Search Google

10/1/15

Need to Know: Oct. 1, 2015

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

OFF THE TOP

You might have heard: A McClatchy executive says the future of journalism and media revenues depend on programmatic ad sales

But did you know: Some new media companies, including BuzzFeed and Vox, are avoiding programmatic ad sales from third-party firms (Wall Street Journal)
A growing number of web publishers including Vox, BuzzFeed and Refinery29 are choosing not to sell their ads through programmatic sales from third-party firms. Instead, these publishers believe they can make more money selling ads on their own. These companies are also arguing that automated ad sales have led to too many ads and tracking mechanisms, and believe they can reduce annoyance for users by selling their own ads. Mic co-founder Chris Altchek says: “We looked at what ad tech looked like three years ago or so, and we saw that the experience was bad for users and didn’t look like it worked well for advertisers anyway. Even if you do it and did it really well, you still don’t make a lot of money.”

+ Noted: Philadelphia City Paper was acquired by Broad Street Media: It will cease publication Oct. 8, and its website will be merged with Philly Weekly (Broad Street Media) and Speculation that The Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com could become a nonprofit institution aligned with Temple University (Billy Penn); Google is expected to unveil its version of Instant Articles next week (Re/code); A day after announcing its plans to purchase a majority stake in Business Insider, Axel Springer says it will invest in Thrillist Media Group (CNBC); With $400,000 from the Knight Foundation, the Associated Press will create a set of standards for data journalism that will be included in the 2017 stylebook (Knight Foundation) and the AP is exploring how to work automation into its elections stories (Poynter); AdBlock Plus will allow an independent board to determine which ads are “acceptable” and can be passed through its filters (Wall Street Journal)

TRY THIS AT HOME

Why a Florida TV station devoted 6,000 words to an investigative story (Columbia Journalism Review)
In addition to a five-minute news broadcast, Tampa TV station WTSP devoted 6,000 words online to an investigation on the influence a private PR consultant wields in local politics, complete with links to public records and online-only videos. Noah Pransky, who led the investigation, says the nature of the story demanded length: “This was a story about a consultant’s body of work. It wasn’t about a single issue. We knew that if we wanted to produce a rock solid story that would be hard to dismiss, we had to show that we had looked at everything.”

+ More on reporting from public records: 10 tips for securing public records, including being aware of the laws and writing about it when the government doesn’t cooperate (Poynter)

OFFSHORE

Jamaica-based mobile operator will block online advertising from its networks (Wall Street Journal)
Wireless operator Digicel will soon block online advertising from traveling across its networks in the South Pacific and and Caribbean. The Jamaica-based company said companies including Google and Facebook will be required pay to deliver ads to Digicel subscribers or their ads will be blocked. Digicel says it plans to allow ads that appear “on a handful of popular local news properties” in its 31 markets.

+ News Corp is bundling digital access to the Times of London and Wall Street Journal for corporate customers, with pricing based on the number of users signed up in each company and negotiations with potential clients (Guardian)

OFFBEAT

How to become a ‘digital organization’ without leaving employees behind (Harvard Business Review)
A digital transformation is more than updating devices and technology, Charles-Edouard Bouée writes. Transforming an organization into a digital one requires changing daily practices, workplace structures, and ultimately people’s mindsets. Bouée recommends looking at your employees’ “digital maturity,” which is often higher than that of the company, by examining what kinds of skills and digital tools they’re using in their personal lives.

UP FOR DEBATE

Mathew Ingram: How Apple treats apps with questionable but newsworthy content raises questions about how it will handle its News app (Fortune)
Earlier this year, an app called Metadata+, which sends you an alert every time someone is killed by a U.S. drone strike, was created by a researcher for The Intercept and accepted into Apple’s App Store. However, the app was suddenly removed this week for “objectionable content,” which Mathew Ingram says raises questions about whether we can trust Apple to deliver news. Ingram writes: “Technically, removing certain kinds of information isn’t censorship because there is no right to free speech on someone else’s platform — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t cause for concern, just as it is when Twitter or Facebook remove something.”

SHAREABLE

How Nuzzel wants to work with publishers to bring its link-discovery app to ‘people who don’t necessarily know how to use Twitter’ (Nieman Lab)
Nuzzel CEO Jonathan Abrams says with a new round of funding, they’re now looking to expand their user base through “opportunities for Nuzzel to help publishers.” Abrams says that help for publishers could come in the form of custom feeds of publishers’ content, which would help get publishers’ content in front of the right audience. Abrams says: “As Nuzzel becomes more and more of a platform to host those kinds of feeds, we think we can do a better job of letting people who don’t necessarily know how to use Twitter use Nuzzel by consuming feeds that other people have created.”

+ A visualization of how long it takes to load mobile ads compared to how long it takes to load editorial content on 50 news websites: Boston.com’s mobile ads take 30.8 seconds to load while its editorial content takes 8.1 seconds, and the Guardian’s mobile ads take just 0.2 seconds to load and editorial content 6.8 seconds (New York Times)

The post Need to Know: Oct. 1, 2015 appeared first on American Press Institute.



from American Press Institute http://ift.tt/1FKmvkq

0 التعليقات:

Post a Comment

Search Google

Blog Archive