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Wednesday, August 22, 2018
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So your news organization has real, paying digital subscribers. Now how do you keep them?One finding: “Need-to-know material converts (related to how to live your life, understand the world), while nice-to-know (guides, arts, reviews) converts badly but is key for retention.” By Shan Wang. |
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We’re getting closer to the day when news apps and interactives can be easily preserved in perpetuityWell, maybe not easily, but an NYU team is building a tool to save the entirety of a news app (including underlying libraries and frameworks), as well as a digital repository to hold them for future audiences. By Shan Wang. |
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Reveal will fuel local, collaborative investigative reporting by helping newsrooms get the awkward conversations out of the way“There may be two partners who think they can’t work together, but really you could have a meeting or two and talk things out and resolve some questions — and then they actually could work together.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Poynter / Kristen Hare
How The Seattle Times brought in more than $4 million to fund critical coverage →
Some insights: Community funding doesn't improve the profit margin of the Times. The funding itself can take a lot of time. Conversations with one funder started in June of 2015, Chan said, and an agreement wasn't signed until August of 2017. Donor development is not source development. And more.
CNN / Oliver Darcy
McClatchy plans to lay off about 140 staff, among other cost-cutting measures →
Craig Forman, president and chief executive officer of McClatchy added in a memo to employees that “most of our expense savings are in legacy areas,” which would allow the company to “continue to build our future as a digital-DNA, journalism-driven media business.”
American Press Institute
The American Press Institute is hiring a strategist to help newsrooms better use analytics to serve their audiences →
“You will be working with reporters, editors, audience and analytics teams at newsrooms big and small across the country. You will be helping them focus on their audience through analytics and community surveys. You will be training teams to discover what works and what doesn't in their journalism, helping them navigate their analytics and consult on content strategy. This job will also involve writing about success stories from our partners that will be shared publicly.”
Deadline / Nellie Andreeva
Apple is getting TV rights to The New York Times Magazine’s 70-page climate change story →
“‘Losing Earth‘ occupied an entire special August 1 issue of the New York Times Magazine. Produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center, "Losing Earth" is based on more than 18 months of original reporting, well over a hundred interviews, and thousands of archival documents, many previously unknown, from government and industry sources.”
Poynter / Indira Lakshmana and Rick Edmonds
Trust in the news media seems to be up, especially in local news, one new survey says →
“A Poynter Media Trust Survey found 76 percent of Americans across the political spectrum have ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ of trust in their local television news, and 73 percent have confidence in local newspapers. The divide in attitudes toward local versus national news is especially pronounced among Republicans: 71 percent said they trust local TV news in their community, 43 percentage points higher than those who trust national network television news.”
Digiday
Business Insider shifts to focus on business as Insider brand takes lifestyle, general news content →
“Some BI editorial teams — politics, news and military/defense — would be moving over to the Insider team, which was publishing on everything from cars to dessert to cheese, initially mostly in the form of social video designed for Facebook. The changes seem to line up with the company's direction into subscriptions. It could be confusing for readers to run up against the BI Prime paywall given the dichotomy between those hard-core business stories and BI's made-for-social, fluffier fare.”