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Thursday, March 30, 2017
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A reporter in a rural district of India uses WhatsApp to broadcast local news — and makes money doing itShivendra Gaur’s Rocket Post Live has already gained 8,000 paying subscribers for rolling news alerts and a daily video bulletin. By Saurabh Sharma. |
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War on the Rocks is a national security site for a military “tribe” that knows what it’s talking about“If every guy that needs something to do for 30 seconds on his phone starts reading War on the Rocks, we’re doing something wrong. I want this to be a publication that you need if you work on national security.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
TechCrunch / Anthony Ha
Nuzzel launches a ‘Newswire’ for sponsored content →
The Nuzzel Newswire consists of sponsored links in Nuzzel's email newsletter, pointing to a blog post, press release or news article of the advertiser's choosing, as an alternative to distribution through a service like PRNewswire.
Wall Street Journal / Mike Shields
Mic is rolling out 9 new digital content brands →
Mic publisher Cory Haik said “the company recently surveyed 2,500 readers and found that ‘what they wanted was more original reporting and in-depth takes.'”
AP / Hillel Italie
Acclaimed and offbeat magazine The Believer has a new owner →
It had been published by McSweeney’s. The Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, purchased it.
Bloomberg.com / Gerry Smith
BuzzFeed News is expanding to Germany and Mexico →
“BuzzFeed Germany and BuzzFeed Mexico will hire journalists in those countries to cover local issues and write in their native languages, with some stories being translated into English”
The Deck / Jim Coudal
Indie ad network The Deck is shutting down after 11 years →
“Things work, until they don’t. In 2014, display advertisers started concentrating on large, walled, social networks.”
The New York Times / Sapna Maheshwari
Chase had ads on 400,000 sites. Then on just 5,000. Same results. →
“‘It's only been a few days, but we haven't seen any deterioration on our performance metrics," [JPMorgan Chase chief marketing officer Kristin] Lemkau said in an interview on Tuesday. She added that the company had also pulled ads from YouTube in the past week after reports showed other major advertisers like Verizon unintentionally appearing on videos promoting hate speech and terrorism. JPMorgan aims to restrict its ads on the platform to a ‘human-checked’ list of 1,000 YouTube channels, which it expects to be able to do by the week of April 10, she said.”
LocalNewsMapping.uk
The majority of the UK is not served by a local daily newspaper →
“Local daily papers are overwhelmingly located in major urban areas.”
American Press Institute / Katie Kutsko
Going for teens’ inboxes: 6 good questions with the Huffington Post’s director of growth and analytics Kiki Von Glinow →
“We all know that Millennials are currently the goal for most publishers and brands, but as we see that demographic get older and enter new life stages, we wanted to start looking forward toward Gen Z. There are more than 70 million of them, and they're still largely undecided in terms of how they want to interact and identify with brands, so we wanted to introduce them to HuffPost early and on their turf.”
Digiday / Sahil Patel
Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith’s publisher survival guide in the duopoly era →
"In the first six months of 2016, we saw a number of companies begin to cut their costs and pull back as excitement over Instant Articles, Google AMP and other social products faded… There has been a significant shift in the confident and belief that working with platforms as your primary source of business value creation is what one should do.”
Journalism.co.uk / Caroline Scott
The Guardian is reaching new audiences on Facebook with video series for people who dip in and out of news →
“Dab: A little news, every now and then”
Journalism.co.uk / Madalina Ciobanu
One year since launch, the Refugee Journalism Project is hoping to expand across the UK →
“We are encouraging not only that they get work as journalists in terms of the conventional writing, but they’re actually called upon for the expertise they have, whether it’s about Afghanistan, or Syria or Sudan.”
Digiday / Jessica Davies
The Independent launches 5-person team dedicated to debunking fake news →
“All journalists will be encouraged to feed into the initiative and use tools like Chartbeat and Brandwatch to monitor for stories they select that need further information or need to be debunked entirely.”
Bloomberg.com / Ira Boudway
ESPN has seen the future of TV and they’re not really into it →
“But while most of ESPN's TV peers have courted cord cutters—CBS and Turner Broadcasting, for instance, are allowing anyone to watch some of their March Madness games online for free—ESPN's view cuts against the conventional wisdom in new media. ‘Everything we do supports the pay television business,’ says John Kosner, the network's head of digital and print media. The strategy, simply put: Defend the cable-TV bundle at all costs.”
The Atlantic / Andrew McGill
A Twitter bot to help you tell when it’s really Donald Trump who’s tweeting →
@TrumpOrNotBot is a Twitter bot that uses machine learning and natural language processing to estimate the likelihood Trump wrote a tweet himself. By comparing new tweets to the president's Twitter record, the bot concludes with reasonable certainty whether Trump himself is behind a tweet.