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1/27/16

Need to Know: Jan. 27, 2016

Fresh useful insights for people advancing quality, innovative and sustainable journalism

OFF THE TOP

You might have heard: Apple’s new app News brings content from publishers together in one pre-installed app, and Apple’s Eddy Cue says more than 40 million people have used the app

But did you know: Microsoft launched an iOS app called News Pro, which personalizes news for its users (TechCrunch)
Microsoft’s newest iOS app looks a lot like Apple’s own News app, Sarah Perez writes. Called “News Pro,” Microsoft’s new app offers users a customized news experience by showing them articles they may be interested in based on their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles. Unlike Apple’s News, News Pro is powered by Bing and is available on desktop as well as mobile. But, as Perez writes, this app isn’t a slam-dunk for Microsoft: “Unfortunately for Microsoft, nothing about this new app comes across as truly unique, and in some cases, it looks like it’s trying to directly clone its competitors. … There are so many opportunities to deliver re-imagined and compelling takes on mobile news reading today, but Microsoft’s News Pro is simply rehashing what others have already done.”

+ Apple will soon offer subscription content in News, a move that would differentiate it from Facebook’s Instant Articles, which doesn’t allow for subscriber-only content (Yahoo Finance)

+ Noted: Facebook is expanding its ad network to the mobile web, which will allow it to help publishers sell ads on their mobile sites (Wall Street Journal); BuzzFeed is being sued for $11 million in a defamation lawsuit by a British viral news agency, Central European News, following an Aug. 2015 article on the site (The Hollywood Reporter); Meredith may walk away from a merger with Media General, which would allow Nexstar Broadcasting Group to acquire Media General (Bloomberg Business)

TRY THIS AT HOME

How to decide when to lower a paywall for big news (Poynter)
During this weekend’s snowstorm on the East Coast, The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun lowered their paywalls. That decision opened up important information to as many readers as possible, Baltimore Sun’s director of audience engagement and development Matt Bracken says. The storm also prevented many subscribers from receiving their print newspapers, which Bracken says added another upside to lowering the paywall. Bracken says: “I think the ultimate mission for us is to inform the public in times of crisis, and this weekend’s weather certainly qualified in our opinion.”

OFFSHORE

While The Guardian is taking steps to break even, why The Times of London is already doing so (PressGazette)
The Guardian is cutting its budget by 20 percent and expanding its membership program in an effort to break even within three years, but The Times of London is already breaking even, Dominic Ponsford says. The Times added a paywall in June 2010, and nearly six years later, the paper is turning a profit. While Ponsford acknowledges that the paywall is likely not the only reason for the Times’ financial success, he writes: “Does this signal the failure of the open journalism model as practiced by The Guardian? It does seem to suggest that it is impossible at this stage to support a staff of more than 900 journalists mainly on revenue from a free website.”

OFFBEAT

Following a mass exodus of executives, Twitter names Leslie Berland as CMO (Re/code)
After four VPs announced their departures earlier this week, Twitter has now found its new chief marketing officer, Leslie Berland. Berland was most recently VP of global advertising, marketing and digital partnerships at American Express. As Berland is tasked with building Twitter’s brand, some challenges she will face include its struggle to attract new users and convincing users who have abandoned Twitter to give it another chance.

+ More executive changes at Twitter: Nathan Hubbard will take over as interim VP of global media as Katie Stanton departs (Re/code)

UP FOR DEBATE

Guardian changes how it labels native ads, now referring to them as ‘paid content’ (Digiday)
The Guardian announced this week that it’s making changes to how it labels native ads, and will now label content that’s supported by sponsors with “paid content” or “paid for by.” The Guardian previously labeled native ads with “brought to you by.” The company told Digiday the changes are “a part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and clarity for our readers and commercial partners.”

+ The Guardian’s changes come just one month after the FTC issued new, stricter guidelines about how publishers should label native ads, and research from the University of Georgia shows that readers are more likely to recognize native advertising if it is labeled as “advertising” or “sponsored content”

SHAREABLE

Measuring audience across different platforms is proving to be difficult for publishers (Digiday)
As many publishers are jumping into distributed strategies, they’re finding that measuring their audiences across different platforms isn’t simple, Lucia Moses writes. CNN’s Meredith Artley says they are somewhat at the mercy of the platform, which may choose to provide data once a day or even once a week: “All these platforms are a little bit different because all these audiences are a little bit different and the measurement metrics are a little bit different. Apple News is going to measure differently because it’s a different audience and use case than Snapchat and Instagram and messaging apps and watches.”

+ The latest round of winners in the Knight News Challenge include projects that make filing FOIA requests simpler and a database of police misconduct reports, with 17 projects receiving a total of $3.2 million (Nieman Lab)

 

The post Need to Know: Jan. 27, 2016 appeared first on American Press Institute.



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