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Wednesday, February 21, 2018
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Newsonomics: Will Michael Ferro double down on newspapers or go digital?Does he really want to take on becoming the great consolidator of the American press, conquering once-mighty Gannett? Or will he exit the field — richer, but his ambitions humbled? By Ken Doctor. |
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With audience engagement and live events, Finimize is finding new ways to boost readers’ financial literacy“Publications like the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal assume a lot of things about what their readers know. If the price of oil goes up, what happens to the dollar? They assume you know that. We assume our readers don’t.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
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With a year of guides to a better life, The New York Times hopes to convert more readers to subscribers“This is all about how we can provide subscribers with the type of content that makes them feel like they’re getting insight they’re not getting anywhere else.” It’s also a bet on keeping some content subscriber-only, not subject to its five-articles-a-month metered paywall. By Christine Schmidt. |
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Will moving to radio put a strain on what makes The Daily work so well as a podcast?Plus: The daily news podcast space gets a little more crowded, The Guardian experiments with an augmented player, and Amazon wants to turn your blog into a podcast. By Nicholas Quah. |
What We’re Reading
The New York Times / Jaclyn Peiser
The Atlantic plans to add 100 new staffers this year, half in newsroom →
The news comes six months after the Laurene Powell Jobs-run Emerson Collective acquired a majority stake in Atlantic Media.
Journalism.co.uk / Caroline Scott
BBC’s VR Hub launches its first news documentary to explore the water politics of the river Nile →
“During the experience, viewers are placed in a range of scenarios, from flying through canyons and over waterfalls, to sitting in on interviews with ministers fighting their countries’ corners. They even go to lunch with the filming crew, and often ‘stand’ next to Leithead as he describes the scene in front of them, chatting to the audience as if they were there with him.”
Search Engine Land / Barry Schwartz
Google drops support for the meta news keywords tag →
“Google introduced the new meta keywords tag specifically for news publishers back in 2012 and quietly stopped supporting it months ago. Google did not announce this change, so publishers, like us at Search Engine Land, have continued to use it.”
The Outline / Kieran Delamont
How to write about weed without sounding high →
“A new generation of journalists who write about the cannabis industry are overhauling what many saw as the activist, stoner fixations of the genre's forefathers, and trying to develop a new genre of cannabis journalism and criticism that carries the stature of its counterparts in the food and travel industries. But at its core it is about one, bigger question: how do you talk about weed without sounding like an idiot?”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
Gannett records a big revenue decline →
“Comparing only properties Gannett already owned in 2016, revenues were down 10 percent year-to-year. Print advertising declined 18.5 percent…Same-store circulation revenues fell too — by 6.7 percent. Gannett has been raising subscription prices aggressively and saw circulation volume fall 12 percent year-to-year at those properties.”
The New York Times / Amos Barshad
What happens when athletes do the sportswriting? →
“The Players' Tribune, a pet project of Derek Jeter's, allows the stars to tell their own stories. It's occasionally great — but is it journalism?”
Digiday / Max Willens
Publishers warily embrace Amazon program to run their content on Amazon.com →
“For some publishers, the tests signal something much scarier. If Amazon, which already claims more than 40 cents of every dollar spent on e-commerce in the United States, trains its customers to look for third-party recommendations inside its platform, it will be able to exert even more control over the affiliate commerce world, potentially dropping affiliate commission rates to a fraction of their current levels.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Publishers warm to Google, but still worry about getting crowded out in search results →
Google is showing more Google-published information on its search results pages — and it’s got publishers spooked
Bloomberg / Katherine Chiglinsky and Noah Buhayar
Berkshire Hathaway is cutting more newspaper jobs →
“BH Media Group is reducing staff by 148 employees and not filling 101 vacant positions, representing a total of about 6 percent of its workforce, the company said Tuesday in a statement. The organization is seeking to trim expenses because of declining advertising revenue.” Last year, it cut 289 jobs.