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Wednesday, July 20, 2016
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Here are 6 reasons why newspapers have dropped their paywallsSometimes it’s a response to a public emergency; sometimes it’s just to build audience. By Joseph Lichterman. |
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Is Twitter letting everyone be verified or just making it easier for its staff to go to parties in peace?Instead of hassling your neighbor’s cousin’s friend who works at Twitter, you can now get rejected via form email. By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re Reading
Pew Research Center / Anna Brown, Gustave López, and Mark Hugo Lopez
The Hispanic/white digital divide is shrinking →
“Big gains in internet use made by immigrant Hispanics and Spanish-dominant Hispanics, two closely linked groups, have been the main drivers in closing this gap.”
Washington Post
The Washington Post built an in-house newsletter tool on Amazon’s Simple Email Service platform →
“Journalists can create custom templates for specific newsletters, allowing for a mix of curated content as well as content pulled in via feeds. Posts from social channels can be quickly added using only a link and Paloma's responsive design ensures multimedia elements fit seamlessly alongside text.”
NPR.org
NPR published its first VR story today →
It’s an interactive look at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, and it’s designed to work on desktop, mobile, and with Google Cardboard viewers.
The Information / Zara Zhang
A look at the enormous role WeChat plays in Chinese life →
“Those struggling to understand WeChat's role in China ask me: Is WeChat the Facebook of China? iMessage of China? Or Slack of China? The answer: It is all of those, and more. There is simply no U.S. equivalent of WeChat, which is really more of a lifestyle app centered around chat than merely a messaging app.”
Politico / Ken Doctor
What could Fox News look like post-Roger Ailes? →
“Consider that the average Fox News Channel viewer is 68 years old, and getting a year older each year. Bill O'Reilly's audience: 72!…[James and Lachlan Murdoch] can look at the data — presumably more their bailiwick, now, than Rupert's — and see the issues FNC faces with 25-54-year-olds.”
Bloomberg / Saritha Rai
Facebook is piloting offline video in India →
“The move followed feedback from users in the country citing poor video experiences because of limited mobile coverage, Facebook said in a statement.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Lauren Steussy
How Chalkbeat is trying to build a bigger audience for education news →
Chalkbeat is doing more to try to synthesize what its reporters see in different cities, looking for common threads to contextualize the issues. Earlier this year, the network launched a new national homepage and named a national editor.
BuzzFeed / Borzou Daragahi
Six hours inside the TV station at the heart of Turkey’s failed coup →
“Any change in the political atmosphere affects the politics of the media, all the time.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Beyond native: How The New York Times plans to turn T Brand Studio into a full-fledged agency →
"If you took the Cole Haan video off our site and ran it somewhere else, it holds its own just like work a creative agency would do."
TechCrunch / Josh Constine
How Facebook Messenger clawed its way to 1 billion monthly users →
“Hitting the one billion user milestone could help Facebook attract brands and developers to Messenger's platform.” (I’m sure brands have no time at all for a platform that only reaches 900 million people.)
Harvard
This is the new class of Berkman Klein Fellows →
Including incoming Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellow Karin Pettersson and former Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow An Xiao Mina.
Poynter / Alexios Mantzarlis
A new widget delivers fact-checking where readers want it →
Istinomer, a Serbian fact-checking website, has launched a Google Chrome extension that allows users to highlight fishy claims they see anywhere online and submit them without leaving the pages they’re on.
American Press Institute / Natalie Jomini Stroud
Outsourced copy-editing doesn’t necessarily mean increased corrections →
“The number of corrections did not uniformly increase at all of these newspapers. Rather, there was considerable variability.”
Accelerated Mobile Pages Project
AMP helps the Washington Post increase returning users from mobile search by 23 percent →
Traditionally 51 percent of mobile search users return to the Washington Post within seven days. For users who read stories published in AMP, this number jumps to 63 percent, according to a case study by Google.
Folio: / Becky Peterson
Dwell reimagines itself as a social network →
Dwell.com will soon be a dedicated "collaborative platform" — an interactive and social space where readers, design professionals and brands all post stories, photos and annotations. A more "democratic" version of Dwell, says Michela O’Connor Abrams, president of Dwell Media.
NewsGuild of New York
Law360’s editorial staff votes to unionize →
“An overwhelming majority of the roughly 130 reporters, editors, and news assistants and apprentices at Law360 across the United States have signed on to the drive for Guild representation.”
The Wall Street Journal / Mike Shields
Google looks to AMP up mobile ads →
“AMP for Ads is essentially the advertising counterpart to Google AMP–the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, which is Google's initiative aimed at speeding up the loading of publishers' content on mobile devices.”