Welcome to the first edition of our NewsWhip Daily spotlight round-up. Every weekday morning we send a newsletter to our subscribers that predicts the top stories and social posts of the day. Here’s today’s, as an example. As part of that, we spotlight a specific topic that is gaining media and public interest across the web and discuss its impact.Â
These are ephemeral by design in the newsletter, so every Friday we will be publishing a blog that catalogs each spotlight so that you can have a full view of what stories mattered during the week. If you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter itself, though, you can do that here.
Let’s jump right into this week, beginning with February 7th, 2022.
Feb 7th: GoFundMe embroiled in trucker crisis
GoFundMe has found itself dragged into something of a crisis this week, after it announced that it would not be releasing funds to the so-called “freedom convoy” in Canada until a clear plan for the funds was revealed.
This caused a huge backlash over the last few days, especially from conservative American publications and politicians.
Feb 8th: Joe Rogan and Spotify
Ever since Neil Young took his “me or Joe Rogan” with Spotify stand at the end of January, the discourse has been ongoing around the company’s responsibility as a platform.Â
Often we see these controversies come and go in a couple of days, but that has not been the case here, with the crisis ongoing for more than two weeks already.
What we particularly wanted to illustrate here is just how much of a monolithic narrative this has been for Spotify compared to all coverage of the platform, with around 90% of Spotify’s engagement in the last few weeks being about Joe Rogan.
Feb 9th: The top publishers of January 2022 on Facebook
The Daily Wire saw its domination of the most engaged websites on Facebook continue into 2022 as we looked back at the top publishers and articles in January this year.
This has largely been driven by the publisher’s remarkable consistency in terms of engagement. While other publications have fluctuated up and down in recent months, the Daily Wire has seen engagement in the mid-30 million range for the majority of the last few months. You can read the blog itself here.Â
Feb 10th: Dollywood to offer free tuition to employees
We’ve written previously about how companies are competing in a tight labor market by offering perks to their employees, and that trend continues with Dollywood.Â
The theme park owned by Dolly Parton has pledged to pay tuition costs for employees that want to pursue higher education, and the reaction from the public in particular has been overwhelming.
Feb 11th: Rihanna’s lingerie for men
This year Rihanna has seized Valentine’s Day, and she’s declared that men deserve love too.
In 2018 the singer-turned-beauty-mogul expanded her business with the addition of the Savage X Fenty lingerie brand, which has since disrupted the lingerie industry thanks to its inclusive designs and affordable prices. Staying true to her mission, this Valentine’s Day Rihanna has launched a lingerie line that is specifically for men — and it’s turning heads.
There were 143 articles written about the new drop on Jan 18th, which was easily the biggest day for media interest, although only one publisher, Pink News, focused on the men’s portion of the collection in the first few days of coverage. More publishers began covering the men’s line on Jan 27th, which led to the biggest peak of public interest on Jan 30th — a day with more than 37k engagements.
You can read the full blog here.
That’s all for this week, but don’t forget you can subscribe to the NewsWhip Daily to receive the top predicted stories of the morning and every spotlight delivered straight to your inbox.
