Selasa, 24 Januari 2017

With Indivisible, public radio stations hope the call-in format will help Americans find common ground: The latest from Nieman Lab

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

With Indivisible, public radio stations hope the call-in format will help Americans find common ground

The show is “about understanding the values that we hold and how we want to be — what are our shared hopes and dreams for who we want to be in the world and how are we seen,” says WNYC CEO Laura Walker. By Ricardo Bilton.

Patreon is helping The Asheville Blade connect directly with readers — and skip over advertisers entirely

“I never have to consider if a story I run is going to make me take a financial hit. That lack of pressure gives us a huge amount of independence.” By Ricardo Bilton.

ProPublica is leading a nationwide effort to document hate crimes, with local and national partners

“We're not alone in trying to compile the numbers, and we're not alone in trying to track all reports.” By Shan Wang.
What We’re Reading
Twitter / laura_june
Matter Studios, the incubator that Medium spun off last year, has apparently shut down →
Its mission had been to give creators “the financing and creative support to develop different media products under their own brands.” We’ve asked the company for comment.
Wall Street Journal / Mike Shields
Vox Media taps Lindsay Nelson as its first CMO →
“Ms. Nelson will oversee a new marketing division within Vox that encompasses branded content, the company's growing stable of advertising products, revenue streams (such as ad revenue share deals with platforms like Facebook) and ad partnerships.”
johnkeefe.net / John Keefe
WNYC’s John Keefe is joining Quartz’s new Bot Studio →
The senior editor of WNYC’s data news team will join Quartz to help it build bots through its new Knight-funded Quartz Bot Studio and to manage future iterations of the organization’s iPhone and Android apps.
TechCrunch / Natasha Lomas
Fake news’ power to influence shrinks with a contextual warning, study finds →
“Researchers found that combining facts about climate change with a small dose of misinformation — in the form of a warning about potential distortion — helped study participants resist the influence of the false information.”
New York Times / Katie Benner
Snapchat Discover takes a hard line on misleading and explicit images →
“The new rules more explicitly restrict publishers from posting questionable pictures on Discover that do not have news or editorial value. Snapchat also clarified guidelines that prevent publishers from including reports or links to outside websites that could be considered fake news, saying that all content must be fact-checked and accurate.”
Chalkbeat
Chalkbeat is expanding to Detroit →
The education news site’s Detroit expansion joins its coverage in Indiana, New York, Colorado, and Tennessee.
Medium / Ernst-Jan Pfauth
De Correspondent now has 50,000 paying members →
“Some 78% of members pay €60 a year (around $65), the other 22% pay €6 a month ($6.50).”
Nytimes / Ben Smith
BuzzFeed News’ editor-in-chief Ben Smith explains why BuzzFeed published the Trump dossier →
“If I were to design a media ecosystem from scratch, it wouldn't be this one. And I certainly did not anticipate this environment in the utopian, early days of digital journalism 15 years ago. The web was supposed to allow powerful media organizations to build trust and connections to their audience by sharing their knowledge and sources. The audience could hold power to account. At its best, that kind of transparency has been powerful.”
Recode / Eric Johnson
How the press can save itself in the age of Trump →
"In order for the press to recover some authority, so that what it says about Trump makes a difference, I think journalists have to conduct an extraordinary act of listening that they've never tried to do before," says Jay Rosen.
Poynter / Melody Kramer
What does a news organization optimized for trust look like? →
“Since November, there's been a renewed interest in thinking about ways to rebuild trust with audiences, to listen to audiences and to include audiences as trusted partners in our work.”

Sabtu, 21 Januari 2017

Newsonomics: Trump may be the news industry’s greatest opportunity to build a sustainable model: The latest from Nieman Lab

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

Newsonomics: Trump may be the news industry’s greatest opportunity to build a sustainable model

Readers have finally understood that their payments for the news will actually make a difference in what they and their community know. That model needs to be extended down to states and cities. By Ken Doctor.

Ezra Klein hopes Vox can change the fact that “people who are more into the news read the news more”

“The primary cleavage in news readership is not liberal vs. conservative. It's news junkie vs. non-news junkie.” By Laura Hazard Owen.

