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You might have heard: The Las Vegas Review-Journal was purchased at the end of 2015 under mysterious circumstances by casino owner Sheldon Adelson, and some staff say that they’ve been told to ease up on the coverage of their new owner
But did you know: Sheldon Adelson says he hasn’t interfered with the Las Vegas Review-Journal newsroom, but staff members continue to depart (New York Times)
Since casino owner Sheldon Adelson purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a divide has been created in the newsroom between editors who see it as their duty to review the paper’s coverage of Adelson and staff who feel that Adelson has interfered with the newsroom. At least a dozen staff members have quit, been fired, or made plans to leave soon since Adelson purchased the paper, with many citing “a strained work environment and untenable oversight” as their reason for leaving. But despite that, Adelson still claims that he hasn’t interfered with the newsroom: “I have never spoken to anybody in the newsroom, nor have we called them to establish news-gathering policies.”
+ Noted: Tribune rejects Gannett’s latest offer of $15/share and announces a new $70.5 million investment from Nant Capital, making Nant Tribune’s second-largest shareholder (Tribune Publishing), but Tribune could agree to share confidential financial information with Gannett (Reuters); The New York Times’ plan for “journalistic dominance” includes more “only-in-The New York Times” coverage, a new plan for covering NYC, and more visual stories, Dean Baquet says in a memo to staff (Poynter); Nuzzel launches what it calls the “first network of newsletters,” with a newsletter-building tool where users can select content from Nuzzel feeds (Marketing Land); Planning an extensive relaunch, Village Voice hires former Adweek executive Suzan Gursoy as its next publisher (Politico Media)
ProPublica’s thinking behind its new app: The key principle is timeliness instead of completeness (ProPublica)
When ProPublica started working on its new apps, it set out to answer two key questions: “1) How do we build a modern, genuinely useful experience for our most active users, and; 2) how do we maintain it without creating a pile of new work for ourselves?” To answer those questions, David Sleight says ProPublica shifted the app’s organizing principle from completeness to timeliness. Sleight writes: “[The new app] puts the new stuff front and center and pares down the complexity we need to support it. Subsections, archives, and all their associated back-end tools were axed,” helping readers find the stories they’re interested in.
A Colombia-based nonprofit network is connecting journalists in Latin America countries to produce investigative journalism (Nieman Lab)
Connectas is a nonprofit network that connects journalists in Latin American countries to produce investigative journalism, often in the form of multi-part stories that look beyond a single country. Connectas was also a partner on the Panama Papers. Connectas director Carlos Eduardo Huertas explains: “Connectas is a journalistic platform. The idea, though, is that we don’t just develop traditional media. We are a hybrid model. Our focus is producing stories, but within the journalism community we provide support in ways that we can — training, fellowships, every kind of action in the support area — that go toward journalistic production.”
Food content is becoming an essential traffic driver for organizations such as BuzzFeed and Vice (Financial Times)
Food videos are growing fast online: In 2015, food-related videos were viewed 23 billion times, a growth of 170 percent from 2014, according to Tubular Labs. For digital companies such as BuzzFeed and Vice, these food-related videos are becoming an increasingly important driver of traffic. BuzzFeed’s food channel Tasty received 2.2 billion views in March alone, Financial Times reports.
+ Despite that growth, the BBC will cut its food section and more earlier insights on food coverage: How NYT thinks of its Cooking app as a service to readers and the publishers that found early success with Facebook video were food publishers
Serving readers advertisements when they’re also paying for a subscription is a flawed business model (Medium)
Responding to a Motherboard story on online tracking by news organizations, Ira Michael Blonder writes: “These publishers have decided they can’t compete with the ‘human brainless’ likes of Google News/Bing News/Facebook News without pumping up an advertising business model with a little bit of paid subscription sauce. The end result is a bad experience for subscribers, advertisers, and the web surfing public. I don’t think I am getting my money’s worth from the subscription since I have to suffer through the interminable page loads, forced attention to meaningless full page ads, etc of online news in 2016.”
Margaret Sullivan’s first Washington Post column: For those interested in saving journalism, it’s a great time to become a journalist (Washington Post)
In her debut column for the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan says young journalists are actually lucky to be coming into the industry now. Sullivan writes: “[These young journalists] have a chance to make a real difference in a high-stakes game. … Given the challenges, what’s needed most are journalists — of every age — who are willing to help figure out the future with passion, smarts and integrity. Yes, we’ve got some big problems, but it’s far from crazy to try to be part of the solution.”
The post Need to Know: May 23, 2016 appeared first on American Press Institute.
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