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Monday, August 28, 2017
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Want more audience engagement in video form? This startup is betting there’s a business in there“We want to help newsrooms pull content in, which is exactly the opposite of what newsrooms have been doing: pushing content out.” By Stav Dimitropoulos. |
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With its interactive news team, Time is finding new ways to engage readers and tell stories“We want to keep giving people experiences that push boundaries on the web and aren’t possible at all in print.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
What We’re Reading
Reveal / Reveal staff
Reveal host Al Letson helped save a man being beaten at an anti-hate rally →
“Our editorial policy is clear: we are unbiased observers not participants. However, in reviewing the video, it is clear that Al did not take sides. Instead, he responded as any of us might if we saw another human in distress.”
Philly.com / Mark Fazlollah
Freelance journalist killed covering South Sudan civil war →
“I left academia because I believed that out here in a place where humanity is at its most exposed and raw, I might better understand something fundamental about the way the world works and the way history is made — about who people really are.”
Quartz Bot Studio / John Keefe
Meet Brian and Kendra, the new hosts of Quartz's newscast →
“Three times a day, or when news breaks, the written words from five stories are sent to a text-to-speech service called Polly, another Amazon product. ‘Brian’ and ‘Kendra’ are two of many voices available on the Polly service. In mere moments, we get back an .mp3 audio file for each story, with the written words converted into synthesized speech. That audio becomes the newscast.”
Business Insider / Tanya Dua
BuzzFeed, famously anti-banner ads, plans to start running them →
“This is a marked departure for the media company, which has firmly rejected traditional banner ads since its inception. BuzzFeed, instead, has pioneered the native advertising format, driving millions of readers towards its signature posts, quizzes and videos that are produced as paid advertising on behalf of advertisers. It has long run banner ads that connect to these in-house native ads.”
Facebook Newsroom / tchannick
Facebook will be blocking ads from pages that repeatedly share fake news stories →
“We've found instances of Pages using Facebook ads to build their audiences in order to distribute false news more broadly. Now, if a Page repeatedly shares stories that have been marked as false by third-party fact-checkers, they will no longer be able to buy ads on Facebook. If Pages stop sharing false news, they may be eligible to start running ads again.”
Recode / Kara Swisher
Facebook has hired former NYT public editor Liz Spayd as a consultant in a ‘transparency’ effort →
Her charge: To get Facebook to share more about itself. She is unlikely to write a lot on Facebook's blog, said a spokesperson — instead, Spayd's role will be as an outsider who is inside, one who pushes boundaries at Facebook.
Wall Street Journal / Li Yuan
The news reads you in China — and people can’t get enough of it →
Apps that use algorithms to scour tens of thousands of sources to find news and tailor feeds to individual users are the country's fastest-growing mobile segment. Take Shen Yun, a programmer in Beijing, who spends up to three hours on the app reading international and technology news during his commute. The news aggregator app Toutiao has learned that he watches videos of funny stunts before going to bed, so has some ready for him when he opens it at night.
Poynter / Kristen Hare
As Houston floods, this independent journalist is delivering the news to hundreds of thousands of people →
Space City Weather, a small Houston-focused weather site, has become a vital resource for Texans affected by Hurricane Harvey.