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You might have heard: Facebook created Instant Articles with the goal of reducing load times and creating a more seamless experience for users
But did you know: Facebook is pushing advertisers to speed up their mobile sites and warning their ads may not be served if their websites are slow (Wall Street Journal)
Facebook wants its advertisers to speed up their mobile sites, and it’s warning that it may limit where their ads appear if they don’t do so. On its Business News page, Facebook outlined a number of ways advertisers can speed up their mobile sites, including minimizing redirects and plugins and compressing files. Facebook also said it would start “prefetching” — pre-loading in the Facebook in-app browser before a link is tapped — advertisers’ sites to help speed up load times, as well. Advertisers won’t have to opt-in to “prefetching,” but they also won’t be able to opt-out, Jack Marshall reports.
+ Noted: Vice’s response to a CJR article claiming Vice mistreated freelancers: “While many of the complaints highlighted in the CJR piece date back to 2014 and 2015, before we mandated best practices and overhauled our accounts payable department, they do point out weak spots that do need fixing, which we’re currently addressing” (Columbia Journalism Review); Gawker Media president Heather Dietrick signs as president of Jezebel, Gizmodo, Deadspin, Kotaku, Lifehacker and Jalopnik for Fusion Media Group, whose parent company Univision bought Gawker Media earlier this month (Politico); Melania Trump is suing The Daily Mail for defamation and tortious interference over a story that suggested she was an escort; Daily Mail has retracted the story online (Hollywood Reporter)
API UPDATE
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 how to get people to care about facts, why a Korean newspaper adviser wants more fact-checking, and whether Facebook needs a fact-checker.
Reported.ly’s favorite tools for social media reporting (Reported.ly)
As we say goodbye to Reported.ly, the team is letting us in on some of their tips and tricks for social media reporting. Some of their favorite tools include: Banjo and Twitter advanced search for geolocation, BreakingNews.com for the day’s wire stories at a glance, TinEye for reverse image searches, and Trends24 to verify where hashtags are trending.
EU says blocking ads at the network level raises net neutrality issues, a ruling that’s good for publishers (Digiday)
On Tuesday, the European Union’s Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications officially said that ad blocking at the mobile network level raises net neutrality issues. That’s a good decision for publishers, Jessica Davies writes. While publishers should take responsibility for their role in the rise of ad blocking, Incisive Media’s chief digital officer John Barnes explains that the problem with network-level blocking is that it treats bad actors the same as good actors: “Ad blockers don’t indiscriminate, so those publishers that are trying to be more responsible are losing out, and if this were to happen at a mobile network level, it would cause us massive issues.”
+ The Huffington Post launches HuffPost Mexico, its 15th edition outside of the U.S. (World Post)
Instead of focusing on your end goal, focus on what you need to do on a regular basis reach that goal (Motto)
Goals aren’t a great way to ensure you get things done, James Clear writes. Instead, Clear says you should focus on the systems, or the things that you need to do on a regular basis that lead to the goal being reached. For example: If you’re a coach, and your goal is to win a championship, the system that you should focus on is practicing every day. Clear explains that thinking about only goals tends to make people think “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal” and impede their long-term progress. And while goals can provide direction, Clear argues that committing to the system is what makes a difference.
Dan Rather expresses concern about the transparency of Facebook’s algorithms (Poynter)
In a note on Facebook, Dan Rather expressed concern about the transparency of Facebook’s “mysterious algorithms,” while noting the benefits of Facebook for news : “I … worry about the opaqueness of Facebook and its mysterious algorithms. My team and I try to figure out why some posts seem to ‘hit’ and are shared thousands of times while reaching millions of people, while others fare much more modestly. … On balance, I feel that all this change is a tremendous force for good. … I believe Facebook never set out to become the primary means of journalistic communication. We have to figure out how to make that work best for all concerned.”
+ Quartz’s ideas on how Facebook’s algorithm for trending news probably works, based on patent filings and interviews with former news curators: The algorithm identifies topics with “a sharp increase in mentions over a short period of time,” weighing likes/shares as well (Quartz)
What Hearken means when it talks about engagement: Members of the audience are responsive to newsrooms, and newsrooms are responsive in return (Medium)
The news industry can’t seem to agree on what exactly “engagement” means. So, Jennifer Brandel is defining what Hearken means when it talks about “engagement”: “Engagement happens when members of the public are responsive to newsrooms, and newsrooms are in turn responsive to members of the public.” Brandel says to determine if there’s actual engagement going on, newsrooms should ask themselves, “What role does your audience play in your journalism?” If there isn’t a meaningful answer, Brandel says, there’s likely not meaningful engagement happening.
FOR THE WEEKEND
+ Ideas from Poynter’s 10UP conference earlier this week (Poynter): Amanda Zamora says on comments, “Ceding these conversations to social platforms doesn’t solve any of those problems, it simply defers any solutions and puts the conversations about our journalism even further beyond our reach, shaped instead by algorithms that reinforce the very same polarization that bogged down the comment threads we couldn’t redeem in the first place” (Poynter); Jennifer Brandel and Monica Guzman created a Google Doc with resources for understanding engagement and examples of engagement in newsrooms (Google Docs)
+ Thinking about the meaning of newspaper buildings, as the Charlotte Observer’s old building is torn down: “It symbolized the importance and power of the newspaper, which not only committed great journalism but was a large employer … These buildings symbolized how 425,000 Americans worked at newspapers in 1996” (Rogue Columnist)
+ In Alaska, one woman writes, edits, lays out, and delivers the biweekly Skagway News (Columbia Journalism Review)
+ “High quality local news and information helps people make informed decisions about issues that impact their lives, encourages them to be civically engaged, and creates deeper understanding and empathy among residents in communities,” Molly de Aguiar writes. “We should be fighting for journalism that improves all of our lives and all of our communities — the kind of news and information we would enthusiastically pay for, regardless of a newsroom’s business model.” (Medium)
The post Need to Know: Sept. 2, 2016 appeared first on American Press Institute.
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