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Thursday, November 3, 2016
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The Telegraph replaces its metered paywall, first launched in 2013, with a premium digital subscriptionA digital subscription starts at £2 per week and includes other perks, like an Amazon Echo Dot for the earliest batch of annual premium subscribers. By Shan Wang. |
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Avid consumers of local news are often also more engaged members of their local communitiesKnow your neighbors? You also probably know something about what’s going on down at city hall. By Shan Wang. |
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As opinions shift, a new wave of cannabis-focused sites hopes more advertisers will loosen their pocketsThere’s money in marijuana, but is there money in marijuana coverage? (Yes, yes there is.) By Shan Wang. |
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Mic is now sending iPhone push notifications with videos that play right on the lock screen“We’re pretty optimistic that there will be some innovative ad format that follows all of this.” By Joseph Lichterman. |
What We’re Reading
Bloomberg / Felix Gillette
Why are football ratings down? Cord cutters, smartphones, concussions, Kaepernick, etc. →
"I just felt for so long that the NFL was unstoppable," says Patrick Keane, a longtime media executive and president of Sharethrough, an online advertising company. "It's live. It's compelling. It's historical. It's only 16 games. The Super Bowl is the most watched thing in the world. It just felt untouchable. The NFL's sudden vulnerability is one of the more shocking media phenomena that I've seen in my career."
Radiotopia
Here’s the winner of Radiotopia’s Podquest contest →
Ear Hustle will offer stories of life inside prison, told and produced from the perspective of those who live it. The podcast is a collaboration between Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams, currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, and Nigel Poor, a San Francisco-based artist. (In March, Radiotopia launched Podquest, an open call for new podcast ideas. 1,537 people from 53 countries entered.)
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Wired, with other Conde Nast tech publications, starts a $4,000/year membership program →
“For $4,000 a year, members of the Emerging Technology Council (and up to four of their colleagues) get access to in-person and virtual events where they can hear presentations by tech startups; join a 24/7 online community; receive a newsletter (likely monthly) and other perks.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
Google and Facebook are booming. Is the rest of the digital ad business sinking? →
Jason Kint compared IAB numbers “along with publicly reported numbers from Google and Facebook” and “concluded that those two companies accounted for all of the growth in U.S. digital advertising in the first half of this year.”
Digiday / Jessica Davies
How BuzzFeed is adapting local stories for a global audience →
“If something ticks over a given benchmark in its local market or on a given platform — say, 75 percentile in terms of video-share rate on Facebook — a Slack bot lets editors around the world know, so they can translate, adapt or iterate creatively on it,” said BuzzFeed head of European growth Luke Lewis.
kottke.org / Jason Kottke
kottke.org announces annual memberships starting at $30/year →
“If you ask around to the creators of other established independent sites on the web (and I have talked to many of them), you'll hear that traffic and display ad revenue have been falling for the last few years…Other strategies are necessary.”