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Wednesday, August 30, 2017
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Ev Williams on Medium’s Spotify-ish future, why publishers left, and why he changed his mind about ads“What we want to do is create the best possible place to support great content. How does the best media in the world work? In almost every case, the best media is supported by those who consume it.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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From a former CNN producer, The Cipher Brief covers national security way beyond cable news“Imagine a newsroom where half of the room is analysts and half is reporters. You combine what each of them is so good at doing and deliver that every day to the reader.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Times Open / JP Robinson
Moving the New York Times games platform to Google App Engine →
“Beyond being able to quickly move to a more reliable platform, we've also managed to cut our infrastructure costs in half during this time period. As gaming at The New York Times continues to grow, I'm confident we made the right choices to enable us to experiment, iterate and scale at speed with ease.”
Anchor / Michael Mignano
Rethinking audio editing on mobile →
“How do we make the actual editing process dead simple? Anything that involved dragging or tapping a very precise point within a waveform seemed ridiculously overcomplicated.”
Digiday / Jessica Davies
German publishers are joining forces against the duopoly →
“By teaming with non-media companies, Axel Springer has taken a different route than a typical media alliance. This way, it can skirt any disagreements that can arise between competitors and stunt progress…But Verimi is open-standard, so although Axel Springer is currently the only media group involved, others can join.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
Apple’s TV plans are still stuck in neutral →
“For years, Apple had very ambitious ambitions in TV: Steve Jobs wanted to build an integrated TV set/pay TV service, but he never got close to the terms he would have needed from TV programmers to make it work.”
The Verge / Casey Newton
How YouTube perfected the feed →
“One of the key things it does is it's able to generalize. Whereas before, if I watch this video from a comedian, our recommendations were pretty good at saying, here's another one just like it. But the Google Brain model figures out other comedians who are similar but not exactly the same — even more adjacent relationships. It's able to see patterns that are less obvious.”
The New York Times / Kenneth P. Vogel
Google critic ousted from think tank funded by the tech giant →
“And after this story was published online Wednesday morning, [New American CEO Anne-Marie] Slaughter wrote on Twitter that it was ‘false.’ She failed to cite any errors on Twitter or in a statement issued hours later through New America. Ms. Mariani did not respond to requests to identify errors or to make Ms. Slaughter available for an interview.”
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
The Newseum opened as the journalism industry tanked. No wonder it’s in deep trouble. →
“I hope the Newseum makes it through this crisis and fulfills its crucial mission of educating the public about free expression and press rights. If it has to do so in a less grandiose building — or some modest fraction of its current one — so be it.”
Digiday / Ross Benes
USA Today’s Facebook-like mobile site increased time spent per article by 75 percent →
USA Today’s mobile site “has tested a personalized design on its mobile website that serves users different content depending on whether they regularly visit the site or not, landed on an article organically or via search, their location and their viewing habits.” It’s working.
Medium / Meredith Talusan
On Mic.com and minority life in startup media →
“It seems to me that the problems plaguing Mic are pretty standard across media, and seem traceable to the fact that the further you go up in the food chain, the likelihood of the folks being maler and whiter increases, with minorities in those positions often hampered or blocked by the white male majority.”
New York Times / Sophie Haigney
Newseum’s leader resigns amid review of finances →
“In their statement, the Freedom Forum's leaders said the board might consider ‘a possible outright sale’ of the large building in downtown Washington that has housed the museum since 2008. They also noted the difficulty of charging hefty admissions fees — $24.95 per ticket — in a city where Smithsonian museums are free.”
Street Fight / Tom Grubisich
Some thoughts from Hearst Newspapers on Facebook’s local news subscription experiments →
“Given the revenue shares that Facebook competitors like Apple take – usually 30% – it will be interesting to see where this goes if Facebook proves to be a subscription driver rather than simply the primary engine for users to sample free news content [via a porous paywall that Facebook reportedly wants to give users 10 free looks at content before a subscription is required].”