 |
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
 |
Pacific Content’s podcasts are all sponsored by companies — but at least there aren’t any adsBranded podcasts want to break out of the traditional intrusive model of advertising: “There are no interruptions for two or three minutes in the middle of a story. There are no top and tail ad breaks. There are no coupon codes.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
 |
Hot Pod: What should an on-demand news podcast look like?Plus: Remixing podcast talent to build new shows, Google prepares to enter the market in a big way, and how to avoid “radiosplaining.” By Nicholas Quah. |
What We’re Reading
The Information / Sam Lessin
Are today’s technology giants now too big for startups to disrupt? →
Interesting to read this in the context of media companies, particularly the digital-natives with valuations in the hundreds of millions or billions. The bet: The rewards of scale are now so great that there can only be a few massive winners.
Bloomberg BNA / Casey Sullivan
How a legal journalist got fired for a non-compete agreement →
As more of the news business shifts to New York, and talent becomes more readily mobile, non-competes are going to become a bigger deal.
VentureBeat / Emil Protalinski
Google will stop running Flash display ads on next January →
“Flash has been on its way out for years. Not only is the tool a security nightmare, with new vulnerabilities popping up regularly, the market has been slowly but surely moving away from plugins in favor of HTML5.” Nearly seven years after this.
The Wall Street Journal / Laura Stevens and Lukas I. Alpert
Gannett explores parcel-delivery business →
“Prompted by the e-commerce boom, Gannett reached out to parcel-industry consultants as recently as December. It also had meetings and preliminary discussions with Amazon.com Inc. as it explores delivery possibilities, according to one of those people.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
The hidden (and not so hidden) costs of platform publishing →
“Increasingly, this is becoming more expensive”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
The (somewhat sad) state of Europe’s ad viewability →
“The percentage of ads that are technically viewable in Europe — 50 percent viewed for longer than a second — has fallen from 63 percent in the third quarter to 58 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to ad verification company Meetrics.”
Poynter / Kristen Hare
Why NPR spent Super Bowl 50 tweeting football haikus →
Cover the Big Game? With haikus, said NPR. A second-screen win.
The Guardian / Mark Sweney
Vice UK staff move to unionize to ‘share in the success’ of media company →
"We want pay issues addressed so everyone gets a fair deal, including freelancers”
Washington Post / Monica Hesse
“Serial” takes the stand: How a podcast became a character in its own narrative →
“This binge-listening is when [Asia McClain] realized that her involvement in the case had been misunderstood for more than a decade.”
Wall Street Journal / Jack Marshall
Washington Post’s “Bandito” tool lets editors test different article versions for clicks →
“Publishers frequently use so-called A/B tests to compare different versions of articles and to establish which headlines and images appeal to readers, but the Post's tool is particularly interesting because it automatically implements changes based on the information it collects. This allows editors to essentially ‘set and forget’ the tool, the company said, which makes the process more efficient.”
Quartz / Zach Seward
Quartz is moving offices, and it’s blogging about it on Medium →
“It's all about this underlying question shared by so many growing firms: How do you capture a company's culture in a physical space?”
NPR / Isabel Lara
How NPR collaborated with member stations for a national conversation around voter anxiety →
Member stations were invited to participate by asking listeners the same question — “Why is America anxious?” — in their call-in, locally-produced talk-shows and in their reporting. Some stations then sent audio to Morning Edition for broadcast pieces to air at the end of last month.
From Fuego
This Is How Hillary Clinton Gets the Coverage She Wants —gawker.com
Introducing First View | Twitter Blogs —blog.twitter.com
Politwoops U.S. is back! —sunlightfoundation.com
Announcing the Twitter Trust & Safety Council | Twitter Blogs —blog.twitter.com
Amazon Is Building Global Delivery Business to Take On Alibaba —www.bloomberg.com
Fuego is our heat-seeking Twitter bot, tracking the stories the future-of-journalism crowd is talking about most. Usually those are about journalism and technology, although sometimes they get distracted by politics, sports, or GIFs. (No humans were involved in this listing, and linking is not endorsing.) Check out Fuego on the web to get up-to-the-minute news.