But did you know: With its new live video feature, Facebook seems to have handed the media industry the answers to the questions of how to get people to watch live videos and how to reach people on mobile, John Herrman and Mike Isaac write. Publishers are seeing surprisingly high viewership numbers from Facebook live video streams, but the remaining question is how they’ll be able to monetize live video. Facebook is trying to get live video in front of as many people as possible, but Herrman and Isaac write that it’s remained vague in its conversations with publishers about revenue sharing or subscription models.
Chat applications are fundamentally different from anything news organizations have tried to monetize before, Jarrod Dicker. In order to successfully monetize these apps, Dicker says news organizations will have to move away from advertising and closer to marketing. Chat apps are more personal and more direct, making people less receptive to unwanted interruptions like ads. Some of Dicker’s ideas on how to make chat apps appealing to advertisers include push notifications, allowing users to opt-in to messages from advertisers and re-engaging users after a transaction is made.
In the United States, Mic’s brand is the news site for “college-educated millennials.” But as it plans to expand into Europe, founder and CEO Chris Altchek says it will after to alter that vision for its European offshoots. Altchek says that going to college in the U.S. is a big accomplishment but in Europe, it’s “seen as a much snobbier thing to say, so we’re working on a different concept.” Mic still won’t try to be everything to everyone, though: “(Millennials have) been consuming the same type of content on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Reddit, for five to 10 years whether they’re in Tokyo, Paris, Rio or New York. So there’s this shared global understanding that allows for a broader set of media brands to be built today than previously.”
You may have seen people you follow on Instagram asking their followers to sign up for post notifications, but NYT’s Daniel Victor writes that the panic around the possibility of an algorithm-based Instagram feed is likely unwarranted. No changes are coming for all users yet, and even if the feed does change, there probably isn’t a huge reason to worry: Instagram will most likely show users the posts it thinks they’ll be most interested in based on their previous interactions, so the more you interact with an account, the more likely you’ll be to see it in your feed.
Does the media bear some responsibility for Donald Trump’s rise? USC Annenberg’s Ev Boyle says based on the sheer amount of coverage the media has given Trump, it does. A team at USC Annenberg spent a week tracking mentions of the presidential candidates on 14 news websites and found that Trump received significantly more homepage coverage than all other candidates combined: Trump was mentioned in headlines 1,341 times, while the second-most covered candidate Hillary Clinton appeared 361 times and all other candidates besides Trump were mentioned 1,047 times.
“Black Twitter,” an unofficial group of African American Twitter users, has emerged as an important force in news media, Katie Ferguson writes, pushing news organizations to cover stories important to the community. Former manager of news and journalism at Twitter Mark Luckie says: “If Black Twitter didn’t continue to exist in the way it does now, you’d actually see a decline of the black press because it’s so difficult to source these stories if you don’t have the resources, which a lot of the black press suffers from.”
But did you know:Facebook live video is drawing news organizations and other media companies in with big audience numbers, but the opportunities for revenue remain unclear (New York Times)
With its new live video feature, Facebook seems to have handed the media industry the answers to the questions of how to get people to watch live videos and how to reach people on mobile, John Herrman and Mike Isaac write. Publishers are seeing surprisingly high viewership numbers from Facebook live video streams, but the remaining question is how they’ll be able to monetize live video. Facebook is trying to get live video in front of as many people as possible, but Herrman and Isaac write that it’s remained vague in its conversations with publishers about revenue sharing or subscription models.
Monetizing chat apps will require less advertising and more marketing (Medium)
Chat applications are fundamentally different from anything news organizations have tried to monetize before, Jarrod Dicker. In order to successfully monetize these apps, Dicker says news organizations will have to move away from advertising and closer to marketing. Chat apps are more personal and more direct, making people less receptive to unwanted interruptions like ads. Some of Dicker’s ideas on how to make chat apps appealing to advertisers include push notifications, allowing users to opt-in to messages from advertisers and re-engaging users after a transaction is made.
Mic plans to become a major force in European media by tailoring its brand to its European audience (Digiday)
In the United States, Mic’s brand is the news site for “college-educated millennials.” But as it plans to expand into Europe, founder and CEO Chris Altchek says it will after to alter that vision for its European offshoots. Altchek says that going to college in the U.S. is a big accomplishment but in Europe, it’s “seen as a much snobbier thing to say, so we’re working on a different concept.” Mic still won’t try to be everything to everyone, though: “(Millennials have) been consuming the same type of content on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Reddit, for five to 10 years whether they’re in Tokyo, Paris, Rio or New York. So there’s this shared global understanding that allows for a broader set of media brands to be built today than previously.”
In a given week, Trump’s name appeared in homepage headlines 1,341 times, while Clinton appeared 361 times (Medium)
Does the media bear some responsibility for Donald Trump’s rise? USC Annenberg’s Ev Boyle says based on the sheer amount of coverage the media has given Trump, it does. A team at USC Annenberg spent a week tracking mentions of the presidential candidates on 14 news websites and found that Trump received significantly more homepage coverage than all other candidates combined: Trump was mentioned in headlines 1,341 times, while the second-most covered candidate Hillary Clinton appeared 361 times and all other candidates besides Trump were mentioned 1,047 times.
