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Monday, July 31, 2017
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Monocle is printing a limited-run weekly newspaper in Italy, because why not (plus it made money)“We’ve spent a lot of time looking at the state of the international news market and looking at what’s working and what’s not working, and there’s an interesting model that’s getting ignored somewhat in English-language media.” By Shan Wang. |
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With an eye toward expansion, WhereBy.us invites its community to help build it as a company“As the company succeeds, so would those people. It actually buys in folks to the mission and success of the company rather than a specific project where you get a reward.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
Journalism.co.uk / Madalina Ciobanu
With its new project Hertz, Prisa Radio wants to make audio more discoverable online →
Prisa Radio, the world’s largest Spanish-language radio group, uploads live and on-demand audio and video content across its network of websites. Hertz allows a listener who arrives to the player for on-demand content to explore a transcription as the audio starts rolling. A listener can share the entire clip or a portion of it, using the text to quickly identify the desired quote, for example if they heard it on the radio earlier that day.
Wall Street Journal / Jack Marshall
Hungry for video, publishers repackage ads as part of their own content →
“Publishers like Business Insider and Cheddar often employ the tactic of reediting a TV commercial or marketing video by a third-party company, adding some subtitles and music, and reposting the resulting clip to their own social media accounts and websites.”
The New York Times / Emily Steel
Discovery is buying Scripps for $11.9 billion, consolidating cable networks a bit more →
“The combined company would control about 20 percent of the advertising-supported pay-television audience in the United States, and it could create a force in television popular with female viewers, bringing together the Scripps channels [including HGTV and the Food Network] and Discovery offerings including Investigation Discovery, OWN and TLC.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Lydia Polgreen is now running HuffPost’s Facebook Messenger bot →
“Last week, HuffPost said its Facebook Messenger bot, which was created to keep readers updated on Donald Trump, would shift gears to share HuffPost stories its editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen picks herself. HuffPost shifted the focus of the Messenger bot because it wasn't driving enough engagement. Many subscribers were opening the chat to read the alerts, but not clicking through to read the stories.”
Nikkei Asian Review
Japan’s public broadcaster is broadening its horizons beyond TV →
NHK, which levies mandatory fees on viewers to fund its operations, intends to begin broadcasting programming simultaneously on television and the internet in 2019, the year before the Tokyo Olympics.
Business Insider / Kif Leswing
Twitter is testing a $99 per month subscription that could get you more followers →
“For Twitter users who were invited and pay $99 per month, Twitter will automatically promote your account’s tweets onto people’s timelines that don’t follow your account. The ‘private beta’ program is aimed at small businesses and individuals — not big brands.”
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty
Russian president Vladimir Putin signs controversial law tightening Internet restrictions →
“The law on proxy services, signed by Putin on July 29 and published by the government on July 30, was promoted by lawmakers who said it is needed to prevent the spread of extremist materials and ideas. A second law also signed by Putin on July 29 will require operators of instant messaging services, such as messenger apps, to establish the identity of those using the services by their phone numbers.”
The Guardian / Mark Sweney
Guardian Media Group cuts losses by more than a third as it seeks to break even within two years →
“Paid-for membership, a core part of the Guardian's plans to counteract the steep falls in print ad revenue affecting all newspaper publishers and slow digital ad growth, rose from 50,000 to more than 230,000 in the year to April 2. The number of readers paying for print and digital subscriptions stayed stable at about 185,000 and there have been more than 190,000 one-off contributions.”
Twitter / Michael Calderone
Ryan Lizza’s Scaramucci interview is the New Yorker’s most-read piece on its site this year, with 4.4 million unique visitors →
“The piece also set a record on newyorker.com, with more than 100,000 concurrent visitors in the hours after publication.”
The New York Times / Jim Rutenberg
As its election nears, the German news media brace for devious hacks →
"We will have a special teaser, and in the teaser we will have a banner saying 'Hacked,' because 'Hacked' is more known than 'Leaked' in Germany," Julian Röpcke, the Bild political editor, said. "And then we will have every paragraph where we use leaked information in red. So we will have black and red paragraphs, and under it we will write something like, 'The information in red was leaked to manipulate your opinion about this person.'"
Quartz / Abdi Latif Dahir
WhatsApp and Facebook are driving Kenya’s fake news cycle →
“Deliberate spreading of false information is now a core part of the news mix in Kenya, according to a study which revealed 90 percent of Kenyans had heard or seen false stories related to the election, with a cross section of the population including official groups, friends, and families all using social media to spread misinformation.”
ExpressVPN / ExpressVPN - Tortola, British Virgin Islands
Apple removes VPN apps from its China app store →
“We received notification from Apple today, July 29, 2017, at roughly 04:00 GMT, that the ExpressVPN iOS app was removed from the China App Store. Our preliminary research indicates that all major VPN apps for iOS have been removed.”
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Call it the Gawker Effect: That R. Kelly ‘cult’ story almost never ran. You can thank Hulk Hogan for that →
“After Jim DeRogatis, the veteran Chicago rock critic, reported for months on a stunning story about R&B singer R. Kelly and the young women said to be under his psychological and sexual control, it came time to get it published. Three separate media organizations were interested but got cold feet at the last minute, DeRogatis said. Each one, after investing months of work, backed away from the story.”
Vanity Fair / James Warren
Is The New York Times vs. the Washington Post vs. Trump the last great newspaper war? →
“Newspaper editors and TV news directors I know read the Times and the Post with envy and an indirect professional pride, but also a sense that what these newspapers are doing is almost completely irrelevant to their own situations—and far beyond their capacities….But an existential threat is already apparent: many Americans won't believe a thing either newspaper says, no matter how great the accuracy, attention to detail, or fair-mindedness.”