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You might have heard: Unique, high-quality content is necessary for a successful digital subscription model, where consumers pay for the content rather than the delivery
But did you know: Harvard Business Review thinks it can add subscribers while raising its digital subscription price (Nieman Lab)
Harvard Business Review plans to increase its subscription price and still attract 100,000 new subscribers by adding new products it hopes will offer readers additional value. HBR is looking to raise its subscription price to $109 from $89 and boost its circulation to 350,000. HBR launched its Visual Library last month, a collection of the magazine’s charts, graphs, and slide decks accessible only to subscribers, and it plans to roll out in mid-2016 “a pretty dramatic strategic rethink.” HBR Group publisher Joshua Macht says: “What we found is that, as we’ve rolled these things out, we’ve been able to move the price up.”
+ Noted: Facebook is testing “suggested videos” with video ad partners including NBA, Hearst and Fox Sports (Variety) and Facebook will share 55 percent of ad revenue to video creators (Fortune); Digital writing/money magazine Scratch is shutting down after two years, saying that the magazine made a profit in 2014 but “the bottom line isn’t always the whole picture” (Scratch); Pulitzer Prize winner Leslie Gelb says he gave Hillary Clinton an advance read on a 2009 profile, but says he did not give her “veto power” (Politico)
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 a fact-check of season 3 of Orange is the New Black, an Italian fact-checking site that’s raising money for animated fact-checks, and a self-help video that can help anyone determine what’s true on the Internet.
How NYT uses KeyWee to find new subscribers on Facebook (Digiday)
To drive subscriptions, The New York Times is using a startup KeyWee, which uses natural language analysis to find keywords in articles that are likely to be relevant to potential NYT subscribers and then buying sponsored Facebook posts targeted with those keywords. Once those readers are on the site, NYT targets them with articles designed to lead them to a subscription, with “subscribe” buttons and reminders that they’re reaching the limit of free articles a month allowed by the paywall. NYT director of audience development Mat Yurow says: “It’s a little like a Facebook hack. But I think it’s a smart marketing play. It’s unlocking those audiences nobody else is thinking about.”
+ Questions writers should ask developers to better understand what they do: What kinds of work do they do? What are you interested in doing professionally? What would be your ideal project? (Poynter)
New law in Spain could fine publishers of content deemed ‘damaging’ to Spain’s police (Columbia Journalism Review)
Under a new law in Spain, publishers of pictures, video and other content deemed “damaging” to Spain’s police and security forces could be fined up to 30,000 Euro ($34,000). Marc Herman says the law does not appear to be targeted to international media, but will affect how local media address Spain’s police force. Elsa Gonzalez, president of Spain’s Federation of Journalists, says the law could also enable police to look at images and other content before publication: “The law doesn’t say so, but it’s imprecise, you can’t count it out. How do they know if something concerns them, if they don’t look at the image before it’s broadcast?”
Obama’s proposal to extend overtime pay could include journalists (Huffington Post)
President Barack Obama’s proposal to extend overtime pay to include salaried workers earning under $50,440 would drastically increase the number of works eligible for overtime, including many journalists. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reporters and correspondents earned a median salary of $36,000 last year, below the proposed threshold for overtime pay. Some newsrooms already pay overtime to salaried workers, especially if it’s included in union contracts.
Gawker’s Nick Denton: Risqué photos are fair game for publication (BuzzFeed)
As Gawker is in the middle of legal battle with Hulk Hogan over publication of a sex tape, Nick Denton says his own iPhone containing suggestive photos of him was stolen. Though nothing came of Denton’s photos, he says they are fair game for publication: “In the modern world, if you’re in the public eye and you’ve opened the door yourself, and I’ve opened the door myself to pretty much any discussion of my life, really, you have to own it. You have to own up to it and do it with as much grace as you can.”
+ Judge in Hulk Hogan trial rules that the press cannot view sex tape during trial, but the courtroom will not be closed while evidence is shown and TV monitors will be pointed away from press (Poynter)
Scribd finds e-book subscription models don’t work well when people read too much (Nieman Lab)
Scribd began pulling thousands of romance titles from its website on Tuesday, a result of users reading too much. Models like Scribd pay publishers by the read, but subscribers pay a flat rate for unlimited access. Readers of genres such as romance read voraciously, so much so that they were becoming too expensive to Scribd. Laura Hazard Owen writes: “If the hope was that e-book subscription services would be more like gym memberships — where people pay but then don’t go — romance readers have turned the model on its head by using the ‘gym’ too much.”
FOR THE WEEKEND
+ Were the rainbow Facebook profile pictures in support of same-sex marriage another social experiment? With the amount of information users share with Facebook, it can test theories such as the “effect of the Supreme Court ruling on gay couples varies with the number of their friends who shared rainbow profiles” and if couples with fewer visibly supportive friends are less likely to get married (Atlantic)
+ John Robinson explains why news organizations should report on their own issues like layoffs and buyouts: “Not acknowledging it won’t make it go away. But acknowledging it might help you. People rally for products and ideas they like and want to keep. Let your readers know you’re hurting and need help. See what happens: they might rally to help. If they don’t, that might tell you something.” (Media, disrupted)
+ An in-depth look into how Arianna Huffington runs The Huffington Post: “To work at The Huffington Post is to run a race without a finish line, at a clip that is forever quickening” (New York Times Magazine)
The post Need to Know: July 2, 2015 appeared first on American Press Institute.
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