Without ‘Black Twitter,’ there would be less coverage of stories important to African Americans (Columbia Journalism Review)
“Black Twitter,” an unofficial group of African American Twitter users, has emerged as an important force in news media, Katie Ferguson writes, pushing news organizations to cover stories important to the community. Former manager of news and journalism at Twitter Mark Luckie says: “If Black Twitter didn’t continue to exist in the way it does now, you’d actually see a decline of the black press because it’s so difficult to source these stories if you don’t have the resources, which a lot of the black press suffers from.”
But did you know: The latest strategy to stay alive in the newspaper business is newspapers eating other newspapers, Gerry Smith writes. In 2015, the industry saw the most deals for the largest amount of money since the 2008 financial crisis, with 70 daily newspapers sold for a combined total of $827 million. Gannett alone purchased 15 daily newspapers in 2015. Even with a surge of acquisitions in 2015, Smith says more deals are expected to come in 2016 as media companies spin off TV stations, leaving newspapers to fend for themselves.
Filing a Freedom of Information Act request can be complicated, but a new Knight Foundation-backed tool called FOIA Mapper is trying to make it easier. Created by data journalist Max Galka, FOIA Mapper tries to help users figure out the best way to request the document they need. The tool includes a centralized, searchable database of government data including logs of FOIA requests other people have made, information systems and various government documents. Users can search for a specific topic, and the database will show if the document is publicly available and how to find it if they need to file a FOIA request.
+ How FOIA Mapper is different from the other FOIA tools the Knight Foundation has supported: “This one was unique in the sense that what he’s attempted to do is use the FOIA process to sort of reverse engineer the systems that store government data so that folks would be able to ask for data in a more specific way that’s hard for the government to say no to” (Poynter)
With a hard paywall that’s been up since 2010, the Times of London has established itself as a destination for in-depth analysis, opinion and commentary for its subscribers. Despite that specialty, it has still covered breaking news. But now, the Times of London will move away from covering breaking news as it happens in favor of making sense of it through in-depth stories, head of digital Alan Hunter says: “Readers don’t come to us for breaking news; they can go to the BBC and Twitter for that, which are free. They come to us for the authority of our reporting, opinion and analysis. Breaking news has become a commodity, and it’s hard to charge people for it.”
In an update released Tuesday, Snapchat made its chat function easier for users to navigate, but also made it look more similar to its competitors, Mike Murphy writes. Users now have more options in the chat area, including videos, stickers and voice calls. While some of those features are new, many existed in the previous version. The update provides more signposting for users, which Murphy writes is an important change: “This could perhaps be an indication that Snapchat is trying to make its messaging service feel less exclusive — and easier to use — as it aims to directly take on social messaging competitors like (Facebook) Messenger and WhatsApp.”
When publishers think about how to deal with platforms such as Facebook, it’s not the platforms itself they’re dealing with, Jeff Jarvis says. Instead, it’s the people on the platforms, because publishers need to go to where the readers are. Though publishers and platforms will disagree, Jarvis says publishers should look past these differences and push for solutions: “We have different missions but that does not mean they are not compatible, it’s just different priorities. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make them available. That certainly should be compatible with our mission. If we get past the misunderstanding, there are many things of mutual interest.”
“Think about it like a Bechdel test, almost. But for journalism,” The Washington Post’s Julia Carpenter says. To celebrate the end of women’s history month, The Washington Post is highlighting profiles of women written by women from its archives. The profiles include Marjorie Williams’ profile of Sandra Day O’Connor and Lynn Darling’s of Maya Angelou. Carpenter also encourages people to share their favorite profiles on Twitter with the hashtag #womenbywomen.
But did you know:70 daily newspapers were sold in 2015 for a total of $827 million (Bloomberg)
The latest strategy to stay alive in the newspaper business is newspapers eating other newspapers, Gerry Smith writes. In 2015, the industry saw the most deals for the largest amount of money since the 2008 financial crisis, with 70 daily newspapers sold for a combined total of $827 million. Gannett alone purchased 15 daily newspapers in 2015. Even with a surge of acquisitions in 2015, Smith says more deals are expected to come in 2016 as media companies spin off TV stations, leaving newspapers to fend for themselves.
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A new tool called FOIA Mapper will help you figure out the best way to request the documents you need (Nieman Lab)
Filing a Freedom of Information Act request can be complicated, but a new Knight Foundation-backed tool called FOIA Mapper is trying to make it easier. Created by data journalist Max Galka, FOIA Mapper tries to help users figure out the best way to request the document they need. The tool includes a centralized, searchable database of government data including logs of FOIA requests other people have made, information systems and various government documents. Users can search for a specific topic, and the database will show if the document is publicly available and how to find it if they need to file a FOIA request.
