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Thursday, July 14, 2016
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MuckRock is launching a national database of FOIA exemptions“One of the things that MuckRock focused on in the beginning was to de-intimidate requests. We want to do the same thing with the appeals process.” By Joseph Lichterman. |
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Newsonomics: Are ads on top news sites worth more? A new study says yes“No matter how you are targeting and how effective you are at reaching audience, you need to pay attention to where your ads are running.” By Ken Doctor. |
What We’re Reading
The Next Web / Napier Lopez
Facebook is bringing Instant Articles to Messenger →
“Meaning that you don't need to open a browser to quickly read breaking news or the viral listicle of the day.”
Business Insider Australia / Hunter Walk
What can be learned from YouTube about Facebook Live and violent footage →
“What's most important is [that] YouTube executives started to think about human rights and activists as a "user segment" we wanted to support. “
Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag / shz.de
A German newspaper has built new native mobile apps using Google AMP →
“By using the open source software from Google, articles load approximately four times faster than conventional websites.”
Editor & Publisher / Adreana Young
Shaw Media’s Pro Football Weekly is offering to give newspapers its content for free →
"With the content we distribute to our partners, we pre-populate ad spaces that they can sell to their local audience, so that they can make some money off the content. And then from our perspective by having more distribution partners, we can get the word out about the website," said Kate Weber, executive director of sales and content.
Columbia Journalism Review / Heather Chaplin
How The New York Times is incorporating design into audience research →
“If you're not doing audience research, you risk just taking shots in the dark”
Responsive Web Design / Ethan Marcotte and Karen McGrane
How Vox Media built a tech culture that values page speed and web performance →
“One of the original directives of the performance team was we weren't going to set ourselves up to be performance cops — we weren't going to go around slapping people on the wrist.”
Pac-12
Twitter has another livestreaming deal, this time with the Pac-12 conference →
“Our partnership with the Pac-12 Networks will give sports fans a great way to view live sporting events along with the live Twitter conversation they are already accustomed to.”
Medium / Jonah Peretti
BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti’s open letter to video plagiarism critics →
“I'm writing because you aren't just attacking BuzzFeed the company, you are attacking the many talented video producers who work here, creative people just like you, who are inspired by the work of others but always strive to add value and originality to their creative work.”
Medium / Clara Jeffery
Why Mother Jones sent a reporter to work as a private prison guard →
“Companies' interest in protecting trade secrets has turned into a tool for shutting down public scrutiny.”
Engadget / Jon Fingas
The Huffington Post moves to make virtual reality a staple of its newsrooms →
The Huffington Post (like Engadget, owned by AOL and Verizon) is launching players for 360-degree and VR content on just about every platform it uses. You’ll logically see them in articles on the web (both desktop and mobile), but the outlet is also promising immersive experiences in its Android and iOS apps.
AdWeek / Lauren Johnson
Square video is all the rage for Facebook advertisers →
“When looking specifically at view-through rates for the first 10 seconds of a video, 1:1 videos outperform 16:9 clips by 54 percent. And people are 67 percent more likely to watch the full length of a square-oriented video than they are to watch a horizontal one.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
Time Warner’s Turner is the third big media company to invest in digital publisher Refinery29 →
In the past few years large funding rounds for digital publishers went from "very rare" to "quite common”: last summer the trend seemed to hit its apex when Comcast made two $200 million investments in BuzzFeed and Vox Media (which owns Recode).
World Wide Web Foundation / Tim Berners-Lee, Lawrence Lessig, and Barbara van Schewick
“We have four days to save the open Internet in Europe” →
An open letter from some big web names: “Network neutrality for hundreds of millions of Europeans is within our grasp. Securing this is essential to preserve the open Internet as a driver for economic growth and social progress.”
The New York Times / Farhad Manjoo
Livestreaming breaks through, and cable news has much to fear →
"I think we saw last week that Facebook Live could become the most intelligent cable news network ever built," said Jonathan Klein, a former president of CNN, who now runs a digital media company called Tapp.
NewsWhip
Essential tools and best practices for creating social video →
Apps like Magisto, Splice, and Animoto let you make clips with a good mobile experience. Tools like Levee allow you target your Facebook livestreams to specific countries.
NewsMediaWorks / Lachlan Bennett
News Corp’s Australian regional newspapers go freemium →
“Head of metro and regional publishing Damian Eales said the freemium model had proven more successful than the metered model, with freemium papers generating twice the number of premium content subscriptions than titles with a metered model.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Behind CNN’s expanding footprint: ‘Content and distribution aren’t separate’ →
Leading the expansion is S. Mitra Kalita, who left the Los Angeles Times for CNN to head up digital programming. She’ll be evangelizing the importance of mobile in the newsroom, building on an opportunity with Apple News, programming for Amazon Echo, and more.
Ad Age / Maureen Morrison
BitTorrent is launching a livestreaming news network at the Republican National Convention →
The peer-to-peer file-sharing company hired a news director, former CNN and Vice producer Harrison Bohrman, to lead its livestreaming news network. The news effort is part of a larger play on BitTorrent’s part to become a media company specializing in video.
Vox Media / Andrea Rogoff
8 different Vox Media sites covered Pokémon Go in one way or another →
“Because there’s likely a Pokémon loose in your room right now — and we’re here to tell you why.”