I write about issues going on in transition from traditional print media to on-line digital media in my posting Old media and digital media – part 1. This post is a continuation to it. The situation does not look too good for traditional media. Traditional media has been able to solve it’s challenges with aggregation or pay-wall. The future seems to be quite bad for traditional print media that can’t adapt to changed situation.
Despite two decades of trying, no one has found a way to make traditional news-gathering sufficiently profitable to assure its future survival. Only about a third of Americans under 35 look at a newspaper even once a week, and the percentage declines every year. A large portion of today’s readers of the few remaining good newspapers are much closer to the grave than to high school. Today’s young people skitter around the Internet. Audience taste seems to be changing, with the result that among young people particularly there is a declining appetite for the sort of information packages the great newspapers provided.
What is the future of media? There is an interesting article on future of media written in Finnish on this: Median tulevaisuus ja 13 trendiä – mitä media on vuonna 2030? It shows 13 trends that I have here translated to English, re-arranged, added my comments and links to more information to them. In 2030, the media will look very different than today.
The new gerations no longer want to pay for the media: Since the same information, benefits, entertainment provided free of charge, they are not prepared to pay. Older generations support the traditional media for some time, but they are smaller each year. Media consumption continues to rapidly change, and advertisers will follow suit digital and mobile channels, which will affect the media sales because advertisers no longer need the intermediary role of the media companies to communicate with their customers.
This does not look good for media companies, but situation even worse than that: When media personnel, production and distribution costs are rising every year and so the order than the ad revenue will be reduced year by year, deprivation twist to push media companies to the rest of the best authors, owners become impatient and expected returns are reduced. Companies are moving their marketing investment priorities for the purchased media.Corporate communications professionals continues to grow and the number of suppliers will continue to fall.
Technological developments enhance the above trends: Technology eliminates the barriers to entry to the traditional media sector and at the same time create new sectors. Technological media competition winner takes all because new scalable technology to create competitive advantages. Very many news writing tasks can be automated with near real-time and reliable enough translation technology The media world is undergoing a wholesale shift from manual processes to automated systems that strip out waste and inefficiency (The Future of Programmatic: Automation + Creativity + Scale).
Strong continuous technological change and automation mean that media consumption will continue to change for the next decade at least as strong as the previous ten years, whether we like it or not. Critical journalism makes searching for new alternative ways to do their work and to fund its work.
Media’s direction is sure to bring, and an ever increasing rate - in an increasingly digital, more mobile, more and more tailor-made … The newspapers will be read mostly on mobile devices. Information is obtained much earlier, in an increasingly digital and real-time. A lot has changed now already.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Jack Marshall / Wall Street Journal:
Washington Post builds Bandito detection tool that monitors alternate versions of stories set by editors, then automatically serves the most popular
Washington Post’s ‘Bandito’ Tool Optimizes Content For Clicks
System promotes version of a story with most popular headline, images
http://www.wsj.com/articles/washington-posts-bandit-tool-optimizes-content-for-clicks-1454960088
The Washington Post is experimenting with technology to automatically optimize articles on its website for maximum readership.
A new internally-developed tool, dubbed “Bandito,” allows editors to enter different article versions with varying headlines, images and teaser text into its content management system. The technology then detects which version readers are clicking or tapping on more, and automatically serves that version more frequently on the homepage and other areas of the Post’s site.
Publishers frequently use so-called A/B tests to compare different versions of articles and to establish which headlines and images appeal to readers, but the Post’s tool is particularly interesting because it automatically implements changes based on the information it collects. This allows editors to essentially “set and forget” the tool, the company said, which makes the process more efficient.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andrew Green / Columbia Journalism Review:
Freelancers are becoming increasingly reliant on NGOs and charities to report from conflict and natural disaster zones
The thorny ethics of embedding with do-gooders
http://www.cjr.org/first_person/the_ethics_of_embedding_with_do-gooders.php
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shan Wang / Nieman Lab:
Boston public radio station WBUR overhauling its site to highlight audio, integrate with NPR, and work better for mobile users
A Boston public radio station is redesigning its site to make audio “a first-class citizen online”
But: “I’ve tried to be really disciplined about not calling this process just a redesign,” WBUR’s executive editor for digital Tiffany Campbell said. “We’ve built a brand new platform.”
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/02/a-boston-public-radio-station-is-redesigning-its-site-to-make-audio-a-first-class-citizen-online/
News analysis program On Point is one of Boston public radio station WBUR’s most popular and prominent shows, yet its website looks more than a little outdated and isn’t mobile-friendly. It’s hard to figure out where content from the show lives when visiting the main wbur.org website.
old-onpoint-phone-screenshot
So the website is getting an overhaul. “We’re planning to make audio more of a first-class citizen online,” WBUR’s executive editor for digital Tiffany Campbell told me, “while also making sure the design can honor the stuff we do in visuals and text.”
For listeners, there’s the problem of seamless listening and of discovery
The beta (emphasis on beta, Campbell cautioned) version of the new WBUR.org is fully responsive and features a persistent player, so users can browse while listening.
To make the best of WBUR’s two-developers-to-dozens-of-staffers ratio, the new site is built to be modular, so that producers will be able to choose from a menu of web components that suit the needs of whichever story page they’re putting up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Twitter is losing customers and its stock is falling
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/10/technology/twitter-stock-users/index.html?sr=twCNN021016twitter-stock-users0957PMVODtopPhoto&linkId=21166985
It’s hard for the small core of Twitter addicts to accept, but Twitter just isn’t popular enough to be successful. In fact, Twitter is losing customers.
The social media company reported Wednesday that it lost 2 million users in the last three months of 2015. Shares plummeted as much as 12% in after-hours trading.
New management, products, designs and features haven’t done much to move the needle. Twitter’s growth has stagnated, and it’s nowhere close to turning a profit.
Twitter is aware of the problem and has launched a slew of new products to address the issue. Notably, Twitter announced Wednesday that it is testing a new algorithm that will change the chronological order of feeds, hoping to appeal more to casual users who aren’t obsessively keeping up with thousands of tweets in real time.
Meanwhile, Twitter’s management is in turmoil.
Twitter begins rolling out its algorithmic timeline around the world
It’s opt in — for now
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/10/10955602/twitter-algorithmic-timeline-best-tweets
After years of debate and months of user testing, Twitter is rolling out a new version of its timeline this morning that ranks tweets by quality in addition to timeliness. As The Verge first reported on Saturday, the feature is based on the algorithms that power Twitter’s “while you were away” feature, which show you a selection of tweets based on how popular they are, and whether you regularly interact with the person tweeting them. When you open Twitter after some time away, highly ranked tweets will show up at the top of your timeline in reverse-chronological order. The rest of your timeline appears underneath as usual.
For a while, the controversial new timeline will not be enabled by default. “Show me the best tweets first,” as the feature is called, is a toggle located in settings
Tomi Engdahl says:
What You Need to Know About Twitter’s Algorithmic Timeline
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/what-you-need-to-know-about-twitters-algorithmnic-timeline/
Today, Twitter rolled out arguably the most fundamental change it has ever made: a major tweak to the timeline. If you already use Twitter, you probably knew this was coming—#RIPTwitter and the Super Bowl were about the only things people talked about on the network this weekend. If you don’t already use Twitter, well, Twitter hopes this might make you start. Either way, the feature’s meant to dramatically increase the number of tweets you see that you actually care about.
Here’s what’s new—and before you freak out, know that this is not all bad and it’s not the giant, Facebook-inspired overhaul you think it is.
In most ways this is no different from the existing “While You Were Away” feature, except it won’t be highlighted in any way. There’s no limit to how many tweets will be out of order at the top, but Haq says the average is about a dozen. As for how often the catch-up feature will trigger? “This is going to vary by user,” Haq says. If you follow 1,000 accounts, and I follow 20 accounts… it might happen for you more often than it happens for me.”
The new timeline’s available for everyone today, but it’s not turned on by default—yet. At some point in the next few weeks (the new feature’s rolling out in waves), you’ll get a pop-up notification in Twitter for Android, iOS, and web that says “Never miss an important tweet,” followed by some explanation about the new way your timeline is organized. From then on, your timeline will be presented the new, algorithmic way. Don’t like it? Turn it off in settings.
It’s a rather simple update, though in fairness to detractors, it’s yet other move away from what makes Twitter, Twitter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
Q&A with Boston Globe election reporter James Pindell on digital-first reporting, using platforms, and staying online
James Pindell is trying to bring The Boston Globe’s election coverage to everyone by being everywhere
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/02/james-pindell-is-trying-to-bring-the-boston-globes-election-coverage-to-everyone-by-being-everywhere/
“Whether it’s their inbox, whether it’s for Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Instagram — the idea is to reach audiences where they’re at.”
James Pindell: I’m digital-first at the Globe. Part of the end goal and strategy from David Skok was to anchor some coverage — particularly New Hampshire primary coverage, but it also applies to the whole campaign.
His idea is that the paper itself is one outlet. In the old model, the job was to tease all of your Globe content on these different social media platforms, like: Oh my gosh, please come back here to read this story. But that’s the old model.
The current model is to reach people where they’re at. Whether it’s their inbox, with the Ground Game email; whether it’s for Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Instagram — the idea is to reach audiences where they’re at, and not just as a pure promotional thing, but to actually create snippets — information, stories, pictures — that may only exist on those different media platforms. I could not really tell you, here’s everything that I ever wrote, or here’s everything that the Globe ever wrote, or produced, or did. Because they’re existing on each separate platform.
It’s a flip on the head of the way most [news outlets] are still doing things that say: Hey, come read this story. Yes, I do promote, of course. But I’m also just trying to report things where they’re at. And they may just end there.
When I go into this when I’m on the trail, my job is, at every moment to figure out, where’s the best place to do this story, how do you serve the audience, and the audience is not just one audience, but several different audiences.
Owen: Let’s talk about the logistics of each platform a little more. How do you decide what you are going to post where?
Pindell: Obviously, Twitter’s where the conversation’s happening on the campaign trail. It’s the No. 1 thing that I use, the first thing I check. But email is key to everyone else — email and Facebook.
Something that’s always surprising is Periscope, and now, increasingly, Facebook Live. Say I’m at an event and we’re doing a press gaggle — everyone’s around the candidates. I might record that 40-minute speech or hour-and-a-half town hall meeting just using an audio recorder to make sure I get the quotes accurately. But if it’s more exciting than just a person in front of the room answering questions — if it’s a press gaggle, if it’s a candidate walking down the street, if there’s something that’s more visually appealing — I will bust out Periscope quickly and start broadcasting it.
I’m serving an audience that way, because there are people who want to watch it. I’ll have 60, 70 people watching whatever it is. But here’s the secret for me as a reporter: If it’s just a press gaggle and it’s just going to be, like, news of the day, I don’t want to use the space on my phone to record, even if later I could upload it to Dropbox or something. I’m only going to use a quote from this gaggle in the next day. So I’ll just use Periscope, it’s no big deal, and I’ll then transcribe off of Periscope. All that data lives on Periscope, it goes away in 24 hours, and after that 24 hours, I don’t need it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nicholas Schmidle / New Yorker:
Inside TMZ: How the celebrity news site gets stories through a vast network of industry sources
The Digital Dirt
How TMZ gets the videos and photos that celebrities want to hide.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/22/inside-harvey-levins-tmz?currentPage=all
Tomi Engdahl says:
George Slefo / Ad Age:
Sources: Google’s AMP initiative to speed mobile pages to launch Wednesday, with Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, and Washington Post among those participating
Official Launch Date for Google AMP Confirmed
Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages Is Launching Feb. 24, Ad Age Has Learned
http://adage.com/article/digital/official-launch-date-google-amp-confirmed/302746/
Google will be introducing its Accelerated Mobile Page initiative on Feb. 24, several sources familiar with AMP confirmed to Ad Age.
AMP is a direct response to similar but proprietary platforms like Facebook’s Instant Articles and Apple’s News. Unlike them, however, AMP is open source, meaning anyone can use it.
Google says AMP pages load 85% faster than standard mobile web pages. The company wants to reinvent the mobile web by delivering content at near instant speeds.
Publishers, meanwhile, have been eagerly awaiting their chance to test AMP’s efficacy in encouraging readership on mobile devices. The Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed and the Washington Post are among those who will have AMP sites ready next week.
A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the date of AMP’s roll-out.
While AMP pages load much faster, many revenue streams for publishers won’t be available. Interstitial ads and site takeovers aren’t allowed. Elements that are script-based, widgets that suggest other reading and video that visitors have to watch before they get to the content they’re seeking are also off the table.
Still, delivering content at blazing fast speeds may be a necessary measure for publishers — and Google — to keep consumers on the mobile web. Consumers currently spend far more time with apps than the mobile web.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Elspeth Reeve / New Republic:
How Tumblr’s teen comedy geniuses find fame, build audiences, outsmart ad networks, strike it rich, then lose it all, without adults ever noticing — That feeling when you hit a million followers, make more money than your mom, push a diet pill scheme, lose your blog, and turn 16.
https://newrepublic.com/article/129002/secret-lives-tumblr-teens
That feeling when you hit a million followers, make more money than your mom, push a diet pill scheme, lose your blog, and turn 16.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Noah Robischon / Fast Company:
BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti and President Greg Coleman on how company uses data and local knowledge to tailor and leverage international coverage
BuzzFeed’s Global Domination Plan: The Techniker Has Been Informed
http://www.fastcompany.com/3056063/most-innovative-companies/buzzfeeds-global-domination-plan-the-techniker-has-been-informed
BuzzFeed is expanding across the globe—and tackling one of advertising’s greatest challenges.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Bergen / Re/code:
Google AMP is about speeding up mobile web, not beating Facebook at news, and may expand beyond publishing to e-commerce and other types of websites
Google AMP Is Less About Beating Facebook at News, More About Gobbling Up the Mobile Web
http://recode.net/2016/02/24/google-amp-is-less-about-beating-facebook-at-news-more-about-gobbling-up-the-mobile-web/
When Google looks at the mobile Web, it sees so many things it does not like.
Websites aren’t built for mobile. Too much code hobbles pages. And everything, oh man, everything is too slow. Then there’s what Googlers whisper, but won’t say publicly: Bad Web experiences send visitors away from the Web, and away from Google search.
Google’s clarion response to all these wrongs is Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP — a tiny bit of code that renders news articles wickedly fast inside Google search on mobile phones, placing them at the top of results. It officially launches today with over a hundred publishing and “dozens” of technical partners, according to Richard Gingras, Google’s senior director of news and the project’s chief evangelist.
“An AMP page is four times faster and 10 times less data. It’s instantaneous. It’s there right away. And that’s really powerful,” he told Re/code. “This is, by far, the most active open source project we’ve ever been involved in.”
We first reported on the existence of AMP in September as Google prepared its rejoinder to mobile publishing products like Facebook’s Instant Articles and Apple News. Unlike those, Google’s is open to other platforms; Twitter and LinkedIn have signed on, among others. Google doesn’t host the content directly, as Facebook and Apple do.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Malcolm Harris / Al Jazeera America:
Columnists at the New York Times have become brands more than writers, dispensing rhetoric without responsibility, turning the job into a mockery
Purge The New York Times op-ed page
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/2/purge-the-new-york-times-op-ed-page.html
The paper of record has let its opinion columns degrade into self-parody
When I first stumbled on the New York Times op-ed page as a teenager, I couldn’t believe what I had been missing: Every day, at the back of the A section, the world’s brightest minds advanced heady arguments. Up until then, I thought ideas lived in books, while reporting (and box scores) went in the newspaper, but there they were. And surrounding these op-eds were the opinion columns, where a trusted few writers got to cultivate readers’ attentions and opinions twice a week, 700 or so careful words at a time.
Unlike journalists, columnists aren’t bound by rigid objective standards.
Still, it’s hard to feel bad for them. Writing several hundred words a week about whatever you want is, as my mom used to say, nice work if you can get it. But content is content is content, and it would be one hell of a coincidence if form based on the physical inches of a broadsheet made sense for online publishers. Why pay some big writer a corresponding salary when an earnest, entry-level social media aggregator can probably get just as many clicks? Opinions from the world’s greatest minds are free on Twitter 24/7.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Pareene / Gawker:
Trump retweeted a Gawker bot that tweeted Mussolini quotes and attributed them to Trump — How We Fooled Donald Trump Into Retweeting Benito Mussolini — Is Donald Trump a fascist? Experts, historians, and pundits have debated the question for months. One thing has been certain for a while now: He tweets like one.
How We Fooled Donald Trump Into Retweeting Benito Mussolini
http://gawker.com/how-we-fooled-donald-trump-into-retweeting-benito-musso-1761795039
Is Donald Trump a fascist? Experts, historians, and pundits have debated the question for months. One thing has been certain for a while now: He tweets like one. That’s why, last year, Gawker’s Ashley Feinberg created a Twitter bot that would post quotes from the writings and speeches of the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, but with all of them attributed to businessman and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. This morning, he retweeted that account.
Our Fascist bot was anything but subtle. It was, after all, directly named after Mussolini. The New York Times today swiftly recognized that it was a parody account.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg Business:
China shuts down Weibo and Tencent accounts of celebrity Ren Zhiqiang, with 37M+ followers, after he criticized campaign to tighten media control — Chinese Tycoon Loses 37 Million Web Followers After Faulting Xi — Internet regulator closes Ren Zhiqiang’s social media accounts
Chinese Tycoon Loses 37 Million Followers After Faulting Xi
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-28/chinese-tycoon-loses-37-million-web-followers-after-faulting-xi
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Trump Hacked This Election in 4 (Far Too Easy) Steps
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/trump-hacked-election-4-far-easy-steps/
I’m no mind-reader. But if I were to guess the top question running through many peoples’ minds when it comes to Donald Trump’s success thus far, it’d be something like, “What the hell is going on?”
Or, “Is this real life?”
Trump has dismantled the traditional rules that dictate how candidates are supposed to act and what they’re supposed to say.
Rule 1: CNN and MSNBC are more powerful than any Super PAC.
Rule 2: If you don’t have something nice to say, SAY IT REALLY LOUDLY.
Rule 3: There’s no need to talk policy when you’ve only got 140 characters.
Rule 4: Embrace your race…and your riches.
Trump, by contrast, proudly admits his father gave him a “small loan” of $1 million which he turned into (depending on when you ask) $10 billion.
Like all great hackers, he is unapologetically braggadocious about his accomplishments, making him an aspirational if never quite relatable figure among his followers. Now, the bombastic billionaire is angling for the biggest target of all: The White House.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
The Associated Press debuts Election Buzz, an online dashboard that uses Twitter, Google data to track the conversation and searches concerning US elections
The AP debuts “Election Buzz,” a tool that uses Twitter and Google data to track the U.S. elections
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/01/the-ap-debuts-election-buzz-a-tool-that-uses-twitter-and-google-data-to-track-the-u-s-elections/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adblockers are “akin to a modern day protection racket,” says UK culture minister
Ad blocking poses “similar threat” to online media as piracy, and gov’t may intervene.
http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2016/03/adblockers-are-akin-to-a-modern-day-protection-racket-says-uk-culture-minister/
Ad blocking poses a “similar threat” to today’s online media as illegal file-sharing or pirate sites did to the music and film industry 10 years ago, the UK’s culture secretary John Whittingdale warned on Wednesday.
He also said that many see the practice by adblocking companies of offering to white list advertisers as “akin to a modern day protection racket.” Whittingdale was speaking at the Oxford Media Convention, where he delivered the opening keynote.
He pointed out that “in the 12 months to June last year, there was a 48 percent growth in ad-blocker use in the USA and 82 percent growth in the UK,” and that mobile phone manufacturers and network companies are starting to integrate ad blockers into their services as standard. Ars has reported how the mobile carrier Three has already done so, with others considering whether to follow suit. A further sign of the times is that one new browser, Brave, places adblocking at the heart of its business model.
Whittingdale went on: “I am not suggesting that we should ban ad-blockers but I do share the concern about their impact. And I plan to host a round table with representatives from all sides of the argument to discuss this in the coming weeks.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
Facebook tests letting publishers like The New York Times and Washington Post collect email newsletter signups in Instant Articles
Facebook is letting publishers use Instant Articles to collect email newsletter signups
http://digiday.com/publishers/facebook-instant-articles-email/
Tim Peterson / Marketing Land:
Sources: Facebook to announce it will open Messenger to publishers for content distribution at its F8 conference in April — Facebook Plans To Open Messenger To Publishers At F8 In April — Facebook will officially let publishers distribute content through Messenger and will announce …
Facebook Plans To Open Messenger To Publishers At F8 In April
Facebook will officially let publishers distribute content through Messenger and will announce the news at its annual developer conference in April.
http://marketingland.com/facebook-plans-to-open-messenger-to-publishers-at-f8-167196
Tomi Engdahl says:
Instagram starts blocking ‘add me’ deeplinking for Snapchat, Telegram
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/03/instagram-starts-blocking-deeplinking-to-other-social-media-profiles/
Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram is flexing its platform muscle by shutting down ‘add me’ deeplinking for some other social media services within its apps.
