Apple is apparently not content to just provide you with movies, music and TV shows – it wants to bring you the news as well.
Apple is reportedly hiring journalists for its Apple News venture, according to a job posting. Its looking for editors to deliver “the best in breaking national, global, and local news”.
In addition to holding a bachelor’s degree in journalism or “a related field” and having more than five years of newsroom experience, candidates must have “a deep knowledge of multiple content categories”.
“They will have great instincts for breaking news, but be equally able to recognise original, compelling stories unlikely to be identified by algorithms,” the ad goes on to say.
“Successful editors will be ambitious, detail-oriented journalists with an obsession for great content and mobile news delivery.”
The product seems haphazard and has two glaring flaws.
The first issues is that Apple News would lack any sort of journalistic independence.
Apple is notoriously fanatical about employees drinking the Kool Aid. Just to work at one of its retail stores, employees must prove themselves to be die-hard Mac lovers. If you’ve ever even used an Android phone you will probably be blacklisted from the job.
So when news breaks about its rivals such as Google or Samsung, or perhaps its appauling factory conditions in China, its safe to assume Apple simply won’t cover it.
The second strange twist to the Apple News service is that it seems to want to steal content from real news outlets.
A number of Apple bloggers recently received emails from the company and they were anything but cordial. Mike Ash, who covers the company, received one of these letters, informing him that the company wants to include his content on the app’s RSS feed.
The kicker, as Ash noted in a blog post, is that Apple is mandating an “opt out” approach to scrapping his content.
He wrote: “Let me get this straight, Apple: you send me an e-mail outlining the terms under which you will redistribute my content, and you will just assume that I agree to your terms unless I opt out?”
Apple, like so many other industries its entered, is playing hardball. It will steal your content and unless you write to it requesting an opt-out, it will continue to do so for as long as it likes.
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