July 2016

The 10 TV and Radio Markets Where Pro-Clinton PACs Are Spending Big Next

Submitted by benton on Mon, 07/25/2016 - 10:41

Hillary Clinton is launching a game-style mobile app for campaign volunteers

Submitted by benton on Mon, 07/25/2016 - 10:41

CNN, ABC cut ties with Donna Brazile, freeing her up for DNC job

Submitted by benton on Mon, 07/25/2016 - 10:41

China Clamps Down on Online News Reporting

China has ordered several of the country’s most popular internet portals to halt much of their original news reporting, in a move that could confine an even larger share of the journalism in the country to Communist-controlled mouthpieces ahead of an important party meeting in 2017.

The profit-driven portals, several of which are listed on United States stock exchanges, have in recent years expanded their investigative teams to increase readership among China’s more than 600 million internet users by scooping the staid state-owned news media on stories about subjects including industrial pollution, tainted milk powder and even police brutality. But on July 25, several news organizations reported that the Beijing office of China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, ordered the websites of a number of the companies, including Sina, Sohu, NetEase and Phoenix, to shut down or “clean up” several of their most popular online news features.

Can the internet reboot Africa?

With smartphone use and web penetration soaring, Africa is set for a tech revolution – but only if its infrastructure can support it.

By 2020 there will be more than 700 million smartphone connections in Africa – more than twice the projected number in North America and not far from the total in Europe, according to GSMA, an association of mobile phone operators. In Nigeria alone 16 smartphones are sold every minute, while mobile data traffic across Africa is set to increase 15-fold by 2020. Twenty per cent of the continent already have access to a mobile broadband connection, a figure predicted to triple in the next five years. The mobile industry will account for 8% of GDP by 2020 – double what it will be in the rest of the world. And internet penetration is rising faster than anywhere else as costs of data and devices fall.

[This is the first of a two-week series supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation]