How The Telegraph built its new CMS by focusing on simplicity: The latest from Nieman Lab

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

How The Telegraph built its new CMS by focusing on simplicity The British newspaper was previously using five separate online publishing systems, each of which larded up the publishing process with dozens of fiddly steps. By Joseph Lichterman.

The UK’s Times and Sunday Times are structuring their new apps and website around peak traffic times The papers are behind a hard paywall, and their platforms will be updated four times each day to correspond with peaks in readership. By Joseph Lichterman.

In the U.K. and Finland, public media is thriving on digital; in other European countries, not so much

What We’re Reading

Ars Technica / Glyn Moody

A German court rules adblocking software legal (again) →

“The court found that there is no contract between publishers and visitors to websites as a result of which users have ‘agreed’ to view all the ads a publisher serves. ‘To the contrary, said the court, users have the right to block those or any ads, because no such contract exists,’ Williams writes.”

Columbia Journalism Review / Katie Ferguson

The influence and limitations of Black Twitter →

“If Black Twitter didn't continue to exist in the way it does now, you'd actually see a decline of the black press because it's so difficult to source these stories if you don't have the resources, which a lot of the black press suffers from.”

Quartz / David Yanofsky

The evolution of Bloomberg’s homepage from 2010 to 2016 →

This is the sixth design of Bloomberg’s homepage in as many years.

Washington Post / Michael S. Rosenwald

Are 50 million stolen research articles giving academic journals their Napster moment? →

“Publishers acknowledge they can probably never catch up to Elbakyan, yet they are adamant that Sci-Hub will not harm them or evolve into a future business model the way that Napster ultimately led to Apple's iTunes — and dramatic revenue losses for record labels.”

The Wall Street Journal / Steven Perlberg

Web annotation platform Genius is launching an advertising business →

While the details of what Genius will do for advertisers remain to be seen, the company says it plans to create for marketers custom content and data products underpinned by its technology.

Windesheim International

Netherlands’ Windesheim University adds “constructive journalism” to its J-school curriculum →

The emerging domain of constructive journalism uses “research and application from behavioral science like positive psychology, moral psychology, and related domains.”

Politico / Alex Weprin

Trump & Co. are shattering cable news ratings records →

“For the first time since it launched in 1996, Fox News was the most-watched channel in all of cable TV last quarter, topping ESPN, which had NFL and college football playoff games; AMC, which televises the ratings juggernaut The Walking Dead; and TBS, which aired college basketball games and a number of high-profile comedy shows.”

Twitter / magicandrew

Twitter removes a Moment that made fun of a confused Trump supporter →

“Fair critique and I agree. We’ve pulled this one down.”

Digiday / Lucia Moses

In rebrand, Bloomberg Business is now just “Bloomberg” →

“The site itself has become more than just a business publication, having launched multi-platform verticals for opinion and politics. A full-fledged tech vertical is also in the works for later this year.”

iTunes / BuzzFeed

The new version of the BuzzFeed News app adds alerts for Canada, Australia, and the U.K. →

“If you have friends in Canada or the UK or Australia you should definitely start telling them about this app you’re super into from BuzzFeed that helps you quickly catch up on the news. No reason.”

Poynter / Melody Kramer

Why isn’t there a Fitbit for news? →

Some prototypes do exist that focus on analytics dashboards for end users: Students from the Northwestern University Knight Lab and hackers at an MIT Media Lab journalism hackathon created Slimformation and Newstrition, respectively — which each show readers' existing news habits through a Google Chrome app.

The Guardian / Philip Oltermann

The Associated Press’ cooperation with Nazis revealed by German academic →

“The New York-based agency ceded control of its output by signing up to the so-called Schriftleitergesetz (editor's law), promising not to publish any material ‘calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home'”

Medium / Jarrod Dicker

How we should be thinking about advertising in messaging apps →

“Messenger applications provoke a very different user behavior from desktop and mWeb interaction. It's more personal. It's more direct. And users will shy away from any unwanted disruption within their chat stream. It will be an opt in approach, and something different from anything we've seen before.”

Politico Media / Peter Sterne

First Look brings on Anna Holmes to develop new property →

“Holmes will create and run a new media property under the First Look umbrella that will focus on commissioning and curating visual work — including videos, photography and graphic storytelling — from independent creators. Holmes expects that the property will have a full-time staff of at least eight people, though most of its content will come from outside contributors. It is expected to launch in the fall.”

Entertainment Weekly / Will Robinson

Serial Season 2 ends this week →

"This has been a different kind of story. It's a story where, in a lot of ways, a lot of people have agreed on the facts from the very beginning," executive producer Julie Snyder told Entertainment Weekly.

Politico / Alex Spence

The FT’s paid print and online circulation rose 8 percent to 780,000 →

“About three-quarters of the paying audience access the FT online: Digital subscriptions rose 12 percent year-on-year to 566,000. There was no information about its financial performance.”

CFO / Katie Kuehner-Hebert

Tribune Publishing dumps its CFO and its auditor →

“The ineffective controls ‘contributed to material weaknesses related to review and approval of insert volume forecasts and variance analysis for preprint advertising, documentation of approval of rates for circulation and other revenue, and the review of compensation expense…'”

From Fuego

The Editor Of The Anti-EU Daily Mail Has Claimed £60,000 In EU Subsidies For His Scottish Estate —ww​w.buzzfeed.c​om

Associated Press’s cooperation with Nazis revealed by German academic —ww​w.theguardian.c​om

Trump and Lewandowski: An unlikely pair of kindred spirits —ww​w.washingtonpost.c​om

Constructive Journalism – Windesheim International —ww​w.windesheiminternational.​nl

This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they’re free. —ww​w.washingtonpost.c​om

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.

Nieman Lab / Fuego / Encyclo

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Hot Pod: Can podcasts move beyond talking heads to produce digital-first audio news?: The latest from Nieman Lab

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Hot Pod: Can podcasts move beyond talking heads to produce digital-first audio news? New podcast companies aren’t “working to solve the journalistic problem that a legacy organization like NPR fights to negotiate.” By Nicholas Quah.

FOIA Mapper aims to make it easier for journalists to know where to look for public documents “There's all this information sitting out there that everyone has access to, but nobody has any idea that it's even there. That’s the basis of the project.” By Joseph Lichterman.

NPR has a new HTML5 audio player that kills the popup (and Flash)

What We’re Reading

Twitter / Katherine Clark

Rep. Katherine Clark asks Genius about potential abuse on the platform →

“Now that your platform has been shown to enable abusive behavior, do you have plans to implement a robust reporting and remediation process or provide an opt-out function?”

Quartz / Mike Murphy

Snapchat revamps the chat section of its app to make it less confusing to olds →

“This could perhaps be an indication that Snapchat is trying to make its messaging service feel less exclusive — and easier to use — as it aims to directly take on social messaging competitors like Messenger and WhatsApp, both of which have over 1 billion daily users. (Snapchat reportedly has about 100 million daily users.)”

Poynter

Poynter and the National Association of Black Journalists are partnering to develop a new digital leadership program →

The tuition-free program will address the unique issues journalists of color face on the path to leadership in digital journalism and technology organizations. Poynter is teamed up with ONA for

Quartz / Mike Murphy

Snapchat has added a bunch of new messaging features →

“Snapchat said today that it has rebuilt the chat section of its app, which now feels a lot like Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp apps. Users can now send stickers, photos, short video messages, and start voice calls to their contacts within Snapchat. To start a chat, users swipe right on their contacts as they did before, but they're now greeted with a range of options.”

Los Angeles Review of Books / Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Why citations still matter in the age of Google →

On the newest edition of the MLA Handbook: “I am convinced that it is possible to get rid of the murky bathwater without disposing of the baby.”

BuzzFeed / Alex Kantrowitz

You can now post 60-second videos on Instagram →

“The Facebook-owned product is extending the time limit of user-posted videos from 15 to 60 seconds. The move is sure to increase the amount of video consumption on its platform, which has already shot up 40% over the past six months, per a spokesperson.”

Twitter Blogs / Todd Kloots

Twitter enables “accessible images for everyone” →

“Starting today, people using our iOS and Android apps can add descriptions — also known as alternative text (alt text) — to images in Tweets.”T

Medium / Julia Carpenter

The Washington Post is combing its archives for women’s stories (from women) →

“For women's history month, The Washington Post is opening up our archives to resurface profiles of interesting women — as written by interesting women.”

CNN / Brian Stelter

Sports Illustrated’s football site MMQB will be growing →

Lead writer Peter King has agreed to a contract extension and will be adding staff.

Bloomberg / Gerry Smith

Newspapers gobble each other up to survive the digital apocalypse →

“Last year, the industry saw the most deals for the largest amount of money since the 2008 financial crisis, with 70 daily newspapers being sold for a combined $827 million, according to mergers-and-acquisitions adviser Dirks, Van Essen & Murray. Gannett Co. bought 15 dailies, including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Tribune snapped up the San Diego Union-Tribune; and Warren Buffett's newspaper chain acquired the Free Lance–Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia.”

Recode / Peter Kafka

The New York Times may make it harder to use Facebook and Twitter to jump its paywall →

“Two months ago, the Times began capping some Facebook users' access to the site at 10 articles a month, said NYT rep Eileen Murphy. On Friday, she said, the NYT expanded the test limits to referrals from Twitter and other services.”

From Fuego

Security researchers: help EFF keep the Web safe for browser research! —bo​ingboing.n​et

NFL demands retraction of Times article on player concussions —ww​w.capitalnewyork.c​om

Accessible images for everyone | Twitter Blogs —bl​og.twitter.c​om

Trump aide charged with misdemeanor battery on Breitbart reporter —ww​w.palmbeachpost.c​om

Snapchat seamlessly combines video, audio, GIFs, stickers in “Chat 2.0” —te​chcrunch.c​om

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.

Nieman Lab / Fuego / Encyclo

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Bloomberg’s Hello World tech-and-travel show trades talking heads for Vice-like filmmaking: The latest from Nieman Lab

Monday, March 28, 2016

Bloomberg’s Hello World tech-and-travel show trades talking heads for Vice-like filmmaking “With video on the web, the most important thing is that you meet the audience eye to eye.” By Ricardo Bilton.

From Nieman Reports: The four kinds of people you meet in newsrooms going digital The Natives, the Naturals, the Collaborators, and the Fearful: You can guess which one The Marshall Project's Gabriel Dance says is “a dangerous group to be in.” By Gabriel Dance.

Oculus Rift for news? Not quite yet

Is there a way to save the best of the decentralized early Internet in an age of Facebook and Google?

What We’re Reading

Quartz / Marc Bain

Facebook’s erroneous “safety check” accidentally became a breaking news alert →

“By pinging people nowhere near the bombing [yesterday] in Pakistan, however, it did unintentionally demonstrate Facebook's power as a media platform.”

Storybench / Aleszu Bajak

Covering rainforests and beyond, how a Brazilian media start-up is reporting on the environment →

“The mainstream media in Brazil is not covering science enough. They're not offering the scientific perspective on many topics. Science and the environment are not the main focus for mainstream media companies. We have great journalists and photographers, big public interest in these issues, and we have lots of science that's not being used by the media.”

The Wall Street Journal / Mike Shields

How oversized web ads are encouraging adblocking →

“According to many publishers, ad agencies consistently produce oversized, tracking-laden digital ad files and often deliver them at the last minute without enough time for publishers to push back. This behavior is contributing to how slowly some Web pages are loading, encouraging the growing use of ad-blocking software among consumers, they argue.”

The New York Times / Ravi Somaiya

Jill Abramson is formally joining The Guardian as a political columnist →

Abramson, who has already written for The Guardian about the American elections in recent weeks, will write regularly as part of its coverage of the presidential race this year.

Variety / Janko Roettgers

Periscope has been used for 200 million broadcasts, 100 million since January alone →

“Twitter added Periscope live streams to its timeline in January, and the potential for a much larger audience is apparently not lost on broadcasters: Periscope's number of total broadcasts doubled since January, when it surpassed 100 million.”

