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Thursday, February 7, 2019
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Tony Haile’s Scroll acquires the news-reading app Nuzzel (it’ll remain free)“Nuzzel as a test kitchen.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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In a hot week for audio, paid newsletterer Substack introduces a way for podcasters to earn money“It’s not paying for the newsletter or the audio file. It's the connection to the mind.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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It’s time to apply for an Abrams Nieman Fellowship for Local Investigative ReportingIn communities across America, there are stories that need telling. We want to help you tell them. Applications are due February 18. By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re Reading
Membership Puzzle Project / Melanie Sill
How Reveal grew a corps of 50 volunteers to serve as hate sleuths, and other beat-building insights →
“Reveal's approach won't work for every beat, but the idea of tapping audience knowledge gets to one of the core elements of beat reporting: finding people who know and care about subjects and drawing on that input to inform and improve journalism.”
Recode / Kurt Wagner
Twitter finally shared how big its daily user base is, and it’s a lot smaller than Snapchat’s →
“Twitter has 126 million daily users compared to Snap's 186 million…roughly 39 percent of Twitter's monthly active users are on the app every day.” (For comparison, Facebook has 1.52 billion daily users.)
Recode / Peter Kafka + Eric Johnson
Full Q&A: Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber explain why they sold Gimlet to Spotify →
“But the actual size of the industry is still very small. Podcasts are probably a half-a-billion-dollar industry this year. And there's basically a disconnect between the number of people who are listening and the amount of shows they're listening to, and the amount of money coming into podcasting. And so one of the reasons this is the right time for us is we feel like for this golden age of audio to truly begin to flourish, there needs to be global scale, there needs to be better discovery, and there needs to be better monetization. And Spotify has all those things.”
The Ringer / Alison Herman
How NYT Cooking became the best comments section on the internet →
Sam Sifton: “We made the conscious decision not to call them comments. The call to action was to leave a note on the recipe that helps make it better. That's very different from 'Leave a comment on a recipe.' And the comment might be 'I hate you.' 'You're an asshole.' 'This is bad.' And that's helpful to no one. I see that on other recipes, and I'm glad that we don't have those comments, because we don't have comments. We have notes.”
The Guardian / Leonie Kijewski
Rappler is hit with a libel charge — about a story published months before the law was enacted →
“The move by the justice department was slammed by international rights organisations. Reporters Without Borders condemned the ‘absurd charges’ while Amnesty International demanded and end to the ‘harassment of Maria Ressa’.”
The Verge / Ashley Carman
What Spotify needs to become a great podcast app →
“Spotify is known for its work on Discover Weekly, which made personalized music discovery as simple as a weekly playlist. Hopefully, the company will do the same for podcasts, which could solve users' discovery problems.”
Center for Cooperative Media / Ned Berke
Here’s a (free) analytics tool for small and mid-sized publishers to build an audience funnel →
“The Audience Explorer is a set of 10 reports that drills into Google Analytics to specifically pull the kind of data publishers need to grow a relationship with their loyal and potentially-loyal readers. It provides side-by-side views of three different segments of readers, the content that resonates, and the platforms driving engagement with your website.”
Gizmodo / Patrick Howell O'Neill
Despite being banned in China, Reddit is about to land a $150M investment from Tencent →
“Further complicating matters is the fact that Tencent is not merely a resident on China's internet—the company is one of the most important architects of the Great Firewall. It's an interesting source of cash for a Silicon Valley company whose product is essentially speech.”
Medium / Nancy Watzman
How the Colorado Media Project will work to strengthen local news →
“We're planning to encourage collaboration between the state's higher education institutions and journalists, connect local news organizations with resources to develop capacity financially, provide opportunities for training and talent development, and more.”