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Monday, February 4, 2019
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Happy birthday, Facebook! These are the 10 most important moments in your not-so-great relationship with the news industryWhy only 10 on its 15th birthday? Recently, we discovered an error in our internal metrics that may have overstated the number of items on this list. We are very sorry for anyone affected; we take any mistake seriously. By Joshua Benton. |
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In Japan, a content-sharing platform for publishers aims to even the playing field between big and small“It's inefficient for publishers to try to do everything themselves. Meanwhile, they have to try to compete with massive, powerful news distributors like Google and Yahoo. That's why it's best for publishers to cooperate.” By Tim Hornyak. |
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Spotify is in “advanced talks” to buy Gimlet, at a price the podcast industry has never seen before$230 million for the venture-backed podcast company would open a wave of questions about the industry, its continued openness, and whether an era is ending — or beginning. By Nicholas Quah. |
What We’re Reading
USA TODAY / Philana Patterson
Gannett rejects Digital First Media’s takeover bid →
“After careful review and consideration, conducted in consultation with its financial and legal advisers, the Gannett board concluded that MNG's unsolicited proposal undervalues Gannett and is not in the best interests of Gannett and its shareholders,” the company said in statement. “In addition, Gannett does not believe MNG's proposal is credible.”
Miami New Times / Chuck Strouse
McClatchy sent buyout offers to 450 employees (10 percent of staff) →
“Last August, the company cut about 3.5 percent of the staff, nearly 140 employees. The cuts were not unexpected after a deal with the Tribune Company fell apart several months ago.”
HuffPost / Sanjana Karanth
Tom Hanks narrated the Washington Post’s $5.2 million Super Bowl ad →
“‘When our nation is threatened … there's always someone to gather the facts, no matter the costs,’ Hanks said in the ad. The commercial showed multiple slain and missing journalists, including Austin Tice, Marie Colvin and Jamal Khashoggi.”
Nieman Reports / Martin Scott
The unintended consequences of foundation-funding international coverage →
“Specifically, news outlets are incentivized to focus on producing content that is likely to be more ‘impactful.’ This was generally understood to include longer-form, explanatory, and off-agenda coverage targeted at niche, specialist audiences—including policy-makers. For example, the director of one nonprofit intermediary encouraged its grantees to, ‘think of the long tail,’ arguing that, ‘long-form work with a shelf-life is more attractive in the philanthropic world than breaking news or hyper-topical reports.'”
Times Open / Dalit Shalom
The Daily will now come with transcripts →
“It's important to us that all of our readers can engage with our report, whether they choose to listen, share or read, and audio transcripts are a big step forward in our commitment to make Times content accessible to all users.” (They’re using 3Play to transcribe.)
The Guardian / Nick Evershed
Guardian Australia publishes its first automated article →
“If the news media want to control how technology like this is used and how it affects their industry, it's far better to construct an open-source system that can be used by any media organisation. It's not going to make anyone redundant any time soon – ReporterMate can only provide coverage for certain types of stories, and the coverage it provides is limited to templated summaries.”
The New York Times / Alex Williams
The former editor of Vanity Fair launches a digital international platform for “worldly cosmopolitans” →
“Mr. Carter also suggested the new venture might be like the weekend edition of the Financial Times, which he loves, but ‘is hard to get — you've got to be in the metropolitan city, it's $7, or at least it is where I spend the weekends in the country, you've got to get out of your pajamas to get it.'”
Global Editors Network / Tristan Ferne and Kourtney Bitterly
How the BBC and New York Times R&D teams work →
“Our horizon is designed to be 5–10 years, though in my team I think it's sometimes a bit closer than that due to the speed of change on the internet. It's a balance between having the space and time to come up with truly radical ideas and making things that are more immediately useful to the business and resonate with our audience.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Social news publisher Attn recalibrates with a TV show focus after being Facebook-first →
“The startup raised a $15 million series C round of funding at an undisclosed valuation last September and ‘more than doubled’ its revenue in 2018, co-founder Matthew Segal said, adding that he sees a path to profitability "very soon." He declined to provide hard revenue figures.”