Broken By Design: Ads, Amplification, And Algorithms

In August, the second most popular food story on Facebook was fake news about Burger King using horse meat in their burgers. This is hardly the first time that fraudulent news sources have beat out legitimate media outlets online. Why can’t journalism win? The answer is more complicated than you might think.

In this workshop, the second in a three-part series, Aram Zucker-Scharff of The Washington Post will dig into the wild world of content fraud, from fake ads to arbitrage, that drives what some estimate to be as much as 90% of the digital ad economy. What data do search and social take from the page, and how can media organizations enhance their standing? What ethical practices can we learn from the worst fraudsters? Why do you keep getting the same ad over and over again? And what does user data mean in the context of journalism ethics?

We’ll peel apart the layers of content, code, metadata, and distribution to understand what it means to make money by chasing pageviews. Then we’ll learn how to stitch it all back together.

*Participants must bring their own laptops to take part in this workshop.*

This workshop is the second in a three-part event series hosted by Journalism + Design. Attendance at all three events is encouraged, but not required. Register here for Session I and here for Session III.

Aram Zucker-Scharff is the Ad Engineering Director for the Research, Experimentation and Development (RED) team at The Washington Post. He leads the creation of platforms and code related to advertising technology for The Post and its partners, including the launch of the new podcast monetization service Rhapsochord. He is also the lead developer for the open-source tool PressForward and has been a consultant on content strategy and digital newsroom workflows.