Fresh useful insights for people advancing quality, innovative and sustainable journalism
You might have heard: With an investment from Gannett, Billy Penn’s parent company Spirited Media will expand into new cities
But did you know: The next location for Jim Brady’s local news experiment will be Baltimore, Chicago or Pittsburgh (Politico Media)
Spirited Media, the company that owns and operates Billy Penn, is narrowing in on Baltimore, Chicago or Pittsburgh as the location for the company’s next local news franchise. Spirited Media CEO Jim Brady told Politico Media that he was looking to launch a Billy Penn-like site in a city with a high percentage of young news consumers and a relatively compact size. The final decision on which city will be the next one for Brady’s local news experiment will be based on the journalism and business talent in the city and “finding the right people,” Brady says.
+ Noted: Smaller publishers that are part of big ad networks such as those run by Vice or Refinery29 see the benefit as being able to sell better ads and ultimately grow their audiences (Advertising Age); Individual journalists are going solo, launching their own newsletters and websites, and creating their own subscription and business models (Poynter); BuzzFeed demands the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by British journalist Michael Leidig and his news outlet Central European News that claims a BuzzFeed story about the news service damaged its reputation (Advertising Age); Breaking News alerts are now available on Slack (Nieman Lab)
More than 200 ideas for your next podcast (Medium)
If you’re looking to start a podcast at your news organization, but aren’t sure what topic you should tackle, Melody Kramer and Christine Eriksen are here to help. Kramer and Eriksen compiled a list of more than 200 podcast ideas, including interviewing people on your block, a news program about the election from the perspective of people who do not have the right to vote, and a podcast about people trying to learn a new skill.
+ More insights for those looking to get started in podcasting: How 5 news organizations are approaching podcasts, why competing publishers are partnering on podcasts to mitigate financial risk, and why your podcast needs to put out more than just audio
In a test with Facebook Instant Articles, U.K. publisher Car Throttle saw a 16 percent drop in pageviews (Digiday)
As Facebook prepares to make Instant Articles available to all publishers, Lucinda Southern writes that not all publishers agree about whether it works. In a weeklong test with Instant Articles, the U.K.’s Car Throttle published all of its articles as Instant Articles and saw a 16 percent drop in pageviews. Car Throttle’s founder and CEO Adnan Ebrahim says: “The main point for us is that we turned on Facebook Instant Articles and expected more distribution, or for this content to weigh higher than other Facebook content. Instead, we saw the opposite effect.”
+ Earlier: Instant Articles publishers have seen a drop in pageviews, but “it’s been a shift from bucket to bucket”, while The Washington Post has prioritized growing new audiences through Instant Articles over simply increasing traffic to its website
The tablet market is falling short of forecasts, mostly thanks to smartphones (Re/code)
In 2011, research firm Gartner predicted that 300 million tablets would be sold annually by 2015. But reality is falling short of that forecast: Research firm IDC estimates that 207 million tablets were sold in 2015. Arik Hesseldahl writes that one of the causes is likely smartphones: Screens on smartphones are growing larger, reducing the need for a tablet. But one market in mobile that IDC sees growing is what it calls “detachables,” or tablets that can attach to a keyboard and mimic a computer.
The Panama Papers show a shift in mainstream journalism, moving more toward WikiLeaks (New York Times)
The Panama Papers show the “WikiLeaks-ization” of mainstream journalism, Jim Rutenberg writes. That shift is significant, and it’s one that’s changing the course of history, Rutenberg writes, as well as “changing the rules for mainstream journalists in the fierce business of unearthing secrets, and for the government and corporate officials in the fiercer business of keeping them.”
+ Emily Bell writes that the Panama Papers also show how crucial cooperation between news organizations is, both on important stories and when navigating relationships with platforms: “If competitive advantage now rests in a close co-operation with platforms and technologies, and it looks as though it does, then as journalists we need to be more open about disclosing those terms of engagement. Facebook articles and the Panama Papers are conceptually quite a long way apart, but in terms of how we work together cooperatively, and the benefit of transparency applied to transactions, they are maybe much closer than we might think” (Guardian)
How small design decisions in data journalism can affect a user’s understanding of the numbers (Washington Post)
Data visualization is much an art as a science, Wonkblog’s Christopher Ingraham says. Comparing his own map about population change in the U.S. to the Pew Research Center’s map of the same data, Ingraham shows how small design decisions such as a choice of color or the number of thresholds can affect how numbers are displayed and ultimately understood by the readers. Ingraham writes: “Communicating with numbers is, in many ways, just like communicating with words. You make decisions about what to emphasize and what to downplay, and about how to convey a full understanding of the subject at hand.”
+ How publishers are preparing for the possibility of an algorithm-based Instagram feed: They’re paying closer attention to their engagement metrics, posting more often to Instagram, and creating accounts tailored to niche interests (Digiday)
The post Need to Know: April 12, 2016 appeared first on American Press Institute.
from American Press Institute http://ift.tt/1VlwfIX
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