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Tuesday, April 2, 2019
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Can a local public radio station make a national podcast — and build a donor base off it? In New Hampshire, they havePlus: The BBC might open up its app, universal stories through Muslim voices, and podlediadau yn Gymraeg. By Nicholas Quah. |
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Taking local news to the really local level: Using location data to deliver relevant local news“We were glad to see hundreds of people install the app and also give it permission to access their location and motion.” By Sarah Schmalbach. |
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Facebook is working on a dedicated News tab that might pay publishers licensing fees (or quarantine news where most users won’t find it)“The relationship between us and the publishers is different in a surface where we’re showing the content on the basis of its being high-quality, trustworthy content.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
The Verge / Nick Statt
One week with Apple News+: “A messy but good-enough Netflix for magazines” →
“While it certainly has its weird design quirks, I will say that for $10 a month, News Plus is the most comprehensive magazine subscription service on the market. (Scribd is a very solid alternative for non-iOS users.)”
Better News / Shirley Qiu
How The Virginian-Pilot identified and built a popular new beat focused on helping readers spend their money →
“Jeff Reece, senior editor at The Pilot, put together a team of two business reporters as well as one food writer to start a consumer-focused beat, which would cover things like local retail, dining, business openings and closings, and trends, with deeper dives into consumer culture and where readers could spend their money.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
The Financial Times now has 1 million paying readers →
“Digital subscriptions now account for more than three-quarters of the FT's circulation.”
Bloomberg / Mark Bergen
YouTube executives ignored warnings, letting toxic videos run rampant →
“In recent years, scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the world's largest video site surfaced and spread. One employee wanted to flag troubling videos, which fell just short of the hate speech rules, and stop recommending them to viewers. Another wanted to track these videos in a spreadsheet to chart their popularity. A third, fretful of the spread of ‘alt-right’ video bloggers, created an internal vertical that showed just how popular they were. Each time they got the same basic response: Don't rock the boat.”
Vanity Fair / Joe Pompeo
How Apple tried to woo The New York Times and Washington Post to sign on with Apple News+ →
“Cue's elevator pitch, according to people familiar with the discussions, was, ‘We'll make you the most-read newspaper in the world.'”
BuzzFeed / Mark Di Stefano
YouTube is placing sweeping new restrictions on far-right activist Tommy Robinson’s channel, but it’s not banning him →
“While YouTube is stopping short of an outright ban, the restrictions will mean Robinson’s new videos won’t have view counts, suggested videos, likes or comments. There’ll be an ‘interstitial’ or black slate that appears before each video warning people that it might not be appropriate for all audiences. Robinson will also be prevented from live-streaming onto his channel. Until now, he would do this regularly to reach his nearly 390,000 YouTube subscribers.”
Cleveland.com / Tom Feran
The Cleveland Plain Dealer lays off a third of its unionized newsroom staff →
“The Guild said in a statement that The Plain Dealer had a unionized staff of 340 journalists two decades ago. That soon will be reduced to 33.”
New York / Irin Carmon
What was The Washington Post afraid of? (Or: Why reporting a #MeToo story is ridiculously hard) →
“Amy and I did win the Mirror Award for Best Story on Sexual Misconduct in the Media, and when we went onstage to accept it, I spoke: ‘The stories that we have been doing are about a system. The system has lawyers and a good reputation. It has publicists. It has a perfectly reasonable explanation about what happened. It has powerful friends that will ask if it's really worth ruining the career of a good man based on what one women says, what four women say, what 35 women say. Indeed, the system is sitting in this room. Some more than others.'”
Deadspin / Tom Ley
Deadspin shares a meaty pitch guide for freelancers →
“‘Here at [cool magazine], we are interested in telling stories nobody else wants to tell.’ I promise that you will find no such sentences here. Instead, you will find actual pitches that Deadspin editors have received and approved, which then turned into actual stories that appeared on our website.” (Here’s more on pitching from The New York Times’ Tim Herrera.)
Digital Content Next / Nicole Torres
How the Harvard Business Review embraced evergreen content in a finishable pop-up newsletter →
“We're not the only ones experimenting with evergreen content in newsletters. The New York Times has given its Smarter Living material regular space in its morning news briefing. Even closer to our experiment, The Information is offering email courses on topics like the future of mobility; Vox.com launched a newsletter on giving to charity at the end of 2018 that followed a similar approach; The Washington Post has a 12-week email series on cooking; and the Pew Research Center recently launched a two-week email course on immigration.”
Local Media Association / Jed Williams
Here’re the 10 newsrooms working with Google’s subscriptions lab →
“The GNI Digital Subscriptions Lab, announced last week in partnership with Local Media Association and FTI Consulting, is an ambitious six-month program that will be laser-focused on finding a path forward for reader revenue strategies.”