+ How FOIA Mapper is different from the other FOIA tools the Knight Foundation has supported: “This one was unique in the sense that what he’s attempted to do is use the FOIA process to sort of reverse engineer the systems that store government data so that folks would be able to ask for data in a more specific way that’s hard for the government to say no to” (Poynter)
The Times of London is moving away from covering breaking news to focus on more in-depth analysis (Digiday)
With a hard paywall that’s been up since 2010, the Times of London has established itself as a destination for in-depth analysis, opinion and commentary for its subscribers. Despite that specialty, it has still covered breaking news. But now, the Times of London will move away from covering breaking news as it happens in favor of making sense of it through in-depth stories, head of digital Alan Hunter says: “Readers don’t come to us for breaking news; they can go to the BBC and Twitter for that, which are free. They come to us for the authority of our reporting, opinion and analysis. Breaking news has become a commodity, and it’s hard to charge people for it.”
Snapchat’s latest update includes a redesign of its chat function, making it easier to understand (Quartz)
In an update released Tuesday, Snapchat made its chat function easier for users to navigate, but also made it look more similar to its competitors, Mike Murphy writes. Users now have more options in the chat area, including videos, stickers and voice calls. While some of those features are new, many existed in the previous version. The update provides more signposting for users, which Murphy writes is an important change: “This could perhaps be an indication that Snapchat is trying to make its messaging service feel less exclusive — and easier to use — as it aims to directly take on social messaging competitors like (Facebook) Messenger and WhatsApp.”
Jeff Jarvis: Publishers need to stop being jealous of platforms and start working with the platforms to solve problems (WAN-IFRA)
When publishers think about how to deal with platforms such as Facebook, it’s not the platforms itself they’re dealing with, Jeff Jarvis says. Instead, it’s the people on the platforms, because publishers need to go to where the readers are. Though publishers and platforms will disagree, Jarvis says publishers should look past these differences and push for solutions: “We have different missions but that does not mean they are not compatible, it’s just different priorities. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make them available. That certainly should be compatible with our mission. If we get past the misunderstanding, there are many things of mutual interest.”
For women’s history month, The Washington Post is combing its archives for interesting profiles of women written by women (Medium)
“Think about it like a Bechdel test, almost. But for journalism,” The Washington Post’s Julia Carpenter says. To celebrate the end of women’s history month, The Washington Post is highlighting profiles of women written by women from its archives. The profiles include Marjorie Williams’ profile of Sandra Day O’Connor and Lynn Darling’s of Maya Angelou. Carpenter also encourages people to share their favorite profiles on Twitter with the hashtag #womenbywomen.
But did you know: In its partnership with Glamour magazine, Facebook will use its audience data to inform the issues that the town halls will cover. Partnerships like this have their problems, Li Zhou writes, because the use of audience data in this way can lead to the “ultimate clickbait” by “plucking content directly from reader’s brains, and then presenting it back to them on a silver platter.” That creates a feedback loop, Zhou writes, that leaves little room for new perspectives to enter the conversation.
With newspapers scattered across the country, Gannett newspapers are increasingly teaming up to cover big stories. In Wisconsin, 10 newspapers throughout the state worked together to cover the state’s youth suicide problem. About 25 reporters were working on the story, and the newspapers also held 10 town hall meetings to discuss the problem with their communities. The 10 newspapers all published a front-page editorial on Friday with five steps for addressing issues around children’s mental health, and the newspapers will also take their findings and sources from the series to the capital for a “day of action” in May.
You’ll often see people complain that terrorist attacks outside of Western Europe aren’t covered well enough, but Martin Belam writes there’s a reason for that: Data shows that it’s hard to get people to read those stories. It’s also easier and less expensive for reporters based in Western Europe to get to cities such as Brussels or Paris than Lahore. Belam writes: “It’s harder to get mainstream reader empathy and interest in terrorism attacks that occur further from our shores. Many, many of our readers will have visited Brussels or Paris. Far fewer will have ever ventured to Pakistan.”
In the wake of the news that Instagram may soon move to an algorithm-based feed, bloggers are starting to get worried about how those changes would affect them. Fashion bloggers in particular began asking their followers on Instagram Monday to turn on post notifications for their Instagrams, so their posts will still be seen even if an algorithm pushes them down. While the feed changes couldaffect some users more than others, bloggers would be particularly harmed by a drop in views: To make money, many bloggers depend on affiliate links on Instagram that link to shopping sites, where the blogger makes a commission off sales.
+ Publishers and bloggers might be worried, but an algorithm-based Instagram feed could be good for users, Alex Fitzpatrick writes: “I don’t check my feed more than a couple of times a day on average. Instagram’s claim that the average user misses 70 percent of their friends’ photos rings true to me. … I would rather see all of my friends’ posts, even if out of order, rather than miss them entirely. That’s what the site’s algorithm promises” (Time)
Publishers’ obsession with “clickbait” and getting as many pageviews as possible is devouring journalism, Frédéric Filloux writes. Filloux says publishers have at least three viable alternatives to get out of the “clickbait” business: A paid model (such as a paywall or membership), nonprofit, philanthropy-supported journalism (such as ProPublica or the Center for Public Integrity), and separating the part of the newsroom that produces “clickbait” from the part of the newsroom that produces “value-added journalism,” similarly to how BuzzFeed is structured.
