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Tuesday, July 26, 2016
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For Western news companies looking to India, partnering with local publishers is a path inVice is only the latest American or British publisher to seek out an Indian partner — in its case the Times Group — for reasons that combine local knowledge and legal restrictions. By Hasit Shah. |
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Hot Pod: Are too many people skipping the ads in podcasts?Plus: Using TV’s playbook to pitch podcasts to advertisers, moving from magazines into audio, and a Slack experiment aims to make Gimlet’s core listeners feel engaged. By Nicholas Quah. |
What We’re Reading
Medium / Anil Dash
Pop Life “is like a podcast, but instead of audio, we talk by texting each other” →
Using the public-texting platform Talkshow. The first episode went up today.
Search Engine Land / Ginny Marvin
Google is now selling longer text ads for mobile →
“Expanded text ads include two headlines, each with up to 30 characters and a description of up to 80 characters. Google has said the extra copy was specifically designed to give mobile users more information and cited an average CTR [clickthrough rate] bump of 20 percent in early tests.”
Variety / Dave McNary
Netflix is developing a Panama Papers movie →
The streaming giant has acquired the rights to the book "The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the World's Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money," written by German journalists Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, who were first contacted by the anonymous whistleblower in the largest leak in history.
Digiday / Lucia Moses
How GQ reversed declining homepage traffic →
Three priorities: speed, design, and publishing volume.
Gizmodo / Sophie Kleeman
The group that hacked Mark Zuckerberg just hacked TechCrunch →
“OurMine has taken credit for a number of hacks in recent weeks — besides the aforementioned tech giants, it's also apparently gone after celebrities and Pokémon Go.”
Folio / Caysey Welton
Fortune launches weekly podcast “Fortune Unfiltered” →
“A weekly 30-minute podcast that will include in-depth interviews with some of the most notable thought leaders in business. The conversations will focus on the leaders themselves and what makes them tick. Whether its personal anecdotes about growing up, what inspires them or what personal or professional influences have shaped them over time, nothing will be off limits.”
Folio / Becky Peterson
Amtrak is launching a new in-train magazine →
Sharing an editor-in-chief with United Airlines’ in-flight magazines.
ProPublica / Robert Faturechi
A defamation suit against ProPublica and CIR has been dismissed →
“The lawsuit stemmed from an August 2014 story published by the two nonprofit newsrooms that revealed an apparent security breach at the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, an intelligence center set up by state and local authorities after the 9/11 terror attacks.”
Current / April Simpson
Diversity at NPR: “Clearly, there’s a lot more work to do” →
“For the past three years at NPR, whites have represented about 77 percent of the overall editorial workforce, although their numbers have increased. The other 23 percent self-identified as black, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian or two or more races.”
Digiday / Sahil Patel
Political conventions are proving grounds for virtual reality →
ABC News, CNN, and The Huffington Post are all experimenting with VR at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Wired / Davey Alba
A lawsuit says the FBI is using 21-year-old software to process FOIA requests →
“The federal suit filed by MIT national security researcher Ryan Shapiro on the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of FOIA this month claims that the FBI is using software developed in 1995 to respond to FOIA requests. The software is so old, according to Shapiro, that it doesn't even have a graphical user interface, meaning no mouse or icons. “