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Friday, August 5, 2016
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Inspired by Purple, The New York Times will text readers behind-the-scenes updates about the Olympics“What we're trying to do is figure out if there a space between broadcast and a total human-powered one-on-one interaction — which obviously doesn't scale easily — to see if we can have the best of both worlds.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
The Guardian is testing putting quizzes inside push notifications (and more) during the Rio Olympics
What We’re Reading
Recode / Peter Kafka
The Washington Post will use robots to write stories about the Rio Olympics →
“The idea is to use artificial intelligence to quickly create simple but useful reports on scores, medal counts and other data-centric news bits — so that the Post's human journalists can work on more interesting and complex work, says Jeremy Gilbert, who heads up new digital projects for the paper.”
Washington Post / Abby Ohlheiser
Why the IOC’s crackdown on Olympic GIFs won’t work →
“The IOC is fine with people posting still images from the Olympic venues (so long as they are "consistent with the Olympic values."
Reuters / Michael Holden
Stop the presses: The last two journalists leave London’s Fleet Street →
“While the British press is still collectively known as ‘Fleet Street,’ from Friday there will no longer be any working journalists there after the Scottish-based Sunday Post newspaper closed its London operation.”
Fortune / Mathew Ingram
Information founder Jessica Lessin on what media companies are doing wrong →
“Lessin says media companies are shooting themselves in the foot by relying on social networks.”
Bloomberg.com / Sarah Frier
FTC to crack down on paid celebrity posts that aren’t clear ads →
“It’s a move that could make the posts seem less authentic, reducing their impact.”
Washington Post
The Washington Post is experimenting with automated storytelling to help power 2016 Rio Olympics coverage →
Updates will appear in The Post's live blog, on Twitter at @WPOlympicsbot, and are accessible via The Post's Olympics skill on Alexa-enabled devices and The Post's bot for Messenger.
The Atlantic / Adrienne LaFrance and Robinson Meyer
Here are famous headlines rewritten for Facebook’s new clickbait policy →
“Frank Sinatra Is a Complicated Person (and Unfortunately Our Reporter Did Not Get to Speak to Him)”
Politico / Tom McGeveran
The New Yorker’s phone app is testing a paywall →
New Yorker Today, which we wrote about when it launched back in April, had always planned to incorporate a paywall.
Digiday / Max Willens
Inside The New York Times’ Snapchat team →
“Thanks to a core team of eight people, the Times has filed stories everywhere from Angola to Hiroshima, from the runways of New York Fashion Week to the cabin of Donald Trump's press jet. The account creates a couple stories per week, occasionally ramping up its output during tentpole events; it posted a story every day during Democratic and Republican National Conventions.”
Digiday / Jessica Davies
The FT makes its VR debut for Rio Olympics →
Taking a page from The New York Times’ playbook, the FT will distribute 35,000 Google Cardboard headsets to readers in the UK.
Recode / Edmund Lee
Viacom is a mess. Buying something like BuzzFeed could be a way forward. →
“But a management shake-up currently going on could change Viacom's approach to the internet, with possible acquisition targets that could include BuzzFeed, according to sources. While the publisher has made no public plans to sell and is likely to seek an IPO next year, a proposed new slate of board directors at Viacom could alter that calculus, which we'll get to a little later.”
Mashable / Jason Abbruzzese
The internet will be a barren, GIF-less void for the Olympics →
A new rule from the International Olympic Committee: “Additionally, the use of Olympic Material transformed into graphic animated formats such as animated GIFs (i.e. GIFV), GFY, WebM, or short video formats such as Vines and others, is expressly prohibited.”
The New York Times / Katie Benner and Michael J. de la Merced
Snapchat used to spook advertisers. Not anymore. →
“When Snapchat entered the ad business, ‘it didn't quite have the infrastructure, and the market didn't understand it,’ said Sarah Hofstetter, chief executive of the ad agency 360i. ‘It was a bumpy beginning.’
The Guardian / Harrison Jones
Journalism’s lack of diversity threatens its long-term future →
“Everyone in the industry acknowledges these issues in the same resigned how-will-this-ever-change tones. To become a journalist it clearly helps to be well educated, well connected and wealthy, so it's not difficult to see why the public perceive us much like politicians: all the same and out of touch.”