The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset began shipping pre-ordered headsets yesterday, but Joseph Lichterman writes that we shouldn’t expect the Oculus Rift to have a big impact on journalism just yet. While the Oculus Rift is “a solid first step into mainstream VR,” the price point and computing power needed will limit its adoption: The headset sells for $599, and a special high-powered PC is needed to run the headset.
But did you know:The danger of Facebook/publisher partnerships focused heavily on data is that they can create a feedback loop that doesn’t allow for new perspectives (The Atlantic)
In its partnership with Glamour magazine, Facebook will use its audience data to inform the issues that the town halls will cover. Partnerships like this have their problems, Li Zhou writes, because the use of audience data in this way can lead to the “ultimate clickbait” by “plucking content directly from reader’s brains, and then presenting it back to them on a silver platter.” That creates a feedback loop, Zhou writes, that leaves little room for new perspectives to enter the conversation.
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How Gannett newspapers across Wisconsin teamed up to cover youth suicide (Poynter)
With newspapers scattered across the country, Gannett newspapers are increasingly teaming up to cover big stories. In Wisconsin, 10 newspapers throughout the state worked together to cover the state’s youth suicide problem. About 25 reporters were working on the story, and the newspapers also held 10 town hall meetings to discuss the problem with their communities. The 10 newspapers all published a front-page editorial on Friday with five steps for addressing issues around children’s mental health, and the newspapers will also take their findings and sources from the series to the capital for a “day of action” in May.
Martin Belam: Terrorist attacks outside of Western Europe aren’t covered as thoroughly because it’s harder to get people to care about those stories (Medium)
You’ll often see people complain that terrorist attacks outside of Western Europe aren’t covered well enough, but Martin Belam writes there’s a reason for that: Data shows that it’s hard to get people to read those stories. It’s also easier and less expensive for reporters based in Western Europe to get to cities such as Brussels or Paris than Lahore. Belam writes: “It’s harder to get mainstream reader empathy and interest in terrorism attacks that occur further from our shores. Many, many of our readers will have visited Brussels or Paris. Far fewer will have ever ventured to Pakistan.”
+ Publishers and bloggers might be worried, but an algorithm-based Instagram feed could be good for users, Alex Fitzpatrick writes: “I don’t check my feed more than a couple of times a day on average. Instagram’s claim that the average user misses 70 percent of their friends’ photos rings true to me. … I would rather see all of my friends’ posts, even if out of order, rather than miss them entirely. That’s what the site’s algorithm promises” (Time)
Three alternatives to ‘clickbait’: A paid-for model, nonprofit journalism, and separating ‘clickbait’ from the rest of the newsroom (Monday Note)
Publishers’ obsession with “clickbait” and getting as many pageviews as possible is devouring journalism, Frédéric Filloux writes. Filloux says publishers have at least three viable alternatives to get out of the “clickbait” business: A paid model (such as a paywall or membership), nonprofit, philanthropy-supported journalism (such as ProPublica or the Center for Public Integrity), and separating the part of the newsroom that produces “clickbait” from the part of the newsroom that produces “value-added journalism,” similarly to how BuzzFeed is structured.
+ How oversized ads are encouraging ad blocking: Some publishers say ad agencies are creating ads that are large in file size with lots of tracking and delivering them at the last minute without enough time for publishers to push back, making their webpages load slower and encouraging users to install ad blockers (Wall Street Journal)
Don’t expect the Oculus Rift to have a huge impact on journalism just yet (Nieman Lab)
The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset began shipping pre-ordered headsets yesterday, but Joseph Lichterman writes that we shouldn’t expect the Oculus Rift to have a big impact on journalism just yet. While the Oculus Rift is “a solid first step into mainstream VR,” the price point and computing power needed will limit its adoption: The headset sells for $599, and a special high-powered PC is needed to run the headset.
+ In a campaign called #dropthepaper, Cincinnati TV station WCPO-TV is trying to get people to cancel their subscriptions to local daily newspaper Cincinnati Enquirer by offering a subscription to The Washington Post through its digital partner program to the TV station’s premium subscribers for $10 per year (Washington City Paper)
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But did you know: The promise of digital news was that it would make the news industry more geographically diverse, allowing people to work from anywhere, Joshua Benton writes. But instead, digital news has made the industry more concentrated in a few geographic areas, including New York City and Washington, D.C. That concentration has an effect on who enters the industry, as some people just aren’t interested in living in New York City, as well as how well the news industry represents its readers: College educated liberal arts graduates who live in cities, a characterization that most journalists today fit into, tend to be more liberal than the average American.
New York Times’ Beta team is dedicated to working with NYT’s various apps, many of which aren’t necessarily hard or breaking news related. With apps such as Cooking or its real estate app, the Beta team is trying to build a deeper connection with readers and helping readers access some of the content they’re most interested in: Before the launch of Cooking, recipes were one of the most searched topics on NYT’s website. But even without the resources and manpower of the NYT, local news organizations could adopt this idea, Ken Doctor says, by exploring niches relevant to their audiences.
