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5/4/16

Need to Know: May 4, 2016

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

OFF THE TOP

You might have heard: The Tampa Tribune was sold by Media General in 2012 to a Los Angeles-based private equity investment group for $9.5 million (Tampa Bay Times)

But did you know: The Tampa Bay Times bought and folded the Tampa Tribune, making Tampa a one-newspaper city (Poynter)
The Tampa Bay Times bought the Tampa Tribune on Tuesday for an undisclosed price and folded the Tribune, ending a 29-year competition between the two papers. Cuts are expected to the Tribune newsroom; Times CEO Paul Tash said at least 100 layoffs are expected. The acquisition makes the Tampa Bay region a one-newspaper city. Tash says: “The continued competition between the two newspapers was threatening to both. There are very few cities that are able to sustain more than one daily newspaper, and the Tampa Bay region is not among them.”

+ Noted: NYT now gets 57 percent of its revenue from readers, but its revenue is still down 1.2 percent year over year (Politico Media); Ahead of its move downtown, The Boston Globe is downsizing its newsroom again, offering all employees in the newsroom a buyout (Media Nation); Race and ethnicity editor Sonya Ross is suing the AP for race, sex and age discrimination and retaliation, saying she worked in a “hostile and abusive” environment in the AP’s Washington bureau (The Wrap); Max Linsky, co-founder of Longform.org, and Jenna Weiss-Berman, former BuzzFeed director of audio, are joining forces to launch Pineapple Street Media, which will develop podcasts for clients that already include NYT and Lenny Letter (Nieman Lab)

TRY THIS AT HOME

Why soliciting feedback from readers doesn’t have to be scary (Publisher Solutions)
Interacting with customers and readers can be intimidating, Desert Digital Media’s Jen Land writes, but those people are also the source of a lot of valuable feedback. Land writes: “Not all feedback is going to be relevant, actionable and valuable. Sometimes customers just want to vent. Sometimes their suggestions are not the best suggestions. But hearing all that scary stuff — and responding when it’s appropriate — is the important key to instituting a customer experience that is truly for the customer.”

OFFSHORE

Australia’s Fairfax Media is offering whistleblowers two ways to securely communicate with reporters (Sydney Morning Herald)
Starting yesterday, whistleblowers have two new ways to securely communicate with Fairfax Media journalists in Australia: With SecureDrop, they can send files up to 500MB; with JournoTips, they can send files up to 5MB and chat with reporters. Laws passed in Australia last year require phone companies and ISPs to keep details of communications between people for two years, and that information can often be obtained by law enforcement without a warrant, underlining the importance of a secure way for potential sources to communicate with journalists in Australia.

OFFBEAT

The lifespan of a video is much longer on YouTube than Facebook (The Information)
“A Facebook video is a brief supernova, peaking early and then quickly fading out,” The Information’s Tom Dotan and Peter Schulz write. “A YouTube video is more like a cooling star that emits a small flash of light then slowly decays.” Videos posted to Facebook receive 75 percent of their views within four days and peak on the second day, according to analysis of 1,700 videos by ChannelMeter. But videos posted to YouTube stick around longer: The same videos took 79 days to reach 75 percent of their views on YouTube, ChannelMeter found.

UP FOR DEBATE

Publishers’ reaction to AdBlock Plus’ micropayment plan: It’s another way to tax publishers (Digiday)
AdBlock Plus is partnering with Swedish micropayment startup Flattr to create a payment system for readers to pay publishers they visit the most, but some publishers don’t have a good initial impression of the plan. Incisive Media’s John Barnes says it seems like “yet another way that Adblock Plus is trying to tax publishers” and “it makes more sense to do this directly with the publisher, not through an intermediary,” while Swedish news group Nyheter24-Gruppen’s CEO Daniel Weilar says the micropayment plan detracts from the issue of intrusive advertising and that he sees it as a way for AdBlock Plus to generate revenue at the expense of publishers.

SHAREABLE

Facebook’s trending news section is controlled by a group of contractors who curate the news (Gizmodo)
Launched in January 2014, Facebook’s “trending news” section appears in the top right hand corner of your news feed. That section is controlled by a group of news curators who are contractors for Facebook, working out of a basement in Facebook’s NYC office, Gizmodo reports. After seeing a list of topics ranked by Facebook’s algorithm, the contractors choose what’s trending, as well as what news sources the trending topics link back to. The curators are also reportedly encouraged to choose from a list of “preferred media outlets,” including NYT and Time magazine, and have the power to “deactivate” a trending topic if at least three traditional news sources aren’t covering it.

The post Need to Know: May 4, 2016 appeared first on American Press Institute.



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