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Thursday, March 1, 2018
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By mass-texting local residents, Outlier Media connects low-income news consumers to useful, personalized data“I was not satisfied with covering low-income communities for a higher-income audience. I wanted to cover issues for and with low-income news consumers.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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An AI editor and story summaries are helping Compass News become a go-to app for non-news junkies“If you go to any news site, at least half the headlines require a huge amount of assumed knowledge. Thats fine if you’re a journalist who spends a lot of time reading the news but it’s not if you are an average person who checks the news once a day for five minutes. We’re building for that second group.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
What We’re Reading
Wall Street Journal / Ben Mullin
Gimlet Media launches an Alexa skill that helps kids brush their teeth →
The show, “Chompers,” “encourages children to brush their teeth with trivia questions, riddles and stories. The show is sponsored by Oral B and Crest Kids and will feature new episodes twice a day starting in March. The company plans to launch future seasons at a date to be determined.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
BuzzFeed needs more money, so it’s selling its own line of kitchen tools at Walmart →
“Starting next week, Walmart will sell dozens of kitchen tools using BuzzFeed's Tasty brand in its stores and online at Walmart.com. The products, which range in price from $4.44 to $99 and include spatulas, cooking sheets and mixing bowls, will get dedicated shelf space at some 4,000 Walmart stores.”
Wall Street Journal / Soma Biswas
iHeartMedia preparing bankruptcy filing →
“iHeartMedia Inc. is preparing to file for bankruptcy as soon as this weekend after months of negotiations with creditors who hold over $15 billion of the company's debt, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Heidi N. Moore
Yes, there’s a crisis of trust in journalism. But it’s inside newsrooms, too →
“What is new is that the displays of dissatisfaction are becoming both more emphatic and more public — through leaks and tweets — and thus picking up momentum through journalists' extensive social networks. Protests against newsroom leadership have increasingly come with an eye towards taking complaints public.”
WAN-IFRA
Reader revenue strategy: Schibsted shifts focus to “stickiness” →
“All the subscription newspapers in Norway have turned up the share of premium on the homepage and are monitoring the traffic. Because we’ve been able to drive more digital subscriptions, and our users are increasingly logged in, we’ve in general been able to maintain the level of uniques.”
The Verge / Colin Lecher
Twitter is asking the public to help measure how toxic it is →
“The company is accepting proposals for the project until April 13th. The chosen applicants will partner with Twitter and receive funding for their projects. The company says it plans to announce the first projects in July.”
Source / Eileen Webb
Your interactive makes me sick →
“Now picture this: A journalist has published a piece of work you're interested in…You click over to the page and WHOOSH some sort of video moves unbidden behind the header. You scroll a bit and WHOA two different pieces of the page move with your scrolling…You're starting to get a bit overwhelmed, and maybe a touch nauseated. I don't know what you'd do at this point, but I'm gonna close the page.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Pete Vernon
Tom Scocca wants to provide an alternative to the NYT Opinion section →
“Nikole Hannah-Jones challenges liberals so much harder than Bret Stephens does. Bret Stephens opens his yap, and people are like, ‘You fudged these statistics and you're only arguing this because you have a prior commitment to an agenda that you want to push.’ It's like, ‘I'm annoyed that you're taking this tone of voice with me, but I'm not really bothered by you. You don't really care what I think, and I don't really care what you think.’ But Nikole Hannah-Jones hits you where you live.”
Poynter / Kristen Hare
Local journalists created a Facebook group with tips and support for covering mass shootings →
“A big part of why this group started was there was already this unofficial tragic club of newsrooms that have gone through mass shootings in their communities and understand what this means for their communities.”
Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin
The short list for FiveThirtyEight’s potential new owner includes The Athletic, The Atlantic, and ABC News →
“Potential buyers have been told it is losing about $6 million annually on revenue of about $3 million, according to one person familiar with the sale discussions.”
Facebook
Facebook is ending the “Explore Feed” test that moved all news out of News Feed in 6 countries →
“We…received feedback that we made it harder for people in the test countries to access important information.”