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Thursday, October 5, 2017
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‘Stratechery as a service’: Substack aims to streamline the creation of independent subscription news sitesWhat’s the most effective way to encourage more writers to start their own subscription sites? Reduce the time they spend doing anything that’s not writing, argues Substack. By Ricardo Bilton. |
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Crooked Media expands from podcasts to text, with a new site and plans for investigative reporting“We would find that more established media companies would notice the interesting stuff that happened in our podcasts and turn those moments into articles or news-breaking blog posts on their own sites. We’ll now be our own home for that.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
ProPublica
ProPublica’s new Local Reporting Network will pay staffer salaries for a year at up to 6 local newsrooms →
“With support from a new three-year grant, we will pay salary plus an allowance for benefits for one full-time reporter dedicated to investigative work throughout 2018 at each of up to six partner news organizations in cities with population below 1 million. The reporter will still work in and report to their home newsroom, but they will receive extensive guidance and support from ProPublica. Their work will be published or broadcast by their home newsroom and simultaneously by ProPublica as well.”
MisinfoCon / Gabriel Stein
A prototype for stemming the flood of misinformation during breaking news events →
“I propose that news organizations counter this misinformation by using the combined power of their algorithmically authoritative websites and reporters on social media as one of these cooperative propaganda networks. With any luck, this coordinated effort will have the effect of getting high-quality news to the top of algorithmically compiled trending sections during breaking news events.”
Poynter / Daniel Funke
Here’s why fighting fake news is harder on WhatsApp than on Facebook →
“With WhatsApp, you have no idea how many people are reading what you're putting in there. It's like a black box.”
FiveThirtyEight / FiveThirtyEight
Does the media cover Trump too much? Too harshly? Too narrowly? →
538 discusses this week’s Pew report on how the media has covered Trump.
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Some publishers give Facebook and Google visitors a worse user experience →
Says one anonymous exec: “There are lines you won't cross with your loyal audience that you'll cross with your fly-by-night audience. We're less concerned with ruining the user relationship because we don't have a user relationship.”
The Atlantic / Jeffrey Goldberg
The Atlantic fully launches its membership program →
We wrote about The Masthead (which opened last month just to Atlantic subscribers, and is now open to everyone) here.
TechCrunch / Anthony Ha
BuzzFeed says its morning news show “AM to DM” is reaching 1M daily viewers →
“BuzzFeed says the show averaged about 1 million unique viewers each day, with clips being viewed a total of 10 million times. And it's a young audience, with 78 percent of daily live viewers under 35.”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
Facebook accused of inflating its reach among young adults →
“Collectively, [analyst Brian] Wieiser and the [Video Advertising Bureau] say, the company’s claimed reach exceeds census estimates by a third in the 18-24 demographic and 80 percent among 25-to-34-year-olds.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
Google is paying publishers working on “Stamp,” its version of Snapchat’s Discover →
“Publishers who are working on Stamp describe it as multimedia slide format, optimized for phones, that's supposed to surface at the top of Google's search results but would also live on their own sites. It can accommodate video, images and text, and users can advance through slides by swiping or tapping through, similar to Snap's Discover and Instagram's Stories.”
New York Times / Sydney Ember
Los Angeles Times newsroom, challenging Tronc, goes public with union push →
“Last year, Tronc instituted an abrupt change to the vacation policy that effectively eliminated accrued vacation days, according to several employees interviewed. That change, these employees said, had helped motivate the union drive.”