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Wednesday, January 17, 2018
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“We stepped in and started doing it”: How one woman built an award-winning news outlet from her dining room table“This is all going on in my apartment. My kids were small and running around, there were always interns here. And then that spring, we were nominated for a really big award.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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Cold, hard numbers will drive the stories on this Internet-crawling company’s new media armFintech company Thinknum has lots of interesting data to sell access to. Now it wants to build public-facing stories out of it. By Christine Schmidt. |
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At The Boston Globe, the editorial pages are looking for new ways to engage readers“We learned how important it is to have writers and editors and digital producers working collaboratively, near each other. It’s a model for the future.” By Dan Kennedy. |
What We’re Reading
The Verge / Dani Deahl
Instagram is testing a new text-only option in Stories →
“The feature appears as a separate option at the bottom of the screen when within Stories, alongside the other usual options like Boomerang and Live. Once Type is selected, you can write and choose different options for the background and font.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
Magazine publisher Bonnier has laid off 70 people in the U.S. and shuttered five magazines →
The publisher is closing WaterSki, Wakeboarding, Sport Diver, Baggers, and Dirt Rider.
9to5Mac / Chance Miller
Apple expands Siri’s “Give me the news” feature to non-beta users and the UK →
“The feature works by instantly streaming a daily news podcast when you ask Siri to ‘Give me the news.’ By default, the feature appears to play content from NPR in the U.S. and BBC in the U.K. During the initial rollout to beta users, the feature defaulted to The Washington Post, but that appears to have changed in today's broader rollout.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Mathew Ingram
Europe tries to fight hate, harassment, and fake news without killing free speech →
“France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are all either discussing or are already in the process of implementing requirements for social networks to take measures to remove or block online hate speech, harassment, and so-called ‘fake news.'”
Stratechery / Ben Thompson
Is Facebook telling us the whole story about why it’s changing News Feed? →
“This change could have been made and justified without even broaching the idea that Facebook might be bad for you; why did Facebook rest everything on that reasoning?”
AP / Lauren Easton
AP launches @APFactCheck on Twitter →
“The Twitter account will give us a dedicated platform to quickly deliver any live fact-checking we do around big events — items that have proven to be a huge success for us. Getting fact checks out on social media as soon as possible also can be a major weapon in helping to debunk trending false stories.”
The Membership Puzzle Project / Emily Goligoski
When membership might not be your publication’s best path forward →
“We recommend membership as one of several revenue streams and one that will likely generate less than 10 percent of total revenue in its first year. Still, we'd be remiss not to share other membership limitations with you — and warn that it may not be rosy under these conditions.”
Jezebel / Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Babe, what are you doing? →
“If journalists are going to be the carriers of stories like this one, we have to view that responsibility as a solemn one, not one that will finally put our websites on the map, or jolt our writers into the public eye.”
Pew Research Center / Elisa Shearer
Americans claim they follow science news because they feel a civic obligation to do so →
“About half (48%) of those surveyed said they follow science news because they feel a civic obligation to do so.”
Medium / Wolfgang Blau
Facebook’s China problem →
“Wrapping too much journalism around your brand is a mistake for any platform hoping to still make it into China, which is one of Mark Zuckerberg's great ambitions. Why own publishing companies also or become a publisher yourself when you have the best publishers’ content and ‘brand-halo’ for free on your own properties, even in a now downgraded newsfeed?”
Mumbrella Asia / Eleanor Dickinson
Pay to play on Facebook: A view from four Asian publishers on the news feed changes →
"We aren't super concerned about Facebook's algorithm change. For the last two years we've been working relentlessly on diversifying away from the platform, and in 2017 Facebook accounted for about 40 percent of our traffic.” (40 percent!)
The Splice Newsroom / George Wright
A new English-language podcast in Vietnam wants to bring lively debate to one of the region’s most restrictive media environments →
“The creators hope the 30-minute episodes will expand on Saigoneer's current model of blending lighthearted content with hard news. But with the latter comes a need to carefully navigate what US non-governmental organization Freedom House has called one of the harshest media environments in Asia.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Axios plans to push into video, using the “smart brevity” concept →
“We're not at all Facebook-dependent. Twenty percent of our traffic is direct; 20 percent is Google; we get a lot from Flipboard. We do well with Facebook. Some Reddit. Year one, we focused mainly on text. In year two, you're going to see a big push into video as we take the smart brevity concept and apply it to video.”
The Awl / The Awl
The Awl is shutting down at the end of the month →
April 20, 2009- January 31, 2018.