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Tuesday, October 24, 2017
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“Maybe it is a purist attitude we have, but we believe that being funded by your readers is the best guarantee for independence”The Belgian investigative news site Apache is a co-op, counting on its shareholders and subscribers — who are often the same people. By Tom Cassauwers. |
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Are you a low-quality web page? (Are you sure?) Facebook sheds a little light on its algorithm“If we determine that a post might link to these types of low-quality web pages, it may show up lower in people's feeds.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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Can sports turn the local podcast business into a green monster?A partnership of Boston media giants is going to try. Plus: The mysteries of messed-up analytics and The New York Times’ expanding podcast strategy. By Nicholas Quah. |
What We’re Reading
The Washington Post / Brian Fung
The FCC just ended a decades-old rule designed to keep TV and radio under local control →
“The regulation, which was first adopted almost 80 years ago, requires broadcasters to have a physical studio in or near the areas where they have a license to transmit TV or radio signals…’the Commission's proposal would allow these conglomerates to move even more resources away from struggling communities and further centralize broadcasting facilities and staff in wealthier metropolitan areas.'”
Columbia Journalism Review / Pete Brown, Andrea Wenzel, and Meritxell Roca-Sales
How consumers think about distributed news: Findings from focus groups →
“Multiple participants described how they had abandoned platforms, curtailed their usage, or considered leaving a platform due to a lack of transparency about algorithm changes.”
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Lucas Graves
“News you don’t believe”: Audience perspectives on fake news →
“We analyze data from 8 focus groups and a survey of online news users to understand audience perspectives on fake news.”
Axios / Sarah Fischer
Conservative sites are seeing a traffic slump, according to comScore data →
ComScore data shows traffic down significantly at Breitbart, Drudge Report, Daily Caller, and Independent Journal Review.
MediaFile / Shira Hanau
The New York Times announces residency for “social-first” reporting in partnership with snack company Mondelez →
“The one-year residency, which will hire at least three journalists, is the result of a partnership between the Times and the snack company Mondelez, though the Times will not reveal the terms of the partnership.”
Monday Note / Frederic Filloux
Scoring stories to make better recommendation engines for news →
“By being able to come up with a score for each story (and eventually each video), I want to elevate the best editorial a publication has to offer.”
International News Media Association / Earl J. Wilkinson
Scandinavia emerges as gold standard in digital subscriptions →
“The core trend internationally in digital subscriptions is the shift away from the metered model and toward data-fueled freemium and hybrid models — notably in Europe and the South Pacific.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Jon Allsop
A new project will keep stories alive when journalists are killed →
The nonprofit Freedom Voices Network “will officially launch a new platform at the Newseum in Washington, DC, on October 31, inviting journalists to upload their reporting to a secure central portal and giving Richard and his team the means to continue their work if they are silenced.”