How The Guardian will be experimenting with push notifications on Inauguration Day

Plus a look back at some Inauguration Day digital innovations of the recent past. By Joseph Lichterman.
What We’re Reading
Politico / Joe Pompeo
The Committee to Protect Journalists has raised around $300,000 since Meryl Streep’s Golden Globe nod →
“CPJ has been thrust into the national spotlight thanks to high-profile shout-outs from the likes of Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes; Nick Kristof in The New York Times; and BuzzFeed in the form of a merchandizing drive that raised $25,000 for the group. Donations were up threefold year-over-year following the election, and since Streep's January 8 Golden Globes plug.”
Financial Times / Matthew Garrahan
BuzzFeed and online media rivals seek new models →
“BuzzFeed recently launched an e-commerce store that ‘curates’ clothing and other products emblazoned with sweary messages. The Sun, which removed its paywall at the end of 2015, has taken a similar approach, offering commercial services such as sports betting alongside its content. The Guardian, a rare example of a newspaper that continues to give its content away, has taken a different tack, selling memberships that include a ‘welcome pack and gift card.'”
AdExchanger / Kelly Liyakasa
“If you're a content company and you're not Facebook, Google or Snapchat, you're in the niche ads business” →
Says New York Times chief revenue officer Meredith Kopit Levien. “Now we're on a path to becoming a very big consumer business and a niche ad business.”
Poynter / Kristen Hare
Covering the inauguration: A resource guide →
Tips on everything, including what to do in case of arrest and guidelines for basic press rights. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, for instance, reminds journalists to carry government-issued identification and have cash at all times.
BuzzFeed / Pranav Dixit
Viral WhatsApp hoaxes are India’s own fake news crisis →
“The primary vector for the spread of misinformation in India is WhatApp. The instant messenger is fast, free, and runs on nearly all of India's 300 million smartphones. It's also encrypted end-to-end, which means it's nearly impossible to track what flows through it. Its real-world ramifications, nonetheless, can be brutal.”
WWD / Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke
The Women’s March on Washington raises ethical questions for media outlets →
“The New York Times, The Washington Post and BuzzFeed (or, as Trump called it during his press conference, a "failing piece of garbage") are not allowing their reporters to attend unless they are on assignment. But for those more fashion-oriented magazines, attending the march as a participant rather than a reporter isn't a problem. In fact, these titles oddly seem to see it as an advantage.”
Naija247News
Business Insider launches a sub-Saharan Africa edition with Ringier →
“The Africa-focussed business title has secured an impressive roster of leading and authoritative African commentators, including Bright Simons, Ethel Cofie and Herman Chinery Hesse.”

Jumat, 20 Januari 2017

Can Marketplace reach an audience beyond those who already care about explainer journalism?: The latest from Nieman Lab

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

Can Marketplace reach an audience beyond those who already care about explainer journalism?

The stated mission is big: raising the economic intelligence of the country. “It’s our job to do more of that storytelling, but also to think more about how we are telling the story outside the traditional audience of public radio.” By Laura Hazard Owen.

A new collaboration: NPR stations nationwide are working together to spot trends in state governments

