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Thursday, June 7, 2018
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Here are some of the ways you might be doing email newsletters inefficiently (and how to do them better)Yellow Brim wants to tackle the pain points in newsletter production — and there are plenty. By Shan Wang. |
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La Pulla’s wildly popular YouTube videos (born at a 130-year-old newspaper) are bringing hard news to young ColombiansLa Pulla is run out of El Espectador, Colombia’s oldest newspaper. But to remain independent, the team fundraises for its own salaries, equipment, and expenses. By Marta Martinez. |
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All the news that’s fit for you: The New York Times’ “Your Weekly Edition” is a brand-new newsletter personalized for each recipient“Say you read a lot about cooking, and someone similar to you has also read a lot about cooking, but also read a Saturday profile from International about a chef in Italy. We may surface that story in your queue in your newsletter.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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Can crowdsourcing scale fact-checking up, up, up? Probably not, and here’s why“We foolishly thought that harnessing the crowd was going to require fewer human resources, when in fact it required, at least at the micro level, more.” By Mevan Babakar. |
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Programmatic advertising is coming to audio. Should podcast producers embrace it or run for the hills?Plus: A $1 million podcast talent deal, TV recap culture in audio form, and the delight of regional accents. By Nicholas Quah. |
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Revenge of the desktop: These are the most important announcements Apple made for news publishers todayApple News comes to the Mac, breaking news alerts get a little extra scrutiny, Siri learns a few new tricks, and the web — or some version of it — comes to your wrist. By Joshua Benton. |
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Spurned by Facebook’s News Feed, Guatemala’s Nómada prepares for a more independent future“At the beginning, we were very upset. But at the end, we can thank it because it exploded the bubble we were living in.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
Twitter / Mark Di Stefano
BuzzFeed France appears to be shutting down →
“We are taking steps to reconsider our operation in France given the uncertain path to growth in the French market.”
Building The Atlantic / DJ Brinkerhoff
The Atlantic redesigns its article pages for speed, readability, and better ad placements →
“On average, start render is down 52 percent and load complete is down 42 percent. In our public beta, these changes have already shown concrete results. We have seen a 15 percent improvement in engaged time, and a statistically significant reduction in bounce rate.”
Civil / Vivian Schiller
Vivian Schiller is joining Civil →
“What's most exciting for me is a fresh chance to get it right. Civil's unique governance structure specifically rewards quality, participation, link sharing and respect through a specific set of community and journalistic standards — that's where I come in.”
Poynter / Kristen Hare
Miss editing investigative projects (or need an editor yourself)? Sign up here →
Rose “Ciotta piloted IECorps last year in two newsrooms — the Olean (New York) Times Herald and the Beaver County (Pennsylvania) Times. The Pennsylvania paper created a multimedia series on the impact of the opioid crisis. The New York paper produced an investigation on the city's broken rental housing program, which won a prize from the state press association. Now, Ciotta is looking for editors willing to work with local journalists and newsrooms that need those editors.”
Twitter / Farai Chideya
What the NYT’s coverage of Kate Spade’s legacy reveals about newsroom demographics →
“The class-based assumptions in the writing are staggering.”
Times Open / Jeremy Bowers
How The New York Times uses software to recognize members of Congress →
“Shazam, but for House members faces.”
San Francisco Chronicle / Trisha Thadani
Al Jazeera is shutting down its San Francisco office, which housed AJ+ →
“Employment terminations are expected to begin Aug. 5, the letter to the state said. Abderrahim Foukara, assistant secretary of Al Jazeera International, confirmed that AJ+ will be moving to Washington, but did not elaborate. It is unclear how many employees from San Francisco will make the move.”
Nieman Reports / Ken Auletta
Doing the math on subscription budgets, amid the epic disruption of the ad business →
“Think about the subscription toll today, including mobile phone, broadband, cable or satellite TV, newspaper and magazine subscriptions, Netflix, HBO or Showtime, Amazon Prime, apps, music. Jeffrey Cole, who teaches at USC, says the average household pays monthly subscription charges of $267 per month, which does not include electricity, gas, and other unavoidable monthly bills. How do most overstretched consumers pay more?”
Columbia Journalism Review / Jon Allsop, Kelsey Ables, and Denise Southwood
America’s top newspaper editors are (wait for it) really white and male →
90 percent white and 73 percent male, by CJR’s counting.
Digiday / Tim Peterson
YouTube seems to be planning (and hiring for) a new “news initiative” →
“Two sources speculated that YouTube may follow Facebook's playbook and pay news publishers for exclusive videos or that it may simply roll out a new way to promote videos from accredited news outlets on its platforms in order to combat the spread of fake news videos. The latter seems more likely. For one, YouTube is said to be eyeing people with proven journalism backgrounds for the aforementioned position.”
New York Magazine / Noreen Malone
The New Yorker staff wants to unionize →
“The era of white-collar organized labor is fully upon us.”
Chicago Tribune / Robert Channick
An investor group’s deal to buy Michael Ferro’s entire stake in Tronc has fallen through →
“In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, Ferro said he terminated the purchase agreement because of a ‘breach of its obligations’ by the buyer, McCormick Media. A source familiar with the proposed transaction said Tuesday that McCormick Media was unable to fully finance the transaction.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Pete Brown
Apple News’s human editors prefer a few major newsrooms, according to this analysis →
“In the US, the Los Angeles Times got the lion's share from @AppleNews, racking up 39 of the 61 Twitter mentions of regional publishers—approximately two-thirds—with New York-centric outlets New York magazine, the New York Post, and The New Yorker accounting for thirteen of the remaining twenty-two.”
News Corp
Gerard Baker is out as Wall Street Journal editor; Matt Murray is in →
Baker had faced newsroom revolt over allegedly soft coverage of the Trump administration.