Just two months after it announced it would close its United States offshoot, Al-Jazeera says it will cut about 500 jobs, with many of those coming from Qatar. Al-Jazeera currently employs about 4,500 people, making the cuts about 11 percent of its workforce. The Associated Press reports that the economy in Qatar is currently struggling to deal with dropping oil prices and that several big Qatari employers have cut jobs in the past few months.
Both inside and outside of journalism, legacy organizations are increasingly having to compete with platforms that don’t always play fair. But rather than trying to call out the platforms or bring them down, Benjamin Edelman and Damien Geradin say that legacy organizations should be focusing on what they can offer to their audiences that the platforms cannot. For example, if a hotel is trying to compete with Airbnb, Edelman and Geradin say it should emphasize to its customers that it can accommodate check-ins at any time or the benefits of having a staff present 24/7.
On Sunday’s edition of CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter tried to answer the question of how exactly the media got Donald Trump wrong. Stelter included guests from print media, cable news and online media, talking to them about how they covered Trump and whether unfavorable coverage of Trump constitutes “snobbery” on the part of the press. The Atlantic’s Molly Ball suggests that one problem with the coverage of Trump is that too much of it is focused on talking to the politicians or consultants. Instead, Ball says news organizations should focus on the voters who have to make a decision about whether or not to vote for Trump.
A banner ad on The New York Times’ website is directing readers to New York Times Magazine’s cover story on the revival of “Shuffle Along.” The ad directs users not only to the 10,000 word story, but to buy tickets for the show itself. Poynter’s Kelly McBride says the ad raises ethical questions about whether NYT confirmed the story was on the cover or if it sold the ad first, then updated after the story’s publication: “The biggest question that readers might have is whether the Times did the story in order to sell the ad? Knowing the Times, I’m sure they didn’t. But not every reader knows that. … In this case, I suspect that the ad creates the perception that the Times may have compromised their editorial independence, by doing a story on an advertiser.”
But did you know:Digital news is making the industry more concentrated in a few geographic areas, rather than making it more geographically diverse (Nieman Lab)
The promise of digital news was that it would make the news industry more geographically diverse, allowing people to work from anywhere, Joshua Benton writes. But instead, digital news has made the industry more concentrated in a few geographic areas, including New York City and Washington, D.C. That concentration has an effect on who enters the industry, as some people just aren’t interested in living in New York City, as well as how well the news industry represents its readers: College educated liberal arts graduates who live in cities, a characterization that most journalists today fit into, tend to be more liberal than the average American.
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Why The New York Times has a team dedicated to working with its apps and how local news organizations can adopt this strategy (Poynter)
New York Times’ Beta team is dedicated to working with NYT’s various apps, many of which aren’t necessarily hard or breaking news related. With apps such as Cooking or its real estate app, the Beta team is trying to build a deeper connection with readers and helping readers access some of the content they’re most interested in: Before the launch of Cooking, recipes were one of the most searched topics on NYT’s website. But even without the resources and manpower of the NYT, local news organizations could adopt this idea, Ken Doctor says, by exploring niches relevant to their audiences.
Al-Jazeera will cut as many as 500 jobs, and many of those will come from its Qatar headquarters (Associated Press)
Just two months after it announced it would close its United States offshoot, Al-Jazeera says it will cut about 500 jobs, with many of those coming from Qatar. Al-Jazeera currently employs about 4,500 people, making the cuts about 11 percent of its workforce. The Associated Press reports that the economy in Qatar is currently struggling to deal with dropping oil prices and that several big Qatari employers have cut jobs in the past few months.
To compete with platforms that don’t always play fair, focus on what you’re offering to your audience that the platforms cannot (Harvard Business Review)
Both inside and outside of journalism, legacy organizations are increasingly having to compete with platforms that don’t always play fair. But rather than trying to call out the platforms or bring them down, Benjamin Edelman and Damien Geradin say that legacy organizations should be focusing on what they can offer to their audiences that the platforms cannot. For example, if a hotel is trying to compete with Airbnb, Edelman and Geradin say it should emphasize to its customers that it can accommodate check-ins at any time or the benefits of having a staff present 24/7.
How did the media get it wrong on Trump? It may be that news organizations need to focus more on the voters, instead of the politicians (Mediaite)
On Sunday’s edition of CNN’s Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter tried to answer the question of how exactly the media got Donald Trump wrong. Stelter included guests from print media, cable news and online media, talking to them about how they covered Trump and whether unfavorable coverage of Trump constitutes “snobbery” on the part of the press. The Atlantic’s Molly Ball suggests that one problem with the coverage of Trump is that too much of it is focused on talking to the politicians or consultants. Instead, Ball says news organizations should focus on the voters who have to make a decision about whether or not to vote for Trump.
The New York Times is running a banner ad for the magazine’s cover story, raising ethical questions about the unusual ad (Digiday)
A banner ad on The New York Times’ website is directing readers to New York Times Magazine’s cover story on the revival of “Shuffle Along.” The ad directs users not only to the 10,000 word story, but to buy tickets for the show itself. Poynter’s Kelly McBride says the ad raises ethical questions about whether NYT confirmed the story was on the cover or if it sold the ad first, then updated after the story’s publication: “The biggest question that readers might have is whether the Times did the story in order to sell the ad? Knowing the Times, I’m sure they didn’t. But not every reader knows that. … In this case, I suspect that the ad creates the perception that the Times may have compromised their editorial independence, by doing a story on an advertiser.”
