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Friday, July 28, 2017
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On the heels of its own success, Spain’s Politibot is opening up a chatbot builder for other outlets“Problems news organizations will run into, we’ve run into before, we can help them with that, and we can hopefully help them get the same retention and engagement we did.” By Shan Wang. |
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“Stories may have political impact less by persuading than by reminding people which side they are on”Plus: “Humans can be successfully manipulated through social bots,” what Russia Today’s fact checking project actually does, and a more sociological take on the spread of fake news. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Twitter / Sydney Ember
David Bradley’s memo to The Atlantic staff →
“Against expectation, surely against my own, The Atlantic is completing its most successful decade in 100 years.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Baynard Woods
As Baltimore City Paper faces the reaper, stakes mount for alt-weeklies →
“After staff learned of City Paper's death sentence, I began working with editor Brandon Soderberg to try to figure out ways to save it before the news went public. The Tennessee alt-weekly Knoxville Mercury seemed to offer hope….Before we could call him to ask for details about the model, editor Coury Turczyn announced that the Mercury would cease publication.”
TechCrunch / Sarah Perez
Twitter adds Nuzzel-ish notifications about articles people are sharing →
“It says its goal is to make sure that people don't miss content that may be interesting to them.”
BuzzFeed / Craig Silverman
Publishers are exploiting Facebook’s hunger for video by posting static images as videos →
But apparently: “‘We do not prioritize videos over other story types in News Feed,’ a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News on the condition that they not be identified. ‘News Feed is personalized: if you're the type of person who likes to engage with videos, you will likely see more videos in your feed.'”
NPR Training / Tamar Charney and Nick Deprey
Lessons from the NPR One app about how to get listeners to care about your story →
“In this research and in other analyses we see that length is a factor in the success of a story. We've found that for all stories — local and national — 3.5-5 minutes is a sweet spot.”
Digiday / Max Willens
The New York Times’ “Game of Thrones” newsletter already has over 60K subscribers →
“The newsletter, produced by staffers at the New York Times' Watching, is also being forwarded and read so much that its open rates have exceeded 100 percent through the last two weeks.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
Facebook wants to help news publishers sell subscriptions, but says it doesn’t want a cut of the revenue →
“Industry sources say that instead of operating a subscription service itself, Facebook plans on creating a paywall it would implement after non-subscribers view 10 articles a month from a particular publisher.”
New York Times / Sydney Ember
Emerson Collective acquires a majority stake in The Atlantic →
“The deal, which Mr. Bradley announced to the staff on Friday morning, also includes The Atlantic's digital properties, events business and consulting services. Mr. Bradley will continue to fully own the rest of Atlantic Media's properties, which include the National Journal Group and the digital media organization Quartz. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.”