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Monday, April 29, 2019
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A doorbell company owned by Amazon wants to start producing “crime news” and it’ll definitely end wellBecause what good is a panopticon if you can’t generate some clicks? By Joshua Benton. |
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Product teams have taken national news organizations by storm. What’s happening locally?“We’re trying to create great experiences for both our friends in the newsroom and our audiences whom we never meet.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
Digiday / Jessica Davies
El Pais’s owner built a brand-safety tool to identify articles evoking positive feelings →
“A string of publishers, including the New York Times, ESPN and USA Today, has also rolled out ad products that they claim can match ads to people in certain moods. The BBC has also experimented with tracking emotional reactions to ads for years to prove the value of its branded content.”
Vice News / David Uberti
How Fox News dominates Facebook in the Trump era →
“The Fox page's engagement rate — the average number of engagements per post per follower — was higher than any major news organization over the same period, and some five times that of The New York Times.”
BBC / Alli Shultes
Behind Jane Manchun Wong’s hobby of uncovering app features before launch →
“By reverse-engineering popular apps such as Facebook and Instagram, she is able to preview changes that are still in testing mode. She shares the designs from her Twitter account, which is watched closely by journalists eager for a scoop – and the companies hoping to avoid landing at the center of one.”
Wired / Molly Wood
The rise and fall of Facebook’s memory economy →
“If at some point, when we stop posting anything new, Facebook will inevitably hit Peak Memory, and the site's News Feed will collapse upon itself, a heap of reposted content from the year before, the two years before, the four years before.”
Variety / Todd Spangler
“We don’t plan to cut our way to growth,” Gizmodo sites’ new owner says →
”The more time we spent with the data the more excited we got,’ Spanfeller said. Besides comprising a large audience, it also skews younger to provide better reach among consumers 18-34 than Vice, Vox, BuzzFeed or Group Nine, according to Spanfeller. ‘Then what was really interesting was how engaged they are with their audience — they're not dependent on social media.'”
Los Angeles Times / Wendy Lee
BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti on the three months after layoffs →
“I think it's possible to achieve some of the same benefits without M&A. Certainly if it was the right thing, buying another company that could add to what we're doing would make sense.”
Fortune / Danielle Abril
Here’s the plan toward profitability from the CEO of Verizon Media (formerly Oath) →
“My vision, the next five years, is to get a third our revenue each from ads, subscriptions, and transactions…. Let's say you're watching the Dallas Mavs and want to buy a jersey while you're watching. We want to integrate commerce more deeply.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Nicholas Diakopoulos
A 101 on machine learning in the newsroom →
“Sorry, machine learning is probably not going to save the news industry from its financial woes. But there's nonetheless a lot of utility for journalists to discover within it.”
Politico / Tim Alberta
Inside the shrinking newsroom of the paper that shapes the primaries, the Des Moines Register →
“The paper's business reporter is covering Bernie Sanders; its agriculture reporter is responsible for keeping tabs on not-yet-declared Montana Governor Steve Bullock; its metro reporter is assigned to the long-shot Maryland Congressman John Delaney, who has all but lived in Iowa for the past two years.”
Politico / Zack Stanton
Bustle Digital Group’s editor-in-chief on expanding editorially as Bustle’s business grows →
“‘In the early days, we were kind of like, “Is there any news? What's happening?”‘ she said with a laugh. ‘Now, … there's news every five minutes.”