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You might have heard: Twitter’s new tool Project Lightning will bring curation to the platform, with an editorial team curating content around events, breaking news and “anything that’s interesting” (BuzzFeed)
But did you know: With Project Lightning, Twitter will be ‘killing Twitter to save Twitter’ (Wired)
Twitter’s upcoming Project Lightning will define the big stories of the day, with an editorial team packaging tweets, images and videos accessible by a button on the main screen. Project Lightning will be a core feature of Twitter going forward, writes David Pierce, and its curated packages will be embeddable elsewhere on the Internet. But Pierce says what Project Lightning represents is “the long-overdue death of the Twitter timeline,” favoring curation over an endless flow of tweets without context, and better answering the question, “What’s happening?”
+ Noted: Google and Storyful are launching YouTube Newswire, a feed of verified user-generated videos for journalists (Nieman Lab), and Google will also partner with Storyful, Reported.ly and others for First Draft Coalition, which will bring social media experts together to develop resources on best practices for verifying user-generated content (Medium); Charleston Post and Courier apologizes for a gun ad on its front page Thursday (Poynter); Arianna Huffington renews her contract through 2019, and says Huffington Post will be seeking out “smart acquisitions and strategic investments” (CNN Money); As News Corp cuts jobs at Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal, bureaus in Prague and Helsinki will be closed and resources will be shifted into digital media and core coverage areas (Wall Street Journal)
API UPDATE
The week in fact-checking
As part of our fact-checking journalism project, Jane Elizabeth highlights stories worth noting related to truth in politics and on the Internet. This week’s round-up includes fact-checking a fifth-grade Donald Trump fan, tips for verifying polls and surveys, and debunking an oft-quoted statistic on the chances of a black male ending up in jail.
Instead of only thinking ‘content is king,’ Raju Narisetti says newsrooms should focus on user experiences (Digiday)
The ‘content is king’ mindset can be a harmful one in newsrooms, according to News Corp SVP of Strategy Raju Narisetti. Narisetti says that focus has blinded newsrooms and made them unable to focus on packaging content in a way that is beneficial for the user. Narisetti says: “It is my job as a journalist to get the most people to read my journalism. I’m not asking anyone to change their journalism. The only way you can [increase audience] is to create a very interesting experience.”
To take advantage of sharing on social media, The Sun will make some content available outside of its paywall (Guardian)
Starting in early July, some content on The Sun’s website will be available for free to help drive traffic from social media. Chief executive of News UK Mike Darcey says general news and sports will be the first areas to have free content. Darcey says: “The guiding principle for the free content will be shareability, helping us to take advantage of the growing trend of readers finding and sharing content on social media, given further impetus by the rapid rise in smartphone use.” Some sites in the U.S. have created similarly porous paywalls.
Startups can compete against established companies because of more nimble processes (Harvard Business Review)
Inside and outside journalism, many startups have quickly won market share from more established and traditional competitors, often decomposing markets into more niche areas. Hemant Taneja says startups are in a position to do this because their teams are designed to iterate quickly, which then allows the startup to offer a better product. Taneja also says startups are designed for growth in their lean organizational structures, without much of excess that exists in established companies.
+ Our archive of insights to foster innovation in news orgs
How can publishers make notifications better for users? (Nieman Lab)
Notifications can be really annoying for users, Laura Hazard Owen says. For publishers trying to make notifications better, they need to overcome the challenge of winning back users who have been burned by notifications in the past, as well as figuring out better metrics to determine if their notifications are working. Dana Karwas, lecturer in integrated digital media at the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, says: “Just like we can’t call the president and get a direct line, maybe it should cost the content providers just a little bit to take our time.”
+ Earlier: Why people are turning off push notifications and BuzzFeed thinks of notifications as less like headlines, more like social media or a friend (BuzzFeed)
Jonah Peretti on why BuzzFeed does news: ‘It’s good for the world, it’s good for business, and it’s good for our company culture’ (BuzzFeed)
As the BuzzFeed News app launched yesterday, Jonah Peretti shared his thoughts on why BuzzFeed is pursuing news. While “news might not be as big a business as entertainment,” Peretti writes that news is the best way to have a big impact on the world and can be done with a small team of journalists. Besides its global impact, Peretti says news will have a positive impact on BuzzFeed’s company culture: “Even our team members who work on entertainment content or on the business side are proud to work at a company that is breaking big, important stories.”
FOR THE WEEKEND
+ Why the path to the White House for the 2016 candidates will be on Facebook: Facebook is able to focus in on voters at granular levels, and Facebook guarantees that “you will reach the right person at the right time and eliminate the waste that you might find in email marketing, certainly in TV advertising” (National Journal) and iOS mobile ad-blocking could be good for Facebook, while hurting more web-reliant competition: Most of Facebook’s ads are delivered on Facebook and in integrated apps, so media companies and bloggers who only post to the web and rely on display ads will be hit the hardest (BuzzFeed)
+ InTouch’s coverage of the Duggars may have changed the future of tabloid journalism: Tabloids are willing to chase stories other organizations aren’t, and they’re willing to pay for stories (BuzzFeed)
+ While reading the comments can be a futile and frustrating experience, Joseph M. Reagle Jr. maintains that comments have value: “Although I do not advocate that everyone read all the comments all the time, I think that it is wise to understand them” (New Yorker)
The post Need to Know: June 19, 2015 appeared first on American Press Institute.
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