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Wednesday, February 20, 2019
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Local TV is still the most trusted source of news. So how do you collaborate with a station?“The idea that you would collaborate with your competitor when you’re fighting for ratings is anathema to broadcasters.” But it may be a key part of how local news remains sustainable. By Christine Schmidt. |
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How Tribune Publishing, The Guardian, and Slate tackled reader revenue by valuing their journalism moreExclusive podcasts, tightened paywalls, and just plain asking each played a part. By Christine Schmidt. |
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How the Lenfest Local Lab used texting to inform Philadelphians about election issuesTexting “seemed like a way to allow people to pare the constant stream of news down to just what mattered to them the most.” By Sarah Schmalbach. |
What We’re Reading
International Center for Journalists
Help ICFJ study the state of technology in newsrooms worldwide →
“The inaugural study in 2017, which surveyed more than 2,700 journalists and newsrooms managers, revealed that despite great strides, journalists are not keeping pace with technology.”
Vox / Anna North
How one NPR host is “retraining” the audience to improve gender and racial diversity on the radio →
“I've been really intentional on trying to get gender parity on the show, getting different voices on the show. And we track that. And it's about trying to move away from this very static idea of who should be telling us the news, and trying to amplify people with stories to tell who will expand our understanding of an issue.”
TechCrunch / Josh Constine
Instagram plans a fundraiser sticker for nonprofits — but is it just a way for Facebook to store credit card info? →
“Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed that commerce is a huge part of the 2019 road map for Facebook's family of apps. But before people can easily buy things from Instagram etc., Facebook needs their credit card info on file. That's a potentially lucrative side effect of Instagram's plan to launch a Fundraiser sticker in 2019. Facebook's own Donate buttons have raised $1 billion, and bringing them to Instagram's 1 billion users could do a lot of good while furthering Facebook's commerce strategy.”
Emarketer
Digital ad spending is expected to surpass traditional ad spending this year →
“Also for the first time, the combined share of the duopoly (Google and Facebook) will drop, even as their revenues grow. Google's share will drop to 37.2% from 38.2% last year; Facebook's share will drop to 22.1% from 21.8% last year. The big winner this year will be No. 3 player Amazon, which continues to take share from just about everyone.”
Wired / Zeynep Tufekci
Here’s one idea on how to strengthen verification to strengthen facts →
“For example, the digital front page of The New York Times on the date and time a photograph was taken could be used to generate keys to "digitally sign" any photograph and its metadata. That's a bit like making the photograph hold a copy of that moment's New York Times, so to speak, except the "holding the paper" part is done by cryptographic digital signing.”
HuffPost / Taryn Finley
Nikole Hannah-Jones on the realities of reporting on race as a black person →
“I think for most journalists, journalists of color, you have to be very, very careful. Because the assumption of your bias is there in a way that it's not there with white journalists. But I also understand that as a black journalist, our tradition is different because we were journalists who were writing in a country who was opposed to our very existence.”
CSO / Ms. Smith
Google forgot to mention some of its Nest devices have an secret microphone →
“I suppose it depends upon your outlook on if you are happy or creeped out that your security system secretly had an undocumented microphone capable of doing the listening all along.”
Bloomberg / Mark Gurman
You’ll probably be able to turn your news org’s iPad app into a Mac app this fall →
“…via a new software development kit that the company will release as early as June at its annual developer conference…In 2020, Apple plans to expand the kit so iPhone applications can be converted into Mac apps in the same way. Apple engineers have found this challenging because iPhone screens are so much smaller than Mac computer displays.”
9to5Mac / Zac Hall
In the next version of iOS, “APPLE NEWS” is becoming “🍎News” →
This is mission-critical intel, obviously.
South China Morning Post
The South China Morning Post has redesigned, with more AI →
“Over the past two years, the Post has gradually transitioned from operating as a local newspaper to a global media company serving a wider international community.” (So long, sudoku and horoscopes.)