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Friday, September 15, 2017
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BuzzFeed’s strategy for getting content to do well on all platforms? Adaptation and a lot of A/B testingMultiple versions of articles — with different headlines but also of different lengths and using different thumbnail art — are shown to BuzzFeed.com visitors until a winning combination emerges after a couple of hours. By Shan Wang. |
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You could change your mind. Or maybe (comforting thought!) you could just let Facebook do it for youPlus: “The year’s most consequential storylines have collided,” the differences between “observational” and direct correction, and one more trip to Macedonia. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Wall Street Journal / Alexandra Bruell and Jack Marshall
Ad trade groups protest Apple’s move to block advertisers from collecting certain consumer browser data →
Apple’s new Safari 11 browser is expected to feature an ‘Intelligent Tracking Prevention’ tool designed to block access to cookies stored on users’ devices, which marketers and advertising companies use to target, track and measure their ads. Six advertising trade associations, including the 4As, Association of National Advertisers and Interactive Advertising Bureau, have teamed up to protest the move.
BuzzFeed
Google allowed advertisers to target with keywords like ‘Jewish parasite,’ ‘black people ruin neighborhoods’ →
Following our inquiry, Google disabled every keyword in this ad campaign save one — an exact match for “blacks destroy everything,” is still eligible. Google told BuzzFeed News that just because a phrase is eligible does not guarantee an ad campaign will run against it. (ProPublica called out Facebook earlier in the week for enabling advertisers to target news feeds of people who people who express interest in topics like “Jew hater” or “How to burn jews.”)
The Splice Newsroom / Sean Gleeson
This new digital platform is providing fresh avenues for Myanmar comic artists to publish their work →
“Founded less than two years ago, White Merak is currently a hot topic for Yangon's tight-knit tech community. In July, five local investors ponied up a six-figure sum to take a quarter equity stake, leaving the young start-up with a $600,000 (USD) book value.”
Journalism.co.uk / Catalina Albeanu
Why the University of Oxford introduced a new role of professor of political communications →
“Teaching in this environment, I think that a lot of the students who come here who are not themselves journalists and haven't worked as journalists both have very high expectations of what journalists ought to do but also feel quite strongly that journalists don't do these things, and they are critical of how journalism is practiced these days.”
Axios / Sara Fischer
NBC adds first-ever media reporting unit →
Senior media editor Claire Atkinson, formerly of New York Post, will lead a team of internal and external contributors to cover media stories that cut across politics, technology, business and culture. External contributors to the unit include the likes of BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith and Recode’s Kara Swisher.
Journalism.co.uk / Madalina Ciobanu
Quartz is partnering with a local newspaper in Texas to investigate the effects of climate change →
The project, funded through a grant from the Center for Cooperative Media, will see the two outlets work together to report on how the issue is affecting McAllen and Reynosa, its sister city across the Mexican border, as well as the wider region. (A look at the ins and outs of how to make national-local collaborations work for both parties involved, here.)
Wall Street Journal / Jack Marshall
Facebook bars advertisers promoting news articles from modifying their headlines and descriptions →
“The social network's change came after The Wall Street Journal contacted the company, pointing to examples of such ads. In June, Facebook said it would prevent its users from modifying news article headlines, descriptions and images when posting links, as part of a broader push to crack down on the spread of false or misleading information.”
Financial Times / Madhumita Murgia and David Bond
Google is set to change its “first click free” policy that allows limited access to subscription news sites →
"If you don't sign up for 'first click free,' you virtually disappear from a search. And given the power of that Google platform, that is disadvantaging premium content of great provenance," said Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp, at an event in New York on Wednesday. "[T]here are many things to be negotiated, but . . . Google has indicated to us that they'll bring 'first click free' to an end. That will fundamentally change the content ecosystem."
ProPublica / Julia Angwin, Madeleine Varner, and Ariana Tobin
Facebook enabled advertisers to reach ‘Jew Haters’ →
“To test if these ad categories were real, ProPublica paid $30 to target groups with ‘promoted posts’ — in which a ProPublica article or post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes. After ProPublica contacted Facebook, it removed the anti-Semitic categories — which were created by an algorithm rather than by people — and said it would explore ways to fix the problem.”