Previously Instagram users were able to include ‘add me’/’follow me’ links in a website section on their profile page, directly linking out to any other profiles they had on third party social services’ apps. Now attempting to type one of these links to a Snapchat or Telegram profile, within the Instagram app’s website field on a user’s profile, results in the following message…
Tomi Engdahl says:
French President’s Epic Periscope Fail Leads to Massive Live Trolling
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/french-president-s-epic-periscope-fail-leads-massive-live-trolling-n530882
French President François Hollande and his media team learned the hard way that it pays to completely master modern technology before broadcasting a live event.
During a public relations trip to an online fashion company in the Paris suburbs, Hollande’s media team broadcast the event in real time on the streaming app Periscope. However, his staffers failed to disable the app’s live comments option, which prominently displays viewers’ comments across the screen. Thousands of French viewers seized the opportunity to post their unadulterated opinions on Hollande as the real-time broadcast unfolded.
French President François Hollande and his media team learned the hard way that it pays to completely master modern technology before broadcasting a live event.
During a public relations trip to an online fashion company in the Paris suburbs, Hollande’s media team broadcast the event in real time on the streaming app Periscope. However, his staffers failed to disable the app’s live comments option, which prominently displays viewers’ comments across the screen. Thousands of French viewers seized the opportunity to post their unadulterated opinions on Hollande as the real-time broadcast unfolded.
Insults and ridicule filled the screen immediately, mocking everything from the president’s socks to his sex life. Many users gleefully pointed out how incompetent his staffers were for not disabling the commenting feed. Others generally derided the president and his policies.
The session was eventually terminated after 30 minutes, but the damage was already done. Le Nouvel Observateur called the incident “a catastrophe” for the president, and public relations experts said it “undermined the dignity of France’s presidential office.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Medium plans publisher monetization within a month, considers paywalls and premium content
http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/03/medium-plans-publisher-monetization-within-a-month-considers-paywalls-and-premium-content/
Popular long-form blogging platform Medium has given the biggest hint yet as to how and when it will let publishers monetize their content.
Medium founder Evan Williams — who also cofounded Twitter — told the BBC, “We’re building monetization into the product right now,” adding that some of these features should be out by the end of this quarter, which basically means within a month or so.
In terms of what such monetization features will look like, well, Williams was quick to stress that it won’t be messy banner ads; it will more likely be sponsored content — similar to the way online publishers such as BuzzFeed make money. While that in itself won’t be revolutionary (or even that surprising), Williams added that there could be some sort of paid model that gives users access to additional content.
“I think there are ways to [run ads] that are respectful to the user experience and privacy,” continued Williams. “We’re not limiting ourselves to advertising. I also think there’s a lot of potential for premium or subscription or even user-paid content, some sort of paywall or membership.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yaqiu Wang / Committee to Protect Journalists:
Anonymous former Weibo censor discusses off limit topics, sensitive words, and methodology
Read and delete: How Weibo’s censors tackle dissent and free speech
https://cpj.org/blog/2016/03/read-and-delete-how-weibos-censors-tackle-dissent-.php
The Chinese microblogging site Weibo has a huge following, with around 100 million users posting every day. For those living in China, one of CPJ’s 10 most censored countries, the social network offers the chance to discuss and share news that is often blocked in mainstream outlets.
Insight into how Weibo balances the demands of government censorship with the need to attract users has been provided by a former employee, who says he worked in its 150-member censorship department for a couple of years.
The core of Weibo censorship is the lack of clear rules that users can follow. You don’t know whether you will be the next target of censorship. Such tactics instill fear in you, then you start to behave yourself.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kwame Opam / The Verge:
How Michelle Obama uses Vine, Instagram, Facebook, Periscope, and other social platforms to reach young people
@MichelleObama
An exclusive look at how the First Lady mastered social media
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/14/11179572/first-lady-michelle-obama-vr-interview-social-media-pictures
And then Michelle Obama joined the party. That October, Mrs. Obama held a Vine Q&A for her Let’s Move! initiative, calling on kids and their families to send in video questions about healthy eating, cooking, and gardening. Over the course of five days, she answered a series of family-friendly queries ranging from “What’s your favorite fall vegetable?” (sweet potato) to “What’s your favorite food memory?” (getting pizza as a reward for good grades). It was cute, but not especially memorable.
Simple and self-consciously silly, the Vine racked up more than six million views in a single day. The headlines were effusive: “Michelle Obama Makes Best Vine Ever for ‘Turnip For What’” wrote Jezebel. “Best Vine Ever” cried Us Weekly.
“[Social media] bypasses the middle man,” Mrs. Obama says. “People can get to know me directly. They can see that I’m kind of silly sometimes, that I care. They can feel the passion, [and] they don’t have to have it filtered through another source. And young people in particular like that.”
But social media is a double-edged sword: one tone-deaf tweet, poorly-timed Vine, or thoughtless Facebook post can spell embarrassment. That’s unlikely with the in-house social media task force Mrs. Obama has built: a close-knit collection of strategists, initiative directors, and managers who work to craft a digital portrait of a First Lady at once cool, caring, and in touch. A First Lady who can turn up with a turnip and make the country swoon, but still advance serious initiatives.
“This generation, they’re looking for authenticity, they’re looking for what feels real and natural,” Mrs. Obama went on. “We know we have to meet young people where they are — they’re not watching the nightly news, they’re not watching the Sunday morning shows, they’re not reading the newspapers. They’re on their phones.”
The shift to digital communication has been a boon for an office with a limited budget: Mrs. Obama’s team can now reach millions of young people at almost no cost and sidestep time-intensive bureaucracy. “We have to be very entrepreneurial, find opportunities and amplify them with surprisingly limited resources,” observes Adler. “It’s a lot like a startup.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mike Ananny / Nieman Lab:
Next NYT public editor should expert in boundaries of journalism, politics of platforms, ethics of algorithms — It’s time to reimagine the role of a public editor, starting at The New York Times — The public editor is meant to mediate between newsrooms and
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/03/mike-ananny-its-time-to-reimagine-the-role-of-a-public-editor-starting-at-the-new-york-times/
Mike Ananny: It’s time to reimagine the role of a public editor, starting at The New York Times
“To hold future journalism accountable (not simply to describe its dynamics to interested readers), public editors must speak a new language of platform ethics that is part professional journalism, part technology design, all public values.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dune Lawrence / Bloomberg Business:
How a businessman now indicted for securities fraud trolled a Bloomberg journalist for years via email, Twitter, and a legitimate looking blog, TheBlot
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-benjamin-wey/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jasper Jackson / Guardian:
With switch to digital, Independent journalists being asked to take pay cuts of up to 50%; more than 100 journalists expected to lose their jobs — Independent staff to take huge pay cuts in move online-only — More than 100 journalists out of a total of 160 expected to lose their jobs …
Independent staff to take huge pay cuts in online-only move
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/22/independent-staff-pay-cuts-online-nuj
More than 100 journalists out of total of 160 expected to lose jobs as NUJ accuses management of making switch ‘on the cheap’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jeremy Barr / Ad Age:
Q&A with Ev Williams on Medium’s evolution, monetization efforts, Matter’s spinoff as an independent studio, and Backchannel’s future — How Can Marketers and Publishers Best Use Medium? Ev Williams Shares His Vision — Ahead of Ad Age’s Digital Conference, Co-Founder/CEO Talks …
How Can Marketers and Publishers Best Use Medium? Ev Williams Shares His Vision
http://adage.com/article/media/ev-williams-talks-medium-s-future-matter-studios/303254/
Ahead of Ad Age’s Digital Conference, Co-Founder/CEO Talks About Medium’s Future and the Spinoff of Matter Studios
Tomi Engdahl says:
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
As shift to algorithmic feed looms, brands and bloggers on Instagram try to get you to turn on notifications by posting reminders — Instagrammers really want you to turn on notifications to avoid death by algorithm — Instagram today is an endless sea of meaningless posts asking you to turn …
Instagrammers really want you to turn on notifications to avoid death by algorithm
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/instagrammers-really-want-you-to-turn-on-notifications-to-avoid-death-by-algorithm/
Instagram today is an endless sea of meaningless posts asking you to turn on post notifications for each account you follow. Brands and professional Instagrammers are worried that they are going to disappear from your Instagram feed once the company turns on its algorithmic feed.
We’ve been here before. When Vine or YouTube switched to an algorithmic feed, brands, YouTubers and Viners all wanted you to switch on notifications. The same happened when Facebook became more selective with Pages posts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why ISIS Is Winning the Social Media War
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/isis-winning-social-media-war-heres-beat/
Cultivate the Brand
Today the Islamic State is as much a media conglomerate as a fighting force.
According to Documenting the Virtual Caliphate, an October 2015 report by the Quilliam Foundation, the organization releases, on average, 38 new items per day—20-minute videos, full-length documentaries, photo essays, audio clips, and pamphlets, in languages ranging from Russian to Bengali. The group’s closest peers are not just other terrorist organizations, then, but also the Western brands, marketing firms, and publishing outfits—from PepsiCo to BuzzFeed—who ply the Internet with memes and messages in the hopes of connecting with customers. And like those ventures, the Islamic State hews to a few tried-and-true techniques for boosting user engagement.
Among these is the group’s use of narrowcasting—creating varied content that caters to niche audiences. (Think of those BuzzFeed listicles aimed at groups like Army brats or Florida natives.) Only a fraction of the Islamic State’s online output depicts the kind of sadism for which the group is notorious: Far more common are portrayals of public-works projects, economic development, and military triumphs, frequently aimed at specific Muslim enclaves throughout the world. This content is meant to convince prospective recruits of the veracity of the organization’s core narrative: that its empire is both stable and inexorably growing.
But the most significant way in which the Islamic State has exhibited its media savviness has been through its embrace of openness. Unlike al Qaeda, which has generally been methodical about organizing and controlling its terror cells, the more opportunistic Islamic State is content to crowdsource its social media activity—and its violence—out to individuals with whom it has no concrete ties.