“By inviting in anybody who covers these things and letting them be participants and part of the conversation, the bar gets raised for everybody.” By Joseph Lichterman.
What We’re Reading
Recode / Peter Kafka
Quartz cancels its high-end ‘Next Billion’ conference →
“The company is laying off three employees who worked full-time on its conference business…[editor-in-chief Kevin] Delaney said Quartz, which has a staff of 190, planned to hire 68 employees, including 20 new marketing specialists, in the first half of this year.”
The Hill / Alexander Bolton
Report: Trump plans to privatize the Corporation for Public Broadcasting →
“The preliminary proposals from the White House budget office will be shared with federal departments and agencies soon after Trump takes the oath of office Friday, and could provoke an angry backlash.”
Canadaland / Moira Donovan
Editorial staffers have been on strike for the past year at Nova Scotia’s largest newspaper →
“We believe that they've been offering proposals that we simply cannot sign and they knew it.”
FiveThirtyEight / Nate Silver
What reporters — and lots of data geeks, too — missed about the election, and what they're still getting wrong →
“National journalists usually interpreted conflicting and contradictory information as confirming their prior belief that Clinton would win,” Nate Silver writes. “The most obvious error, given that Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes, is that they frequently mistook Clinton's weakness in the Electoral College for being a strength.”
The Wall Street Journal / Jack Nicas
Google uses its search engine to hawk its products →
“Google searches for ‘phones’ virtually always began with three consecutive ads for Google's Pixel phones. All 1,000 searches for ‘laptops’ started with a Chromebook ad. ‘Watches’ began with an Android smartwatch ad 98% of the time…After the Journal shared the analysis with Google on Dec. 15, many of the ads disappeared.”
CNNMoney / Tom Kludt
Telecoms mogul Carlos Slim is launching a TV channel for Mexican audiences in the U.S. →
“The channel, called Nuestra Visión (“Our Vision” in English), will be provided by Publicidad y Contenido Editorial, a unit of the Slim-owned America Movil, which is the largest cellular phone company in Latin America. Nuestra Visión will compete against a pair of Spanish-language giants already operating in the U.S., Univision and Telemundo.”
Wall Street Journal / Thomas Gryta
The FCC’s TV airwaves auction nears end with about $18 billion in bids →
“The auction is wrapping up after attracting about $18.2 billion in bids, far less than the last sale of government licenses amid weaker demand (overshadowing the results was the surprising success of the previous FCC auction that closed in early 2015 with almost $45 billion in bids).”
The New York Times / Farhad Manjoo
Clearing out the app stores: Government censorship made easier →
“Blocking a website is like trying to stop lots of trucks from delivering a banned book; it requires an infrastructure of technical tools (things like China's "Great Firewall"), and enterprising users can often find a way around it. Banning an app from an app store, by contrast, is like shutting down the printing press before the book is ever published. If the app isn't in a country's app store, it effectively doesn't exist. The censorship is nearly total and inescapable.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Scaled back: Why publishers are rethinking their pursuit of huge numbers →
"The industry's kind of in a retreat," Josh Topolsky, the founder of The Outline, said. "People are numb to the volume right now. While I think 95 percent of the businesses that exist in digital are still volume businesses, I think there's another business emerging."
Gizmodo / Matt Novak
Russia Today has been banned from posting articles, photos, and videos to Facebook until after inauguration →
The ban was instituted yesterday after RT allegedly ran a pirated stream of Obama's last press conference. While RT has been banned from posting articles, the news outlet is still able to post text directly to Facebook. The Kremlin-funded media outlet was an early and vocal supporter of president-elect Donald Trump, leading some people to find the timing of the ban suspicious.

Kamis, 19 Januari 2017

The Christian Science Monitor is betting big on constructive, non-depressing (but paid-for) news: The latest from Nieman Lab

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

The Christian Science Monitor is betting big on constructive, non-depressing (but paid-for) news

The 109-year-old publication’s digital future will be based around a voice that is “calm and fact-based and fundamentally constructive, and assumes that our readers are looking to have a fundamentally constructive approach to the news.” By Laura Hazard Owen.
What We’re Reading
Stratechery by Ben Thompson / Ben Thompson
More thoughts from Ben Thompson on the unbundling of different types of media →
“I'm starting to agree that the end is nearer than many think.”
The New York Times / Scott Shane
The creation of a fake-news masterpiece →
“The ballot box story, promoted by a half-dozen Facebook pages Mr. Harris had created for the purpose, flew around the web, fueled by indignant comments from people who were certain that Mrs. Clinton was going to cheat Mr. Trump of victory and who welcomed the proof. It was eventually shared with six million people.”
Washington Post
The Washington Post announces The Lily, an “experimental” brand for millennial women →
“The Lily will appear on Medium, Facebook and Instagram to start.”
Twitter / ringer
The Ringer, The Awl, and Medium’s other publisher sites are down →
There was an outage Wednesday. Medium.com stayed up.
New York Times Company
BBC Academy / Trushar Barot
Get ready for APIs from news providers →
“Now, more than ever, media companies will need to have access to developers who can focus on experimenting with APIs and develop uses that will work regardless of the size of your company, reaching the audiences you want on the platforms they're already on. If you don't have developers already embedded in your newsroom, make sure you at least have processes to enable your editorial teams to work closely with them.”
Washingtonian / Andrew Beaujon
The Washington Post will have a beat on the urban-rural divide →
“The Post's announcement says [Jose DelReal will] be looking at the ‘remarkable reversal of fortune’ in which ‘the nation's largest cities have become magnets for money, innovation and young professionals, while its small towns and farms have become poorer, older, sicker and more resentful of urban elites.'”
Medium / 60dB
60dB is now accessible as an Alexa skill on your Amazon Echo →
Getting into the home-based audio platform would seem critical for the personalized short-form audio startup.
Bloomberg / Sarah Frier
Meet the team behind Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page →
“Typically, a handful of Facebook employees manage communications just for him, helping write his posts and speeches, while an additional dozen or so delete harassing comments and spam on his page, say two people familiar with the matter. Facebook also has professional photographers snap Zuckerberg, say, taking a run in Beijing or reading to his daughter.”
Knight Foundation / Eytan Oren
Chat the Vote: How Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, and other chat apps reimagined civic engagement in the 2016 elections →
“The 2016 campaign marked the first U.S. election cycle where chat platforms collectively attempted to register voters and spark political conversation. Much of the activity on Facebook Messenger, Kik, LINE, Viber and other apps was small scale and experimental, making use of nascent chatbot technology that wasn't widely available on most platforms until mid-2016.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
Quartz is getting ready to launch a paid research business →
“Quartz has given a hint by announcing the purchase of Intelligentsia.ai, a small research firm that specialized in artificial intelligence. Quartz says founders Dave and Helen Edwards will write for the site for now, but will eventually be part of a ‘new specialized product aimed at providing global business professionals with valuable insights into how AI affects their organizations.'”
Politico / Ken Doctor
An Outbrain for newspapers: Headlines Network launches →
“Nine major newspaper publishers — McClatchy, Hearst, Gatehouse, Morris, Belo, Swift, BH Media Group, Lee and the Chicago Sun-Times — have bought into Chicago-based content aggregator Aggrego. Under Aggrego, they have formed Headlines Network, this new widget-based content network.”

