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Wednesday, October 5, 2016
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Your Amazon Prime membership now includes magazines, the newest batch of content in the bundleA bad day for Texture: Amazon continues to rebuild the content bundle, this time by relying on established publishers and brands. By Joseph Lichterman. |
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Building off online, new print mag Anxy wants to help normalize conversations about mental health“We want to use print as a public statement…to create something that people are proud to be seen with in public.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
What We’re Reading
Current / Adam Ragusea
NPR diversity VP steps in as interim Code Switch editor →
“Code Switch's previous leader, supervising senior producer Alicia Montgomery, left NPR in mid-September and started Monday as local/regional news director for WAMU in Washington, D.C., which is in the midst of an aggressive newsroom expansion. Also in September, Code Switch senior digital editor Tasneem Raja announced that she was stepping down and moving to Texas, where her fiancé lives. The move was for personal reasons, according to NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara.”
The Verge / Jacob Kastrenakes
BuzzFeed vandalized by hacking group after exposing alleged member →
“The hack comes the morning after BuzzFeed ran a story (mirrored here) on OurMine, identifying a teenager who appeared to be a member of the group. OurMine initially denied BuzzFeed's report in a statement claiming that the person was "just a fan" of their hacking. Today's attack is an odd way of maintaining its denial.”
Bloomberg / Sarah Frier
Jack Dorsey is losing control of Twitter →
“If Jack Dorsey is the introverted deep thinker, [Twitter’s chief financial officer] Anthony Noto is the doer. He's the high-energy cheerleader who has cut through indecision at the company and rallied Twitter's employees around a future of live video streaming, boosted by licensing of premium content.”
Bloomberg / Alex Sherman and Matthew Monks
Gannett and Tronc are reportedly still in talks about a merger →
“The parties haven't reached a final agreement, and an announcement isn't imminent, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Gannett, the owner of USA Today, is in talks to buy Tronc for $18.50 to $19 a share, the people said. While negotiations are advanced, talks could still fall apart.”
Raleigh & Company / R.L. Bynum
McClatchy’s Charlotte hub: Less copy editing, more newspapers →
“This is all part of McClatchy Company's goal to have hubs produce all 28 of its newspapers by sometime in the first quarter of 2017, according to Robin Johnston, the director of the Charlotte hub, called McClatchy News Desk East. Late this summer, McClatchy added a hub at the Kansas City Star to the existing hubs at The Charlotte Observer and at The Sacramento Bee, McClatchy's flagship newspaper.”
The Media Briefing / Chris Sutcliffe
What’s behind a bad week for Trinity Mirror, Telegraph Media Group, and DMGT →
“What it does show, fairly uncontroversially, is that print advertising declines aren’t levelling off to the extent some publishers might have hoped, and digital advertising, while growing, still isn’t compensating for those falls. Small wonder that the watchword for publishers (according to our State of the Media 2017 report) is diversification, into e-commerce and events.”
The New York Times / John Herrman and Mike Isaac
The online video view: We can count it, but can we count on it? →
“But for the advertising industry, audience measurements translate directly into dollar amounts, and the different methods to measure views — and the fact that the information is all self-reported by the technology companies — are problems. Then came the recent admission by Facebook that for years it had miscalculated its video viewing metric, giving its partners the impression that their videos had been viewed for longer, on average, than they actually had been.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Bloomberg claims new article page cuts load time in half →
“In tests, Bloomberg said it cut page load time by 30 percent to 50 percent depending on the test. (The company wouldn't say to what, saying load time varies based on multiple factors like location, browser, connection speed and amount of content on a given page.) If it performs as hoped after launch, Bloomberg plans to roll out the template to the rest of its portfolio: the flagship Bloomberg and Bloomberg Markets, Bloomberg Politics and Bloomberg Pursuits.”
The Wall Street Journal / Tom Corrigan
Gawker says it expects to win legal battle with Hulk Hogan →
“Gawker Media LLC plans to set aside at least $5.5 million from the sale of its websites to fund a continuing legal battle with former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, a feud the company says it intends to win.”
WSJ / Jack Marshall
The New York Times shuns banner ads in favor of proprietary ad format →
Instead, the Times will introduce horizontal Flex Frame ads, which will appear along the top of webpages, between paragraphs in article pages and in feeds of content elsewhere across the site. These ads will be designed to better match the Times site, and will dynamically adjust in size and layout across different devices and window sizes.