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Wednesday, August 17, 2016
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NPR is retiring the comments section on its story pages (because of disuse, not just garbage fires)“Those who comment are not wholly representative of the overall NPR audience.” By Shan Wang. |
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Designing news products with empathy: How to plan for individual users’ needs and stresses“Identifying stress cases helps us see the spectrum of varied and imperfect ways humans encounter our products, especially taking into consideration moments of stress, anxiety, and urgency.” By Libby Bawcombe. |
What We’re Reading
The Wall Street Journal / Taylor Umlauf
That viral Usain Bolt photo is actually two photos →
“Two photographers, Getty Images' Cameron Spencer and Reuters' Kai Pfaffenbach, snapped a shot of Usain Bolt smiling as he crossed the finish line in a 100-meter heat.”
The New York Times / Keith Bradsher and Michelle Innis
The Sydney Morning Herald faces an uncertain print future in Australia →
“But Fairfax's newspapers now face a diminished future, with company executives even discussing whether to stop printing The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on weekdays. If they do, it would signal a new low in the decline of the global newspaper business, the radical retreat of centuries-old, mainstream metropolitan newspapers with national influence.”
Journalism.co.uk / Madalina Ciobanu
How CNN is recreating the #Rio2016 experience for audiences on social media →
“Social producer Masuma Ahuja has been trying out different formats to capture the Olympic Games experience for an international audience.”
Press Gazette / Freddy Mayhew
A British news magazine for kids keeps growing (in print) →
“It's the fifth year [First News] has seen its average total circulation boosted with ABC figures showing it was up by 30,000 copies over the five years to the end of June, reaching 83,254 copies (up from 79,431 copies in the second half of last year).”
Poynter / Benjamin Mullin
At least six newsroom employees have been laid off at the San Diego Union-Tribune →
“The move comes as the Union-Tribune’s owner, Tronc, is seeking to centralize some social media and curation functions at a hub in Los Angeles, where it owns the Los Angeles Times, the sources said.”
Medium / Rob Hammond
Using search to augment analytics for news websites →
“We can define new metrics on the fly — because we index everything we publish, often the answer to a new type of question is just a case of querying the dataset in a new way.”
Civil Beat News / Rui Kaneya
Retail ad decline is hurting newspapers — even in Hawaii →
“The looming job cuts at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser underscore the struggle to boost digital revenue as print ads fall off.”
The Hill / Elliot Smilowitz
Trump hires Breitbart News chairman as chief campaign executive →
Stephen Bannon joins Republic pollster Kellyanne Conway as Trump campaign manager: “Bannon has no campaign experience, but has been informally advising some in the campaign for several months, according to Politico.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
IBT Media says things are better in Europe than in the U.S. →
“While IBT Media is slashing editorial staff in the U.S., it's hiring up in Europe to expand its newsroom, open a branded content studio, and build out an events arm.”
Al Jazeera
Turkey shut down a pro-Kurdish newspaper →
“The judgment on Tuesday by the Istanbul court accused the Ozgur Gundem paper of ‘continuously conducting propaganda for Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)’ and ‘acting as if it is a publication of the armed terror organisation.'”
The Wall Street Journal / Lukas I. Alpert
Nick Denton won’t have a role in the Univision era of Gawker Media →
According to “a person familiar with the arrangement.” “The sale marks the end of an era for Gawker, which British-born journalist Nick Denton founded in 2002 in his apartment and built into a major digital media player through an aggressive and sometimes lurid style of tabloid reporting.”
Fortune / Mathew Ingram
Facebook traffic to U.S. news sites has fallen by double digits, according to a new report →
Down, down down, according to web analytics company SimilarWeb: 25 percent for The New York Times, 26 percent for the Washington Post, 47 percent for Newsweek owner IBT media. (The study measures desktop visits from Facebook, so it could be traffic is moving to mobile.)
Current / Davar Ardalan
Nebraska cornfields become new frontiers for drone storytelling →
“Over the course of three days, more than 60 journalists and media professionals explored issues of weather, safety, ethics, constitutional rights, regulations and more. Matt Waite, a pioneering drone journalist who teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Journalism and Mass Communications, led exhaustive but critical sessions about how to prepare for the Federal Aviation Administration test required for journalists who want to fly drones for commercial purposes.”