This has allowed the Islamic State to rouse followers that al Qaeda never was able to reach. Its brand has become so ubiquitous, in fact, that it has transformed into something akin to an open source operating system for the desperate and deluded—a vague ideological platform upon which people can construct elaborate personal narratives of persecution or rage.
GoPro cameras have been affixed to AK-47s and sniper rifles, resulting in first-person scenes that seem plucked from Call of Duty.
The Anatomy of the IS Propaganda Machine
The Islamic State grabs headlines with execution videos, but those gruesome clips make up only a small percentage of the organization’s total media output. —Brendan I. Koerner
The Islamic State is a cult that desperately wants Western nations to turn on themselves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mathew Ingram / Fortune:
Obama calls for better journalism but has contributed to problems with jail threats, subpoenas, stonewalling of FOIA, and end runs around traditional media
Obama Criticizes the Media, but His Administration Is Part of the Problem
http://fortune.com/2016/03/29/obama-media/
The president calls for journalists to dig deeper, but his government’s track record is not good.
It’s hard to imagine a politician loving the news media unconditionally, so it’s probably not surprising that President Barack Obama had some critical comments to make about the press in a speech on Monday night. But the commander-in-chief’s remarks were particularly difficult to take for some, given the way his administration has treated the media.
The president calls for journalists to dig deeper, but his government’s track record is not good.
It’s hard to imagine a politician loving the news media unconditionally, so it’s probably not surprising that President Barack Obama had some critical comments to make about the press in a speech on Monday night. But the commander-in-chief’s remarks were particularly difficult to take for some, given the way his administration has treated the media.
The President was speaking at a dinner held in Washington to honor the winner of the Toner Prize, an award for political reporting named after Robin Toner, a New York Times correspondent who died in 2008.
In what appeared to be a reference to the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Obama said, “A job well done is about more than just handing someone a microphone. It is to probe and to question, and to dig deeper, and to demand more. The electorate would be better served if that happened. It would be better served if billions of dollars in free media came with serious accountability.”
The “free media” comment seemed to be a direct reference to a recent estimate by the New York Times that suggested Donald Trump has gotten the equivalent of almost $2 billion in media coverage since his campaign began. So perhaps the President agrees with those who argue that the news media has helped create the phenomenon that is Donald Trump.
The President went on to praise the “deep reporting, the informed questioning, the in-depth stories” that the Toner Prize celebrates, which he said “lasts longer than some slapdash Tweet that slips off our screens in the blink of an eye, that may get more hits today, but won’t stand up to the test of time.”
Many journalists would probably agree with Obama’s remarks about digging deeper and demanding more as well as focusing on long-lasting journalism as opposed to dashing off tweets. But when reporters have tried to do this with the White House and the rest of the Obama administration, they have been stymied at every turn, and in some cases, they have even been threatened with prosecution.
It’s not just FOIA requests. The Obama government has also gone after journalists for doing their jobs
In his speech this week, the President also criticized the splintering or Balkanization of the media, in which news consumers stick to channels or sources that cater to their existing prejudices, whether it’s Fox News, YouTube, or Reddit. Yet, as the Washington Post pointed out in a response to the speech, Obama has also been part of this problem.
The administration likes to talk about how open and transparent it has been with the media, and yet much of Obama’s dealings with the press have focused on specific digital outlets such as Reddit and YouTube with events on these channels being criticized as lightweight, rather than in-depth interviews with the traditional media.
Kevin Liptak / CNN:
At Robin Toner prize awards dinner, President Obama urges journalists to hold election candidates to account, notes the negative impact of the web on journalism
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/28/politics/obama-media-politics/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Reporters Pulled Off the Panama Papers, the Biggest Leak in Whistleblower History
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/reporters-pulled-off-panama-papers-biggest-leak-whistleblower-history/
When Daniel Ellsberg photocopied and leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971, those 7,000 pages of top secret Vietnam War documents represented what was then the biggest whistleblower leak in history—a couple dozen megabytes if it were contained in a modern text file. Almost four decades later, WikiLeaks in 2010 published Cablegate, a world-shaking, 1.73 gigabyte collection of classified State Department communications that was almost a hundred times bigger.
If there’s some Moore’s Law of Leaks, however, it seems to be exponential. Just five years have passed since WikiLeaks’ Cablegate coup, and now the world is grappling with a whistleblower megaleak on a scale never seen before: 2.6 terabytes, well over a thousandfold larger.
On Sunday, more than a hundred media outlets around the world, coordinated by the Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, released stories on the Panama Papers, a gargantuan collection of leaked documents exposing a widespread system of global tax evasion. The leak includes more than 4.8 million emails, 3 million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that, according to analysis of the leaked documents, appears to specialize in creating shell companies that its clients have used to hide their assets.
“This is pretty much every document from this firm over a 40-year period,”
The source warned that his or her ‘life is in danger,’ was only willing to communicate via encrypted channels, and refused to meet in person.
Neither the ICIJ nor any of the reporters it’s worked with have made the leaked data public. But the scandal resulting from their reporting has already touched celebrities, athletes, business executives and world leaders.
Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson is facing demands from the previous Icelandic prime minister that he resign
But beyond those revelations—and there will likely be more as the reporting around the Panama Papers continues—the leak represents an unprecedented story in itself: How an anonymous whistleblower was able to spirit out and surreptitiously send journalists a gargantuan collection of files, which were then analyzed by more than 400 reporters in secret over more than a year before a coordinated effort to go public.
