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Tuesday, April 12, 2016
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Here are the important announcements for publishers at Facebook’s F8 keynoteA big step forward for news bots, new sharing tools, and Facebook Live goes pro. By Joshua Benton. |
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The New Yorker Today is the magazine’s new iPhone app for its online articles (plus cartoons)The app will be free for a time while The New Yorker figures out how many articles readers can access before hitting the paywall. By Ricardo Bilton. |
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Live, local, late breaking: On Facebook Live, news outlets take a cue from TV (but don’t call it TV)“This opens up all kind of new ways and products to tell stories that are not so focused on production values.” By Shan Wang. |
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Hot Pod: How big are Audible’s ambitions in changing short-form audio? Really, really big“I’m not at Audible to build podcasts. I’m at Audible to start a revolution. In the way audio is produced, and in the way audio is distributed.” By Nicholas Quah. |
What We’re Reading
Variety / Janko Roettgers
Facebook opens up live video to developers to allow streaming from any device →
The company is making its live API publicly available. This will allow developers to integrate live streaming into third-party apps and devices.
The Verge / Casey Newton
Facebook’s buried Save feature has 250 million users a month, and a new button to help it spread →
“Today at the F8 developer conference, Facebook is introducing a Save to Facebook button for the web. Publishers can now add the button to their standard article templates, and whenever a user taps the button, it will save the article or video directly to their Facebook queue.”
Financial Times / Matthew Garrahan and Henry Mance
BuzzFeed missed its 2015 revenue targets badly and has slashed its 2016 projections in half →
“The company, known for its lists, irreverent content and fast-growing editorial operation, had projected about $250m in revenues for 2015 but generated less than $170m, according to three people with knowledge of the situation. The company has halved its internal revenue target for 2016 from $500m to $250m, the people said.”
Society for News Design
SND Digital’s World’s Best awards go to The Marshall Project and Quartz →
Also shortlisted: AJ+, BuzzFeed News, and NYT Now.
Dart Center
This year’s Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma go to The Washington Post and the AP →
With an honorable mention to Matter.
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
A UK auto publisher’s pageviews fell by 16 percent in a Facebook Instant Articles test →
"The main point for us is that we turned on Facebook Instant Articles and expected more distribution, or for this content to weigh higher than other Facebook content," said Adnan Ebrahim, founder and CEO of the publisher. "Instead, we saw the opposite effect." Car Throttle cut the test short to avoid further traffic declines.”
The Washington Post / Christopher Ingraham
The dirty little secret that data journalists aren’t telling you →
“Visualizing data is as much an art as a science. And seemingly tiny design decisions — where to set a color threshold, how many thresholds to set, etc. — can radically alter how numbers are displayed and perceived by readers.”
The Guardian / Becky Gardiner
The dark side of Guardian comments →
“The 10 regular writers who got the must abuse were 8 women (4 white and 4 non-white) and 2 black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay.”
Medium / Melody Kramer
More than 200 free ideas for your next podcast →
Live commentary on live events. Interview everyone in the United States with the last name Smith. Cover one person for an entire season. Pull out a tape recorder on your commute. Profile one person every day. Call it: Commute. Interview people who make podcasts. And more.
The Observer / Ryan Holiday
An interview with The Wirecutter’s Brian Lam →
On affiliate revenue: “Most people aren’t smart enough to realize that it is less conflicted than advertising in a lot of ways.”
From Fuego
The dark side of Guardian comments —www.theguardian.com
Inside a Billionaire’s New Interstellar Mission —www.theatlantic.com
Facebook’s buried Save feature has 250 million users a month, and a new button to help it spread —www.theverge.com
Uber says gave U.S. agencies data on more than 12 million users —www.reuters.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.