Walking Duck Ready to Fly

New Online News Operation and Production House Features Human-Curated ‘News You Need Now’

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Walking Duck, a new kind of news and entertainment division created by journalists and media experts, commences formal operations tomorrow with the launch of its news website: walkingduck.com.While 2021 might not seem like the ideal time to start a news operation, Walking Duck Co-Founder Paul Wilke cited the fractured media environment as the impetus behind creating Walking Duck, “This year requires a new approach with regard to how we look at news. If the COVID-19 and Trump eras have taught us anything, it’s that news moves faster than ever, and facts are a commodity that aren’t trading hands often enough. As the daily news cycle continues to chum the waters with inaccuracies and over-the-top rhetoric, journalism seems to be broken: We watch, read, comment on, retweet and engage with reporting we wholeheartedly agree with and absorb what we find shocking. Truly unbiased information rapidly delivered remains in short supply.”

A recent study highlights this digital trust divide, with an indication that Americans are losing trust in their news and information sources.

Wilke added, “There is a middle ground. If you’re a regular MSNBC viewer, I don’t expect you to go watch Fox News for two hours a day or vice versa, but there is good reporting and sophisticated aggregation to be done every day on stories that you need to know about. That’s where Walking Duck comes in.”

The home base of Walking Duck’s news operations is the website, which is where readers can go to read up on news stories they should be following throughout the day. The Walking Duck news page, at any given time, follows the very top stories, giving readers enough information to feel informed. Walking Duck merges news and social media aggregation, fresh journalistic content, and impartial political analysis to create a reliable and informative news platform for consumers of media content that covers every topic that is capturing public attention in the news cycle. Every time a reader logs on, the question that will be answered is, “What’s going on?” in news, politics, business and more.

Recognizing that readers tend to go to more than one source for news, Walking Duck was created as a starting point for readers to get an educated news intake on what’s happening all the time. WalkingDuck.com is part news analysis, part human-curated content designed to quickly, and accurately provide you with the main news stories you should be following.

Walking Duck Co-Founder Mark Halperin said, “It’s the human-curation aspect that makes this distinctive. We will only post those stories that are credible. We are fact checking and eliminating left/right bias. Being informative is key - We’re not providing clickbait, nor will we put a story on Walking Duck for the sole purpose of generating views. If it’s news you need to know now, you’ll find it on Walking Duck, along with our analysis of what’s most important.”

Walking Duck had its humble beginnings in the pre-pandemic world. In late-2019, Wilke had a fortuitous meeting with co-founder Mark Halperin. “Mark and I talked about the state of news today, the state of politics today, how we would improve things if we could about both. What emerged from that meeting was a clear vision of what Walking Duck should be, and a shared sense of what was needed.”

Walking Duck is a company that features, at launch, a news website, a newsletter (Mark Halperin’s Wide World of News), a broadcast production operation and a business platform all designed to deliver “news you need now” rather than “news you can use.” According to Wilke, the difference is notable, “News you need now is news that is happening, news that impacts you, rather than something that’s already happened. Readers will go to Walking Duck to read about what’s happening today and about what will happen next.”

In addition to the website and Wide World of News, since June 2020, Walking Duck has been producing Mark Halperin’s Focus Group on Newsmax, a program designed to offer up unfiltered opinions from regular voters all across the American political spectrum.

Walking Duck also has a B2B/B2C business component. Recognizing that the news media isn’t always the money maker it used to be, Walking Duck B2B/B2C productions develop content that can be used internally by all sorts of organizations, shared with media or to create invaluable intel for businesses. Among its current distinctive focus groups are affordable fast-turn-around focus groups done virtually.

And who are the people behind Walking Duck? We are a growing and scrappy team of journalists, researchers, communications experts and news junkies. Halperin and Wilke brought the Duck into the world: Wilke is a former (and again) journalist, communications specialist and founder/CEO of Upright Position Communications and Halperin is a the multi-hyphenated journalist/political analyst/author (Game Change, How to Beat Trump) and co-creator of Showtime’s The Circus. Walking Duck brings together their collective decades of journalistic experience, political insight, and marketing and communications expertise to fill the gaps that are not being addressed by broadcast, online, or print media outlets today. Walking Duck’s staff is committed to keeping content fresh and relevant, with teams on both coasts allowing for round-the-clock updating.

The website and Wide World of News are free for users and advertiser-supported. Mark Halperin’s Focus Group can be viewed on Newsmax each week on Saturdays at 5pm ET/2pm PT with an encore presentation Sundays at 3pm ET/Noon PT. For more information about Walking Duck’s B2B/B2C focus group offerings and video production, please email info@walkingduck.com.

*About Walking Duck*
Walking Duck is a news and information production company committed to journalistic excellence, fairness in reporting and providing reliable, factual information. 2020 taught us that it is obvious that there is a cavernous need for a media outlet that provides both original insight and instantaneous access to the latest news at the nexus of politics, media, entertainment, tech, business, and sports in a way that is easily absorbed and brings fresh material both to consumers of content and media outlets in need of content that answers the most basic of human questions: What’s going on?

For more information:
Laura Metzger
Upright Position Communications
laura@uprightcomms.com
(339) 788-0128