Each morning we scour the web for fresh useful insights in our Need to Know newsletter. Sign up below.
But did you know: Facebook announced Thursday that it’s adding new video metrics for publishers. Previously, publishers could only see metrics such as the number of views and number of unique visitors. The new metrics provide more in-depth data, including how many minutes the video was viewed on a given day and the number of times a video was viewed for longer than 10 seconds. The new video metrics can be found in either the video library or Page Insights, and the new metrics will come to the Page Insights API soon.
News organizations are going where the readers are. But most news organizations can’t succeed on all platforms, meaning they have to decide which platforms are the most important for them. Because its Snapchat Discover editions have a 76 percent completion rate, Cosmopolitan is prioritizing Snapchat. The Guardian isn’t focusing on Instant Articles because it hasn’t seen a significant effect on traffic from the format, while The Washington Post is going all in on Instant Articles because they’re seeing increased engagement.
According to a new survey from City University London, the British journalism industry is 94 percent white and 55 percent male. The survey also found that 65 percent of journalists who have joined the field within the past three years are female, but women in the industry are under-promoted. Most ethnic groups and religions are unrepresented as well: The survey found 0.4 percent of British journalists are Muslim and 0.2 percent are black.
Nearly every industry is learning how to make better use of data, Yuyu Chen writes. Executives from General Mills, Tinder and Bain & Company shared their thinking around data at the Economist’s Marketing Unbound conference this week. Some ideas from the conference: Big data can inform ideas but it cannot create ideas, marketing should still center around the consumer rather than the data, and traditional market research can’t be eliminated entirely.
Immediately after the Brussels attacks earlier this week, journalists were being criticized for asking people on social media if they could use their photos and videos of the attack. Martin Belam writes that the attacks this week highlight an ethical dilemma for journalists: While there’s a public interest in using those images, should journalists contact people near an attack on social media to ask for permission to use their images? Belam writes: “Asking to re-use pictures of tragic events is in some ways the digital equivalent of the old newsgathering ‘death knock.’ But now it is a death knock that everybody can listen in on.”
Apple Pay will be expanded to websites soon, Re/code reports. That could help news organizations get more readers to pay for news, Joshua Benton writes. More people are on mobile devices, and the process of paying for something with a credit card on a mobile website isn’t easy. But Apple Pay will make that easier for people with iOS devices: “If Apple Pay for websites does really let iPhone users pay with one tap on a fingerprint sensor, that’s a real advance. … If your publication offers a paywall and sees mobile conversion rates lower than desktop ones … Apple Pay for the web is worth watching.”
But did you know:Facebook is adding new daily video metrics for publishers, including a metric that shows how many people watched a video for 10 seconds or longer (VentureBeat)
Facebook announced Thursday that it’s adding new video metrics for publishers. Previously, publishers could only see metrics such as the number of views and number of unique visitors. The new metrics provide more in-depth data, including how many minutes the video was viewed on a given day and the number of times a video was viewed for longer than 10 seconds. The new video metrics can be found in either the video library or Page Insights, and the new metrics will come to the Page Insights API soon.
Each morning we scour the web for fresh useful insights in our Need to Know newsletter. Sign up below.
The week in fact-checking As part of our fact-checking journalism project, Jane Elizabeth and Poynter’s Alexios Mantzarlis highlight stories worth noting related to truth in politics and on the Internet. This week’s round-up includes which audiences value fact-checking, what President Obama has to say about fact-checking, and how rumors around recent terror attacks are being debunked.
How different news organizations are deciding which platforms are a priority (Digiday)
News organizations are going where the readers are. But most news organizations can’t succeed on all platforms, meaning they have to decide which platforms are the most important for them. Because its Snapchat Discover editions have a 76 percent completion rate, Cosmopolitan is prioritizing Snapchat. The Guardian isn’t focusing on Instant Articles because it hasn’t seen a significant effect on traffic from the format, while The Washington Post is going all in on Instant Articles because they’re seeing increased engagement.
The British journalism industry is 94 percent white, a new survey finds (Guardian)
According to a new survey from City University London, the British journalism industry is 94 percent white and 55 percent male. The survey also found that 65 percent of journalists who have joined the field within the past three years are female, but women in the industry are under-promoted. Most ethnic groups and religions are unrepresented as well: The survey found 0.4 percent of British journalists are Muslim and 0.2 percent are black.
Lessons on how to use audience data better, from outside the journalism industry (Digiday)
Nearly every industry is learning how to make better use of data, Yuyu Chen writes. Executives from General Mills, Tinder and Bain & Company shared their thinking around data at the Economist’s Marketing Unbound conference this week. Some ideas from the conference: Big data can inform ideas but it cannot create ideas, marketing should still center around the consumer rather than the data, and traditional market research can’t be eliminated entirely.
