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Wednesday, November 2, 2016
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Backchannel is using intimacy and audience participation to fuel its first push into live events“All of us are used to these big conferences that have a lot of people in the audience and a few people on the stage talking outward…in 2016, that format feels tired.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
What We’re Reading
Bloomberg / Max Chafkin
The Skimm now has 4 million subscribers →
That’s up from 3.5 million in April.
Bloomberg.com / Felix Gillette
The baffling history of Tronc →
“The media industry has struggled to classify Ferro in the taxonomy of rich guys who buy newspapers.”
BuzzFeed / Alex Kantrowitz
Vine cofounders are working on a new livestreaming app, Hype →
“The two founders pulled Vine videos from their camera roll and played them on screen, they pinned comments on screen and discussed them, they played full screen videos and overlaid live video of themselves in a circle on top, and then they made the circle disappear entirely.”
Amazon
Amazon launches Rapids, an app that sends kids original stories via text message →
It’s $2.99/month for “hundreds of exclusive short stories…perfect for kids on the go.”
Business Insider / Nathan McAlone
Gawker settles with Hulk Hogan and other litigants: “The saga is over” →
For $31 million. “As the most unpalatable part of the deal, three true stories — about Hulk Hogan, the claim by Shiva Ayyadurai that he invented email and the feud between the founders of Tinder — are being removed from the web.”
WSJ / Lukas I. Alpert
The Wall Street Journal will combine some of its print sections to cope with ad decline →
“The Wall Street Journal will debut a newly formatted version of its print edition starting Nov. 14, which will combine several sections and reduce the size of some coverage areas as the paper copes with an accelerating industrywide decline in print advertising.”
Nytimes / Farhad Manjoo
How the Internet Is loosening our grip on the truth →
“For years, technologists and other utopians have argued that online news would be a boon to democracy. That has not been the case.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Publishers are using their newsletters as labs for new offerings →
“Historically, we conceived of newsletters as an extension to our main site and sections. But now we're flipping that to really think of a newsletter as a primary experience in and of itself and a powerful way to distribute news and reach and engage with readers where they are.”
Poynter / Kristen Hare
At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a newsroom that’s gone from surviving to thriving →
A “Quick Strike” team created to engage with the daytime digital audience.
Digiday / Jessica Davies
How publishers are making money from Facebook Live →
“Facebook's approach with publishers has been more collaborative on Live than with Instant Articles, which is a welcome change,” said Business Insider UK managing director Julian Childs.