🇨🇳 Axios China — by our new China reporter, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian — relaunches tomorrow. Subscribe here.
🇨🇳 Axios China — by our new China reporter, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian — relaunches tomorrow. Subscribe here.
You see the problem. The N.Y. Times' Trip Gabriel tweeted this Iowa caucus result sheet from Dubuque. And that's one of 1,678 precincts.
"We found inconsistencies in the reporting," a party statement said. "In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail."
No, the culprit was closer to home. It turns out that the fabled Iowa caucuses, three years in the planning, were foiled by an app.
Shawn Sebastian, a volunteer who tried to report the results from a precinct in Ames, told MSNBC that when the app didn't work, he tried to phone in results.
The campaigns lit into party officials on a conference call.
The candidates — who had caucus-night parties set up in Des Moines ballrooms, wired for live coverage — finally took advantage of the vacant airtime.
💬 Best text I got last night ... "Big winner: Des Moines Register. Their last poll nailed it."
🥊 Here's the Biden campaign's protest letter:
Before technical difficulties choked off results, TV voyeurs got to watch the Iowa caucuses unfold in all their quirky, colorful, antiquated chaos.
MSNBC's Brian Williams narrated a live feed: "Chairs are becoming scarce on the left side of the room there in Clinton, Iowa."
Over on Fox News, Tucker Carlson talked above the headline: "BERNIE SANDERS IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE."
The disastrous rollout of the Iowa Democratic Party's vote-reporting app looks to go down as a software train wreck for the ages, Axios managing editor Scott Rosenberg writes from the Bay Area.
The big picture: Coding disasters have been with us as long as there's been software. They've led to exploding space missions and lethal doses of radiation for cancer patients.
Between the lines: We don't yet know exactly what happened in Iowa. But it has all the earmarks of what engineers call a "cascading failure."
Background: The Iowa Democrats' app plan had raised questions about security, in an election climate attuned to fears of hacking and meddling.
Our thought bubble: Vulnerabilities may have been less of an issue than usability.
The death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna became one of the most talked-about news events of the social media era, Neal Rothschild writes from data that NewsWhip provided exclusively to Axios.
By the numbers: In the week after the Jan. 26 helicopter accident, stories about the Bryants generated 208 million social-media interactions (likes, shares, comments) — more than coronavirus, impeachment, the Super Bowl, the Iowa caucuses and the Grammys combined.
Between the lines: The story had a huge cascading effect, as tributes drove new stories and hashtags.
The bottom line: In a news ecosystem that's fragmented by both niche interests and ideology, it's rare for the internet to be so captivated by a single story.
President Trump addresses the nation at 9 ET tonight in the House chamber, where Democrats voted to impeach him less than two months ago, and a day before he is expected to be acquitted in the Senate, Axios' Alayna Treene writes.
Trump's theme: the "Great American Comeback."
Mike Bloomberg tells Axios' Jonathan Swan he'd support Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump if those were his two options — but that Sanders is "so far to the left it's not practical," and that "what he wants to do would never get through Congress."
Bloomberg skipped Iowa to campaign in California, the most populous state in the nation and in the March 3 Super Tuesday contests.
Disclosing YouTube revenue separately for the first time, Alphabet said that the Google-owned video site accounted for more than 10% of the company's $46.1 billion in revenue last quarter, and more than $15 billion for the year.
Coffee creamers are getting more grocery-store space as demand grows for new flavors, including Funfetti and Peeps, the Wall Street Journal reports (subscription).
Sales of plant-based creamers, including oats and soy, rose 30% last year to 8% of the creamer market, per the Journal.
📬 Thanks for starting your day with us. Please tell a friend about AM/PM.