Rabu, 18 Januari 2017

This is The New York Times’ digital path forward: The latest from Nieman Lab

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

This is The New York Times’ digital path forward

“For all the progress we have made, we still have not built a digital business large enough on its own to support a newsroom that can fulfill our ambitions.” This new internal report outlines how the Times aims to improve its journalism to help do just that. By Joshua Benton.

Here’s how Twitter is reacting to The New York Times’ 2020 report

The Times released the report on Tuesday, and Media Twitter is already dissecting its every word. By Joseph Lichterman.

The Washington Post is putting a big bet on video (and trying to break into Daily Show-style comedy)

Owner Jeff Bezos is also pushing the Post to experiment with more user-friendly video ad formats. By Joseph Lichterman.

Hot Pod: If we want podcasting to remain open to everyone, we’re going to have to organize

Plus: A new call-in radio show aims to bring people together, a new sales partnership for PRX, and the benefits of doubling down on live programming for public radio. By Nicholas Quah.
What We’re Reading
Variety / Janko Roettgers
It’s official: Twitter has shut down Vine →
“Twitter had given users the chance to download their Vines through the service's mobile app in recent weeks, but removed that feature from the new app Tuesday. Third-party tools that download Vine's directly from the service's website should still work, but are likely going to violate Vine's Terms of Service.”
rasmuskleisnielsen.net / Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
An optimistic take on fake news →
“An optimistic take on fake news may thus (perhaps pessimistically) suggest that the most important questions we face around media and democracy today concern real news, and how real news—often on an eroding resource base—can cover highly partisan politics, reach more people, and connect societies that in some cases seem more and more polarized in terms of both social values and relative affluence.”
BuzzFeed
ProPublica is partnering with BuzzFeed, NYT, and Univision on a project tracking hate crimes →
As part of the project, the news organizations are asking people to submit their own accounts of being attacked for their race, ethnicity, religion, or gender.
Recode / Kurt Wagner
Facebook looks like it’s going to stop paying publishers to make live videos →
“Instead, Facebook is pushing publishers to create longer, premium video content as part of a larger effort led by Facebook exec Ricky Van Veen. The hope is to get more high-quality video onto the platform and into your News Feed — the kind of stuff, presumably, you might find on Netflix.”
Poynter / Benjamin Mullin
‘A marriage of Twitter and The Economist’: How Axios is serving up news for social media addicts →
“On Wednesday, visitors to Axios.com will be greeted by a vertical stream of news that resembles the Facebook timeline, or Twitter’s feed. But instead of posts from friends or celebrities, Axios’ feed will consist of short, newsy bulletins created by the company’s team of writers and curators.”
The Verge / Amar Toor
Facebook rolls out a fake news filter in Germany →
“Lawmakers have considered imposing fines on Facebook and other social media companies that allow fake news to spread…It was reported last week that the German government has opened an investigation into the spread of fake news, after Breitbart published a false story claiming that a mob set fire to a church on New Year's Eve.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Publishers love newsletters, but grapple with the underlying tech →
“So more of them, including The New York Times, Financial Times and Washington Post, have taken matters into their own hands and built their own [email systems].”
Condé Nast
Wolfgang Blau is the new president of Condé Nast International →
“A move aimed at bringing digital authority to the heart of the organisation’s leadership.”