful content” about Covid-19. By May, it had introduced labels to respond to tweets containing conspiracy theories about the origins of the disease and fake cures.