The Guardian / Barry Glendenning

Soccer podcasts are booming in popularity →

The Guardian’s Football Weekly was downloaded 15 million times in 2015.

Forbes / Parmy Olson

Outbrain’s chat bots are coming to Facebook Messenger, Kik, and Telegram →

“Outbrain is currently in talks with several publishers to build chat bots that can deliver their news in a text format. These bots will become like official accounts for chat apps to whom you can text keywords like "sports" or "latest headlines" to bring up stories.”

Medium / Martin Belam

The difficulty of getting people to read about Lahore →

“It's a seemingly intractable problem though. Social media is littered with people accusing the media of not covering Lahore with the same kind of depth that was afforded to Brussels. But as an industry we just can't seem to get people to want to read the coverage in the same amount of depth.”

Digiday / Lucia Moses

Ad on New York Times raises conflict of interest questions →

“A Times spokeswoman said the ad meets with its guidelines that say Times editorial content can be used in ads as long as the material is "quoted accurately and has not been taken out of context." The rep said the paper didn't tell the advertiser in advance when the story would publish. The story was posted at 7 a.m. March 24 and the ad went live 17 hours later, at midnight.”

Monday Note / Frédéric Filloux

Publishers’ clickbait obsession is devouring journalism →

There are three alternatives, writes Frederic Filloux: separating a clickbait operation from the newsroom, the paid-for model, and non-profit, philanthropy-supported journalism.

Digiday / Yuyu Chen

Native advertising could make up as much as three quarters of The Atlantic's ad revenue this year →

And Atlantic Re:think, the marketing group behind The Atlantic's sponsored content, is now a team of 32 people, a 25 percent from last year.

Associated Press / Adam Schreck

Al Jazeera is slashing 500 jobs, many of them in its Qatar headquarters →

Last month it shut down its Al Jazeera America cable news network, launched in October 2013, after struggling to attract viewers and convince cable and satellite companies to carry it.

Poynter / Laura Zommer and Olivia Sohr

How Argentinian fact-checking website Chequeado moved into television →

The fact-checking show “50 Minutos” is now a regular segment on cable TV. One challenge: “The language of television is radically different from the one we’re accustomed to as digital-first fact-checkers.”

Digiday / Sahil Patel

TV-quality live videos are coming to Facebook →

Major publishers will now be able to integrate this technology into their control rooms, allowing for videos that have multiple cameras, remote segments and a more polished look. Facebook is planning to announce this capability during its annual F8 developers conference next month.

The Wall Street Journal / Nick Niedzwiadek

The NFL is running ads on the very New York Times story it’s trying to counter →

“We wanted readers to have all the information about all the work that we've done to improve the safety of the game," said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy. "We were concerned that our message was being mishandled by the Times."

From Fuego

This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest | Jill Abramson —ww​w.theguardian.c​om

BREAKING: Nathan Deal vetoes Georgia’s ‘religious liberty’ bill —po​litics.blog.ajc.c​om

Periscope Has Been Used for 200 Million Broadcasts, 100 Million Since January Alone —va​riety.c​om

Oculus Rift review: Virtual reality gaming is finally ready for your living room —ma​shable.c​om

Instagrammers really want you to turn on notifications to avoid death by algorithm —te​chcrunch.c​om

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.

Nieman Lab / Fuego / Encyclo

Twitter / Facebook

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Cambridge, MA 02138

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The game of concentration: The Internet is pushing the American news business to New York and the coasts: The latest from Nieman Lab

Friday, March 25, 2016

The game of concentration: The Internet is pushing the American news business to New York and the coasts Rather than create geographic diversity, digital news has pushed the industry into a few tight clusters. That has real impacts on the journalism we get. By Joshua Benton.

Think you’re bad at math? A new Tow Center report explores the principles behind data journalism “The future is very hard to know, but standards of journalistic accuracy apply to descriptions of the future at least as much as they apply to descriptions of the present, if not more so.” By Shan Wang.