Should journalists use images of tragedies from Facebook and Twitter? (Guardian)
Immediately after the Brussels attacks earlier this week, journalists were being criticized for asking people on social media if they could use their photos and videos of the attack. Martin Belam writes that the attacks this week highlight an ethical dilemma for journalists: While there’s a public interest in using those images, should journalists contact people near an attack on social media to ask for permission to use their images? Belam writes: “Asking to re-use pictures of tragic events is in some ways the digital equivalent of the old newsgathering ‘death knock.’ But now it is a death knock that everybody can listen in on.”
The expansion of Apple Pay could help news organizations get more readers to pay for news (Nieman Lab) Apple Pay will be expanded to websites soon, Re/code reports. That could help news organizations get more readers to pay for news, Joshua Benton writes. More people are on mobile devices, and the process of paying for something with a credit card on a mobile website isn’t easy. But Apple Pay will make that easier for people with iOS devices: “If Apple Pay for websites does really let iPhone users pay with one tap on a fingerprint sensor, that’s a real advance. … If your publication offers a paywall and sees mobile conversion rates lower than desktop ones … Apple Pay for the web is worth watching.”
+ The New Yorker’s general counsel on the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker case: “We have seen many videos that are more newsworthy than this one … The reported sex tape of John Edwards and Rielle Hunter could have been considered newsworthy, had it been released, and had the former Presidential candidate denied the affair. If the Hogan verdict stands, would a media outlet that published that video be at risk of being put out of business? Would we be worse off if no one were willing to publish such a video? You don’t have to be a First Amendment absolutist, in favor of the unlimited publication of sex tapes, to believe that we would.” (New Yorker)
+ Jeff Bezos has helped create a culture of innovation at The Washington Post and removed the fear of failure: “Post people seem to value most that Bezos provides them air cover while they fiddle with ways to survive the transition from print to digital. … [Fred] Ryan, the publisher, credits Bezos with demanding risk taking — without fear that failure will be punished. … So long as Bezos is enjoying himself, in other words, there is no next-quarter deadline for the Post anymore, just more opportunities to reinvent journalism, preferably in a way that eventually makes money.” (Fortune)
The popular Twitter accounts @UberFacts and @OMGFacts show 13.3 million and nearly 7 million followers, respectively. Yet by encouraging a vision of “facts” as trivial soundbites and not a part of a richer context, these accounts dumb down our understanding of reality. Read the full article on Poynter.
Fact-checking in the U.S.
Quote of the week
“Through social media, talk radio and certain television broadcasts you start seeing wild claims taken as truth…and it circulates through the internet in ways that are immune to fact-checking. [I]f folks have been accustomed to hearing those kinds of wild claims, then they start believing it, and it creates a tinderbox.” — President Barack Obama in an interview with ABC News.
Fact-checking the 2016 elections
The four-person “K-file” team at BuzzFeed — yes, BuzzFeed, deal with it — is causing politicians some angst and often beating legacy media to the truth. The political research team’s mission is to check claims by candidates and determine whether historical records support those claims. Read the NPR story.
Research
A group of European researchers studied the spread of false information in social media and found “the prevalent tendency for users is to support every unverified rumour.” Yay, humans. Read it.
Fact-checking around the world
Fact checks of the week on terrorist attacks in Turkey & Belgium
In a pattern now sadly familiar, terrorist acts in Ankara, Istanbul and Brussels were followed by hoaxes spreading widely on media both social and traditional. First Draft News shared 10 debunked rumors from Turkey, and Libération one from Brussels.
Fact-checking infographic of the week
Fact-checking may be dead to some — but at least at NPR, the audience still ranks it highly. Read the Duke Reporters’ Lab report. Quick fact-checking news
(1) Full Fact is inviting its readers to ask questions on the EU referendum through aReddit-style section of its site. (2) The British fact-checkers are also hiring a fact-checker and a media officer. (3) The dates of Latam Chequea, the main gathering of Latin American fact-checkers, have been announced. (4) PolitiFact needs your support to unlock $15,000 in matching funds to hire a fact-checker concentrating on immigration.
But did you know: Dutch startup Blendle has officially launched in the United States with its “iTunes for news” model. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and more than a dozen other publishers have all made their content available through Blendle’s app. Users pay by the story, as little as 9 cents each, and if they’re unsatisfied with a story, they can request a refund. Blendle’s co-founder Alexander Klöpping says that the generation that has grown up paying for individual songs on iTunes will be more likely to pay for individual articles with a platform that makes it easy.
There’s tons of tools available to newsrooms, NPR’s Brian Boyer writes. “Every tool forces you down a path,” Boyer writes, making it important to determine what tools are the right tools for your newsroom. Boyer’s advice for picking the right tools: “Before you select a tool, you must first intimately understand the problem you’re trying to solve. And the best way to do that, IMHO, is to do it by hand.” Boyer suggests sticking Post-It notes or 3×5 index cards to a wall, using string to connect things or stickers to note statuses and priorities.
