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Monday, May 20, 2019
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Winter may be coming for HBO’s streaming subscriptions, but it doesn’t have to for your news organizationOn the care and feeding of subscribers — and what happens when the thing they originally signed up for goes away. By Joshua Benton. |
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The 016, a social network for Worcester, seeks to become a “delivery boy and booster” for local media“You can create the best journalism, but if you can't get it to an audience, this is a problem.” By Dan Kennedy. |
What We’re Reading
Sacramento Bee / Michael Finch II
McClatchy’s digital-only subscriptions increased by 60 percent vs. 2018, but they’re still only at 179,000 →
“The publisher of 30 daily newspapers, including The Sacramento Bee, posted a $42 million loss or $5.34 per share – nearly an 8 percent increase from the same period the year before.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Salon’s new owners plan for profitability via programmatic ads (without editorial cuts) →
“Salon's had so many lives. It's beyond nine lives at this point. I think for many people who used to work there, it's long since died.”
CNN / Eliza Mackintosh and Edward Kiernan
How Finland is winning the war on misinformation →
“As the trolling ramped up in 2015, President Sauli Niinisto called on every Finn to take responsibility for the fight against false information. A year later, Finland brought in American experts to advise officials on how to recognize fake news, understand why it goes viral and develop strategies to fight it. The education system was also reformed to emphasize critical thinking.”
The New Yorker / Cal Newport
Can indie social media save us? →
“A loose collective of developers and techno-utopians that calls itself the IndieWeb has been creating another alternative. The movement's affiliates are developing their own social-media platforms, which they say will preserve what's good about social media while jettisoning what's bad. They hope to rebuild social media according to principles that are less corporate and more humane.”
Storybench / Alexander Frandsen
How journalism schools are preparing students for the future of news (based on Nieman Lab Predictions) →
“After reading through Nieman Lab's Predictions for Journalism in 2019, we identified four areas of emphasis – data, local news, social media and business models – that will be crucial for journalism students to spend time on. We interviewed five journalism educators across the country who lead especially forward-looking programs and courses within those areas.”
The New York Times / Brooks Barnes
Vice refocuses its business in the studio, with more than 60 TV series in development →
“Companies that make films and television shows — old media — have been awash in money from streaming services. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple and Disney Plus will spend roughly $15 billion combined on original content next year, according to Rich Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research.”
Bloomberg / Selina Wang
How Japan became Twitter’s second-largest market →
“Japanese businesses often create Twitter accounts before making their official websites; students use the service to chat with friends and follow their favorite bands; Anime-fans post their Twitter handles with QR codes on business cards that they exchange at events; and Japanese monks use it to post videos.”
Global Editors Network / Nicolas Kristen
The creator of Google News on AI’s impact on journalism and democracy →
“A large company with deep pockets can not only afford the best AI tech, but they can also build superior AI models based on their large user/client base. This leads to a feedback loop that strengthens their position until they become untouchable.”
The National / Miriam Berger
How Arabic podcasts are a “digital revival of a long-term tradition” →
“Listeners also crave something different from the standard diet of political, or politicised, news. [The cofounder of UAE-based show platform Kerning Cultures, Hebah] Fisher says they want something ‘a lot more focused on personal narratives, as opposed to affiliation with this belief or this government’.”
Knight Foundation
53 percent of college students say free speech is important; 45 percent say that have little trust in the media →
“Nearly half of students (45 percent) report not having much confidence in the media to report the news accurately, while 14 percent say they do not trust the media at all. This reflects a decline in trust from 2017, when half (50 percent) of college students said that they trusted the media to report the news accurately and fairly.”
The Verge / Ashley Carman
Spotify is testing a “Car Thing” to make commute listening easier →
This is the sort of thing terrestrial radio people should worry about.