What We’re Reading

Poynter / Benjamin Mullin

Meet Beta, the team that brings The New York Times to your smartphone →

In less than three years, Beta has developed and released a series of products that touch nearly every cranny of the Times newsroom: NYT Now, the Times’ aggregation-fueled news app, was the first product released by Beta in April 2014. NYT Opinion, a subscription-based app that attempted to monetize the Times’ opinion content, came a few months later. In September 2014, Beta rolled out NYT Cooking, an interactive guide to the Times’ enormous library of recipes.

AdAge / Jeremy Barr

Ev Williams talks about Medium’s future and the spinoff of Matter Studios →

“Long-term it’s clearer and clearer I think to the world that Medium really is a platform, and there may be flagship publications that we own, but that’s not the gist of it.”

Poynter / Benjamin Mullin

Mark Horvit to step down as executive director of IRE →

He’s taking a new job at The University of Missouri.

The New York Times / Emily Steel

Apple is making an original TV show →

It’s about apps. “Apple's ambitions to go head to head with Netflix and create its own lineup of exclusive movies and TV shows has long been the subject of much chatter and speculation.”

NetNewsCheck

Jeff Jarvis to broadcasters: “I'd be on whatever platform I can be on” →

“I'm not saying that we should all make PewDiePie in the news business, but there are lessons to be learned from rethinking fundamentally how video fits in people's lives. It's not media consumption. It's an element in conversation.”

Quartz / Lisa Rabasca Roepe

America’s obsession with social media is undermining the democratic process →

"Our data shows that one of the things that has developed along side of the proliferation of news sources and social media platforms is that the political environment is also becoming more divided rather than more cohesive," Amy Mitchell, Pew's director of journalism research, tells Quartz.

The Verge / Ashley Carman

Here are some basic cybersecurity tips →

What one Verge journalist learned after her phone was stolen on a Mexican vacation

The New York Times / Liriel Higa

This is what it’s like to work for a New York Times columnist →

Here’s how Nicholas Kristof’s outgoing assistant Liriel Higa describes it: “I fact-check and give feedback on his columns, run his blog, produce his newsletter, answer his phone, enter expenses, cajole embassies into giving him visas, investigate new social media platforms, provide mediocre tech support and rib him about his abysmal pop culture knowledge. I've never ghostwritten for him or fetched him coffee.”

Politico / Alex Spence

It’s the last day in print for The Independent →

Working on a British bank holiday, no less.

The Wall Street Journal / Jack Marshall

Publishers are now hiring specialists to coordinate relationships with platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat →

"It's very much a people and relationships role. It's the person who builds, maintains and nurtures relationships with their counterparts at platforms," said Condé Nast International's chief digital officer, Wolfgang Blau.

Poynter / Rick Edmonds

The National Association of Broadcasters has started investing directly in tech startups →

“It was news to me that the industry group has had an active involvement in tech experiments for years — a contrast to the newspaper industry, which typically showcases tech vendors at its conferences and stops there.”

Digiday / Lucinda Southern

Not all platforms: Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post and The Guardian on the platforms that matter to them →

The Cosmopolitan for instance got a first-mover advantage by signing up early on Snapchat Discover — it gets 3 million views there a day. The Guardian, meanwhile, has seen little benefit to being early on Facebook's Instant Articles, highlighting the risk of handing over that distribution control.

NPR

NPR names Thomas Hjelm chief digital officer →

“Currently the digital leader at New York Public Radio, Hjelm will be responsible for guiding NPR’s digital strategy in ways that keep ahead of the changing ways audiences are consuming news and cultural content. He will report to NPR President and CEO Jarl Mohn and will step into the role in late April.”

From Fuego

Gawker’s Season of Fear and Loathing —ww​w.thedailybeast.c​om

Media Metrics Roundup —pb​s.us2.list-manage1.c​om

How millennials should deal with baby boomers at work —ww​w.latimes.c​om

Here is Maserati’s first SUV and other luxury wonders as automakers target the rich —ma​shable.c​om

MediaShift #191: Hulk Hogan Beats Gawker; Quartz Texts the News; David Cohn on Incubating at Advance by MediaShift Podcast —so​undcloud.c​om

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.

Nieman Lab / Fuego / Encyclo

Twitter / Facebook

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Harvard University

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