Johnston Press announced this week that it will sell, close or cut costs at 59 of its local newspapers. The company said in a statement that it had “identified a number of newsbrands that are now considered non-core and such will be either divested or run with less costs.” In 2015, Johnston Press closed a total of 18 of its newspapers, including 11 free weeklies. The Drum reports that the newspapers most likely to be closed are those outside of the geographic regions it’s trying to focus on.
Google may be building a live streaming app called YouTube Connect, VentureBeat’s Ken Yeung reports. Expected to be available for both iOS and Android, YouTube Connect would be a direct competitor to Periscope and Facebook Live. YouTube Connect is expected to connect with a user’s existing Google and YouTube accounts, and include chat, tagging and a news feed of clips from friends or people users have subscribed to on YouTube. Yeung says the app will likely be launched before Google’s I/O developer conference in May.
In all the discussion of the best ways to reach young adults, former Time magazine foreign correspondent and co-founder of news startup Worldcrunch Jeff Israely says that we often forget that these young adults will inevitably grow older. Instead of just asking what those readers are looking for now, Israely suggests that we should also think about what those readers will be like and will want from news in 20 years. Israely writes: “It’s safe to say there will be no shortage of onetime 20-something hipsters who have turned into 40-something dads and moms. What stories and information will matter to them? How will they want it packaged and delivered? We should be busy building those news products right now.”
A new tool developed by The Washington Post called BreakFast is helping the Post measure the speed of its breaking news email alerts against other news organizations. BreakFast monitors alerts from the Post and nine other news organizations and parses the alerts to determine if the topic is the same as previous alerts. BreakFast then tracks how quickly the alert is sent, whether the alert is something that’s been covered before, and if an alert could be considered spam if two or more news organizations send an alert about the same topic. Washington Post data scientist Shuguang Wang says BreakFast has helped the Post increase the speed of its breaking news email alerts by 80 percent.
But did you know:Pay-per-article platform Blendle has launched in the US, with partners including NYT and WSJ (Politico Media)
Dutch startup Blendle has officially launched in the United States with its “iTunes for news” model. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and more than a dozen other publishers have all made their content available through Blendle’s app. Users pay by the story, as little as 9 cents each, and if they’re unsatisfied with a story, they can request a refund. Blendle’s co-founder Alexander Klöpping says that the generation that has grown up paying for individual songs on iTunes will be more likely to pay for individual articles with a platform that makes it easy.
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How to decide what tools are the right tools to use in your newsroom (Medium)
There’s tons of tools available to newsrooms, NPR’s Brian Boyer writes. “Every tool forces you down a path,” Boyer writes, making it important to determine what tools are the right tools for your newsroom. Boyer’s advice for picking the right tools: “Before you select a tool, you must first intimately understand the problem you’re trying to solve. And the best way to do that, IMHO, is to do it by hand.” Boyer suggests sticking Post-It notes or 3×5 index cards to a wall, using string to connect things or stickers to note statuses and priorities.
Johnston Press will sell, close or drastically cut costs at 59 local newspapers (The Drum)
Johnston Press announced this week that it will sell, close or cut costs at 59 of its local newspapers. The company said in a statement that it had “identified a number of newsbrands that are now considered non-core and such will be either divested or run with less costs.” In 2015, Johnston Press closed a total of 18 of its newspapers, including 11 free weeklies. The Drum reports that the newspapers most likely to be closed are those outside of the geographic regions it’s trying to focus on.
To compete with Periscope, Google may be building a live streaming app for YouTube (VentureBeat)
Google may be building a live streaming app called YouTube Connect, VentureBeat’s Ken Yeung reports. Expected to be available for both iOS and Android, YouTube Connect would be a direct competitor to Periscope and Facebook Live. YouTube Connect is expected to connect with a user’s existing Google and YouTube accounts, and include chat, tagging and a news feed of clips from friends or people users have subscribed to on YouTube. Yeung says the app will likely be launched before Google’s I/O developer conference in May.
News organizations should be building the products that today’s young adults will be interested in 20 years from now (Nieman Lab)
In all the discussion of the best ways to reach young adults, former Time magazine foreign correspondent and co-founder of news startup Worldcrunch Jeff Israely says that we often forget that these young adults will inevitably grow older. Instead of just asking what those readers are looking for now, Israely suggests that we should also think about what those readers will be like and will want from news in 20 years. Israely writes: “It’s safe to say there will be no shortage of onetime 20-something hipsters who have turned into 40-something dads and moms. What stories and information will matter to them? How will they want it packaged and delivered? We should be busy building those news products right now.”
The Washington Post created a tool to measure the speed of its breaking news email alerts (Nieman Lab)
A new tool developed by The Washington Post called BreakFast is helping the Post measure the speed of its breaking news email alerts against other news organizations. BreakFast monitors alerts from the Post and nine other news organizations and parses the alerts to determine if the topic is the same as previous alerts. BreakFast then tracks how quickly the alert is sent, whether the alert is something that’s been covered before, and if an alert could be considered spam if two or more news organizations send an alert about the same topic. Washington Post data scientist Shuguang Wang says BreakFast has helped the Post increase the speed of its breaking news email alerts by 80 percent.
