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Monday, August 8, 2016
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Why The New York Times assigned a foreign correspondent to cover the U.S. electionsIt’s part of the Times’ ongoing efforts to reach international readers — and an interesting experiment on how our political system looks from the outside. By Joseph Lichterman. |
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Newsonomics: Sketching in the details of Josh Topolsky’s new Outline“Being outside looking in, to me, is quite important. I think that, for the audience and also for a lot of the people involved in this, it’s a lifelong feeling of trying to make sense of a world that you’re not necessarily inside of or a part of.” By Ken Doctor. |
What We’re Reading
Digital Review / by Mia Miller
Is Snapchat doomed? →
For Facebook/Instagram to win, they have to do what Snapchat is missing.
Politico / Hadas Gold
Poppy MacDonald named president of Politico →
Previously publisher and president of National Journal.
TechCrunch / Jordan Crook
Berlin-based Spectrm delivers the news via Facebook Messenger →
“Since launch in the summer of 2015, Spectrm has been able to give unique insights to publishing partners, like the fact that content consumers are more likely to engage with content in the middle of the day as opposed to the morning or evening.”
LA Observed / Kevin Roderick
The L.A. Times ran a six-year-old crime story in print (and online) by accident →
“This looks like just one of those oops moments. But a not inconsequential one. The online story is currently number 9 on the ‘Most Popular’ page on the LA Times website. Google Betty Broderick and the news story in the Times is displayed prominently as some current action on the case.”
First Draft News / Josh Stearns
How journalists build and break trust with their audience online →
“Journalism is nothing without trust, and recent research shows it takes a long time to build but can be broken in an instant.”
Ad Age / Garett Sloane
Facebook is testing selfie filters, further borrowing from Snapchat →
“Facebook bought a company called MSQRD that specializes in augmented reality, which is a form of virtual reality.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Nausicaa Renner
Does Twitter have a PR problem? →
With waves of executive exits, a shrinking user base, and questions surrounding online harassment, Twitter is having a watershed moment.
Vice / Daniel Tepper
This is where war reporters go to learn how to stay alive on the front lines →
“[Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues] training provides freelance journalists and photographers with a four-day crash course in battlefield medical response. The course teaches participants how to treat everything from bee stings to blast injuries, and almost 300 freelancers have taken the course in New York, London, Nairobi, Kiev, and Kosovo since it began in 2012.”
Recode / Edmund Lee
There's too much Olympics online, so TV programming, with context and commentary, is still a good idea →
According to NBC, it’s streaming more than 4,500 hours of the Olympic Games — but the raw feed is pretty confusing if you’re not, say, a expert in the rules of women’s epee or the 10 meter air rifle.
The New York Times / Liz Spayd
The New York Times metro desk is moving away from routine city news coverage →
Many metro reporters will be given new beats. Top editors are also looking at how much space local news should take up in the daily newspaper (less). More routine New York City coverage will be replaced by “stories with larger, more consequential themes.”
Reuters / Reuters Editorial
Gawker, Hulk Hogan in settlement talks over privacy case →
“In June, Gawker Media LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and put itself up for sale after Hogan won the judgment.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
The Washington Post is using a robot to cover the Olympics, and will expand it to the November elections →
It will use its homegrown Heliograf software to augment its coverage of the November elections, where it will generate a series of stories for some 500 races, to be updated in real time as results come in. Eventually, the Post wants to be able to “inject” contributions from its artificial intelligence into stories its human journalists are creating.
Digiday / Max Willens and Lucinda Southern
How 6 publishers are using Instagram stories →
“There was a time when stodgy publishers would wait out new social doodads to see if they were mere fads. Those days are over.”
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
The ‘I-team’ is back – and it might help save local TV news →
“You could see evidence of this at the recent Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, where almost a third of the 1,800 attendees were TV journalists, mostly from local stations — looking spiffed up and camera-ready, and easy to spot among the scruffier print scribes.”
Digiday / Tanya Dua
Marketers see Periscope as Twitter’s glimmer of hope →
"Live, topical, real-time content still works best on Twitter and, by extension, Periscope," said Lindsay Sutton, group director of social strategy at DigitasLBi U.S. "There is no denying that the Twitter is the best microphone there is, especially with its targeting and autoplaying capabilities.”
Financial Times / Anna Nicolaou
Will big events like the Olympics save TV? Probably not. →
“However, analysts are sceptical that the boosts from events like the Olympics can thwart the tide of cord-cutting, falling cable audiences and declining advertising revenues.”
The Wall Street Journal / Steven Perlberg
NBCU signs a deal to make Snapchat shows →
“The Comcast Corp.-owned media giant, whose networks include E!, Bravo and the NBC broadcast channel, has signed a multi-year deal with the disappearing messages app to create new "shows" for its growing media hub. NBCU will rely on some of its most recognizable franchises for the initiative – like "Saturday Night Live," "The Voice," and "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon."