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Tuesday, December 19, 2017
 | News games rule“At that moment, we understood the power of stories turned into interactive games. Telling news through games isn’t just a playful way of informing readers — it’s also a way to create added value for publishers.” By Mariano Blejman. |
 | Letting black women tell their own stories“In 2018, journalism will need to do a better job of seeking out the voices of black women. It will not be enough to give black women credit for the things that they do; it will be crucial to allow their stories to be told through their own voices.” By Monique Judge. |
 | Skepticism and narcissism“We all know the old journalism saw: ‘If your mother says she loves you, check it out.’ Our moms aren’t the problem. No, if 2016 and 2017 have taught us anything, it’s that our passion for journalism’s flattering mythology only hurts us.” By Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer. |
 | Design connects storytelling and strategy“By aligning strategies from revenue, video, editorial, and audience departments, news products can lessen the assault on their users’ senses. If we understand and attempt to calibrate internal competing goals, we fix the external experience.” By Jessica Parker Gilbert. |
 | At the ballot, it’s time to count black women“Covering politics in the coming year should mean covering black women — the majority of who we mean when we say “black voters.” It will require rethinking who we mean when we say ‘working mothers,’ ‘college-educated women,’ ‘millennials,’ and ‘values voters.'” By Errin Haines Whack. |
 | The year of the local watchdog“What will be exciting to see in 2018 is how watchdog projects will be done. How will journalists tell and present their stories in novel ways? How will they engage the community around their findings? What would make their results most powerful, more accessible?” By Mira Lowe. |
 | Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks“Even if our solutions were very simple, we could not have implemented them on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. It asserts an unfakeable truth of civic responsibility: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” By Ståle Grut. |
 | texting is lit rn, fam“It’s the best of both worlds: Outlets can choose what type of content they want to share — video, text, image — and who they want to share it with. And users feel like they’re getting exactly the kind of info they want, in the place where they’re making most of their daily interactions.” By Mandy Velez. |
 | Reviving the alt-weekly soul“All that’s missing is the form. If it can’t be newsprint — which seems likely — maybe it has to be electronic. But whatever new form it takes, the need for regular, plentiful, and local arts journalism is clear.” By Damon Krukowski. |
 | Are you fluent in AI?“Each innovation changed the way we discover news, so they also changed the way we produce news. Artificial intelligence will follow that same trend.” By Alice Antheaume. |
 | The arc of news and audience“There’s been a reckoning in digital media, and hopefully, a recognition that the very thing we once decried as commodity journalism is also necessary journalism. Like milk and coffee and electricity, news is needed. Facts, verified, analyzed, contextualized, matter.” By S. Mitra Kalita. |
 | The new court of public opinion“The new court of public opinion is a basketball court. Everyone gets their own ball (opinion). Everyone plays by the rules they consider fair.” By Caitria O'Neill. |
 | The rich get richer, the poor scramble“The truth is, in 2018 and beyond, it’s only going to be more expensive to maintain a successful news website. That will lead to further inequality between big and small news organizations. The big will become bigger, and the ones that are smaller, well, they will have to scramble for audience.” By Daniel Trielli. |
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To make fundraising appeals more appealing, Mother Jones turns them into stories readers want to read“Conventional fundraising wisdom is that you’ve got a couple of seconds to reach people and get them to do what you want them to do, and here we are writing 2,500-word appeals.” By Shan Wang. |
What We’re Reading
Bangor Daily News / Michael Shepherd
How an anonymous Maine ‘news’ site may have tipped a big local election →
One Maine Examiner headline said "Leaked Email: Ben Chin Says Lewiston Voters 'Bunch of Racists'" and featured an email apparently forwarded out of his campaign. In it, Chin describes a day of canvassing when he had positive interactions but also ran into "a bunch of racists." The progressive activist lost by 145 votes to Mayor-elect Shane Bouchard.
Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin
The Atlantic is putting up a paywall →
“Beginning in January, the Atlantic will launch a metered paywall that will kick in after readers access 10 articles for free in a given month. A spokesperson for the Atlantic said the magazine will launch with annual pricing equivalent to ‘one fairly nice cup of coffee per month.'”
Business Insider / Maxwell Tani
Leaked Mashable documents show how bleak things were before Ziff Davis bought it for a fraction of its one-time $250M valuation →
“Weighed down by large long-term expenses like the high rent on its offices in New York and Singapore, Mashable ended September with about $4.65 million in cash on hand, down from $8.4 million at the start of the year, documents show. Financial statements suggested revenue growth was slowing. And roughly 72 percent of Mashable’s revenue came from digital ads in the last three months before its sale.”
The Cut / Ashley Fetters
“It was like going to work in a morgue”: The anxiety of waiting to be laid off →
"Everyone was very tense and nervous and unhappy and scared. Some people were very, very confident they were going to be laid off, but they still had to come into work every day."
Chartbeat
The most engaging news stories of 2017, according to Chartbeat →
Topping the list, Alex Tizon’s “My Family’s Slave,” published by the Atlantic. (Explore the rest of the list here.)
Reuters / Antoni Slodkowski, Shoon Naing, Thu Thu Aung
Profiles of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, the Reuters reporters arrested in Myanmar →
“In many ways, the two symbolize their country's emergence after decades of isolation — both are from modest, provincial backgrounds, and both worked hard to pursue careers that would have been impossible in the junta era into which they were born.”