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Thursday, May 9, 2019
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The Salt Lake Tribune wants to go nonprofit in a new and unproven way, and now the IRS will have its sayIf the Tribune can pull it off, it could point the way forward for other metro newspapers with civic-minded owners. By Christine Schmidt and Joshua Benton. |
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Is your organization thinking about membership? Take some ideas (and maybe some money) from the Membership Puzzle Project“Subscribers pay their money and get access to a product. But members join the cause and participate because they believe in it.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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Across seven countries, the average price for paywalled news is about $15.75/monthMore and more news organizations are implementing paywalls. A new report from the Reuters Institute for Journalism surveys the paywall landscape in 6 European countries and the U.S. By Felix Simon and Lucas Graves. |
What We’re Reading
The Verge / Casey Newton
Instagram says it will begin blocking hashtags that return anti-vaxxing misinformation →
“It has been two months since Facebook said it would crack down on anti-vaccination hoaxes, but journalists have continued to find them all over the company's platforms. Meanwhile, a measles outbreak in New York City has drawn new attention to the impact of anti-vaccine misinformation.”
Broadcasting & Cable / John Eggerton
The House Appropriations Committee wants to increase funding for public broadcasting by 15% →
“The funding increase is in contrast to President Donald Trump’s attempts to phase out funding, which even the Republican-controlled House rejected in favor of full funding. Democrats are now in control and have upped the pushback to full funding-plus.”
Correctiv
“Which version would you like to read? Key Findings or Full Story?” →
An interesting on/off switch on this story from the German nonprofit outlet Correctiv. The story, about cross-border tax fraud in the EU, is also interesting: “A Europe-wide investigation by 63 journalists from 30 countries,” coordinated by Correctiv.
Reynolds Journalism Institute / Quinn Ritzdorf
Lessons from a failed newsletter in how to engage with your audience →
“The Playbook covered 11 small schools across Northern Colorado, and when it first started, we covered about two schools per issue with long, in-depth featured stories. This meant that we were leaving out nine other schools and their communities, which added up to be about 500 potential subscribers. So we realized we needed to create shorter sections with a wider variety of schools in each issue. We tried to never leave a school out.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Justin Ray
How one reporter got the Sandra Bland cell phone video — and why his station didn’t run it →
“‘Literally if you've seen that clip you feel like you're looking at this guy through her own eyeball,’ Brian Collister says. But his station wasn't so enthusiastic about the video. ‘I showed it to my news director at the time at KXAN and he didn't think it was newsworthy at the time,’ Collister says. He left KXAN a few months later, but filed a second request for the same video clip; he left the first copy at his former station.”
Bloomberg / Anousha Sakoui
Old-guard financial firms are helping customers weed out recurring payments for subscriptions they no longer use →
“Gym memberships, food-of-the-month-club dues, cable commitments, as well as video-streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, are all vulnerable to impulsive house cleaning. The apps, which sometimes take a cut from the money they save, can also alert subscribers when services hike prices.”
CNN / Tom Kludt
The New York Times is now at 4.5 million subscribers and reported $30.2 million in net income for Q1 →
“It marks the third straight quarter that the Times has added more than 200,000 digital subscriptions, after adding 265,000 in the last three months of 2018 and 203,000 the quarter before. Moreover, digital advertising revenue rose 18.9% to nearly $56 million in quarter one of 2019.”
The Hollywood Reporter / Natalie Jarvey
Disney has taken another write-down on its investment in Vice Media →
“The company has recorded a $353 million impairment charge on its ownership stake in the new media startup, it revealed Wednesday as part of its first-quarter earnings report. That follows a $157 million write-down on its Vice investment in November. Disney invested $400 million in Vice in 2015 through a pair of successive $200 million investments.”
The Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
The New Orleans newspapers’ war post-mortem: “It was the decision to deliver the paper only three days a week that may have dealt the death blow” →
“‘It never worked. It was New Coke. It was an airplane with its wings put on backwards," [former Times-Picayune journalist Bruce] Nolan said. The plane was nose-diving — ‘and you could see them throwing luggage overboard.'”
Poynter / Mark I. Pinsky
Southern newspapers played a major role in racial violence. Do they owe their communities an apology? →
“We're sorry for the Orlando Sentinel's role in this injustice. We're sorry that the newspaper at the time did between little and nothing to seek the truth. We're sorry that our coverage of the event and its aftermath lent credibility to the cover-up and the official, racist narrative.”
TechCrunch / Josh Constine
Facebook talked privacy; Google actually built it →
“While both CEOs made protecting user data a central theme of their conference keynotes this month, Facebook's product updates were mostly vague vaporware while Google's were either ready to ship or ready to demo.”