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Thursday, July 6, 2017
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Newsonomics: There’s a newspaper chain that’s grown profits for the past 5 years, and it’s looking to buy more papersBecause it’s privately held, Hearst isn’t as big a part of industry conversations around the future of newspapers as its publicly traded peers. But it’s charting a path forward and ready to open its checkbook to expand. By Ken Doctor. |
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“It is not hard to come into our tower”: Belgian public broadcaster VRT is connecting with young creativesWith events, trainings, and a freelance database, OpenVRT is an attempt to make the Belgian public media broadcaster VRT more accessible. By Tom Cassauwers. |
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Podchaser, an “IMDb for podcasts,” is building a big tags-based database to help people discover shows“One of our big advantages is we're trying to build this bottom-up, feature-wise, and talking to a hundred different podcasts and tons of listeners and asking exactly what they want.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
What We’re Reading
Digiday / Jessica Davies
Inside Axel Springer’s WhatsApp experiment to get teens into politics →
“Germany is less than three months away from a national election, and publishers there are pushing for new ways to engage first-time voters in the run-up. That's why Axel Springer's in-house journalism school's latest project was to figure out what new editorial formats engage 18- to 22-year-olds in politics, specifically via WhatsApp.”
Axios / Sara Fischer
Google’s new play for mobile ads →
“Google’s introducing three new ad formats for AdSense, its ad placement service that serves millions of advertisers globally. The new formats are “native” ad formats, meaning they are highly customizable to match the look and feel of a publishers’ content, and are very mobile-friendly.”
WAN-IFRA / Simone Flueckiger
Inside The Dallas Morning News’ newsroom transformation →
“We're really trying to look at that funnel. How do you get people from being casual readers to intentional readers to trial new subscribers to loyal subscribers. A lot of our analytics work is focused on that.”
Recode / Eric Johnson
As podcast analytics get better, who wins and who loses? →
"On the one hand, you have certain creatives being like, 'I want to optimize for the metrics when I'm creating stuff, I want to know more,'" said Hot Pod‘s Nick Quah, whose email newsletter is aimed at people working in the podcast industry (and is also published at Nieman Lab on Tuesdays). "And then there's people who are a little more jump-off-a-cliff, creatively oriented."
The Verge / Shannon Liao
Snapchat’s latest update lets you send links to friends →
“After today's update, users can just tap a little paperclip icon located in the Vertical Toolkit and type in a link, which sounds a lot like what you can do in Instagram already if you're a publisher or have a verified account.”
The New York Times / Dean Baquet
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet on changes to the Times’ editing structure →
“Our goal with these changes is to still have more than one set of eyes on a story, but not three or four. We have to streamline that system and move faster in the digital age. If the Supreme Court issues a major ruling at 10 a.m., our readers expect to hear about it within minutes. And they'd like an analysis not too long afterward. And maybe a video on the history of the case that led to the ruling. Or a multimedia analysis of what the ruling says about the court's leanings so far.”
Journalism / Mădălina Ciobanu
Catalan publication VilaWeb is offering subscribers the option to print the newspaper at home →
“So we thought why not create a paper that people can print and that they can also read on their phones, which is published at 10pm? Because that’s when people [in Spain] are at home and have the time to read.” (The evening VilaWeb edition is not available on newsstands.)
Medium / Basile Simon
General election 2017 at the Times of London: what we built and how →
Chatbots, an interactive results page, and a daily politics briefing are some of the tools the Times of London created to cover the U.K.’s general election.
Washington Post / Paul Farhi
The New York Times will fly you around the world for $135,000. Is that a problem? →
“The super-luxe journey and other Times-sponsored travel packages are a lucrative source of income for the paper at a time when news organizations are under increasing financial pressure. The round-the-world trip — which could gross as much as $6.7 million — is part of a range of products and services designed to "monetize" the Times's brand name, from $100 tote bags to event sponsorships.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
With Echo, Amazon is emerging as a friend to publishers →
“Before Echo, Amazon was just trying to get publishers to use its existing tools. For Echo to succeed, it benefits Amazon to have a good working relationship with publishers. Unlike other platforms like Facebook and Snapchat, which have other agendas, media content has been integral to the Echo experience from the start.”
Advertising Age / Garett Sloane
Apple News may let publishers sell ads their own way →
“The bigger thing is they’ve now seen the light. Apple is acknowledging it can’t force its ad technology into the marketplace and it makes more sense to allow standard ad serving.”