The Panama Papers leak began, according to ICIJ director Ryle, in late 2014, when an unknown source reached out to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, which had reported previously on a smaller leak of Mossack Fonseca files to German government regulators.
“How much data are we talking about?” Obermayer asked.
“More than you have ever seen,” the source responded, according to Obermayer.
Obermayer tells WIRED he communicated with his source over a series of encrypted channels that they frequently changed, each time deleting all history from their prior exchange. He alludes to crypto apps like Signal and Threema, as well as PGP-encrypted email but declines to say specifically which methods they used.
After seeing a portion of the documents, Suddeutsche Zeitung contacted the ICIJ
Meanwhile, the shipments of leaked data continued piecemeal. “Over time we got more and more until we had all 11.5 million documents,” Ryle says.
“I learned a lot about making the safe transfer of big files,”
We’re not WikiLeaks. We’re trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly. ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle
The ICIJ’s developers then built a two-factor-authentication-protected search engine for the leaked documents, the URL for which they shared via encrypted email with scores of news outlets
The site even featured a real-time chat system, so that reporters could exchange tips and find translation for documents
You could see who was awake and working and communicate openly. We encouraged everyone to tell everyone what they were doing
Remarkably, despite all that broad access and openness, the full leaked database has yet to leak to the public—perhaps in part because it’s so large and unwieldy.
Ryle says that the media organizations have no plans to release the full dataset, WikiLeaks-style, which he argues would expose the sensitive information of innocent private individuals along with the public figures on which the group’s reporting has focused.
The leaks are bound to cause ripples around the world—not least of all for Mossack Fonseca itself.
Mossack Fonseca and its customers won’t be the last to face an embarrassing or even incriminating megaleak. Encryption and anonymity tools like Tor have only become more widespread and easy to use, making it safer in some ways than ever before for sources to reach out to journalists across the globe. Data is more easily transferred—and with tools like Onionshare, more easily securely transferred—than ever before.
The new era of megaleaks is already underway: The Panama Papers represent the fourth tax haven leak coordinated by the ICIJ since just 2013.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Medium / The Story:
Medium launches Medium for Publishers, a suite of branding and customization tools, over a dozen websites migrate over, including The Awl — Making Medium More Powerful for Publishers — At Medium, we’re building out a new corner of the Internet specifically designed for people and publishers
Making Medium More Powerful for Publishers
https://medium.com/the-story/making-medium-more-powerful-for-publishers-39663413a904#.np4mhi9pr
At Medium, we’re building out a new corner of the Internet specifically designed for people and publishers who want to experience a deeper level of discourse and engagement. Much of the content we love comes from great publications, all of which have different needs. Today we are announcing a new bundle of features: Medium for Publishers, designed to give more tools and horsepower to publishers and bloggers across the web. We want to make it even easier for publications to do what they do best.
Right now on the web, publishers are forced to spend time and money maintaining their aging content management systems. Expensive redesigns inevitably fail to keep up with the rapid pace of technological innovation. On Medium, publishers have full control over their content and spend exactly zero time, money, or effort on tech and hosting, instead focusing their resources on producing great content and reaching new audiences.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fidji Simo / Facebook:
Facebook overhauls Live Video with support for groups and events, reactions, comments, filters, and a global map — Introducing New Ways to Create, Share and Discover Live Video on Facebook — With Facebook Live you can use your phone to share a moment instantly with the people you care about.
Introducing New Ways to Create, Share and Discover Live Video on Facebook
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/04/introducing-new-ways-to-create-share-and-discover-live-video-on-facebook/
With Facebook Live you can use your phone to share a moment instantly with the people you care about. This means your friends, family or fans can be there with you, and you can respond to their comments and see their reactions.
Since launching Facebook Live last summer to public figures via our Mentions app and more recently to everyone in the US using our iOS and Android apps we’ve been surprised and delighted with how people are using live video to connect and interact with each other all over the world.
Live for Groups and Events
“Going live” on Facebook feels special because you are going live with the people you care about. Today we’re rolling out the ability to go live in Facebook Groups and Facebook Events. Live in Groups allows you to broadcast to just the people in the Facebook Group – so you can go live in your family group, or share a workout plan in a fitness group.
Kurt Wagner / Re/code:
Facebook confirms it is paying media companies to use Live Video, sources say New York Times, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, among those getting paid — It’s Not Just Celebrities — Facebook Is Paying Media Companies to Make Live Video, Too — Facebook wants big media companies like BuzzFeed …
It’s Not Just Celebrities — Facebook Is Paying Media Companies to Make Live Video, Too
http://recode.net/2016/04/06/facebook-paying-media-partners-like-buzzfeed-to-livestream/
Facebook wants big media companies like BuzzFeed and the New York Times to use its new livestreaming video service. So it’s paying them to do it.
In recent weeks Facebook has been pushing influential media properties and celebrities to use its Facebook Live product, which makes it easy to stream live video from your phone. Facebook has a lot of rewards for people who do what Facebook likes, and one of them is cash.
“We’re working with a few partners, and in some of the cases that includes a financial incentive,” Fidji Simo, the product director in charge of Facebook’s Live video push, told Re/code.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thomas Fox-Brewster / Forbes:
A look at the software and methods used to distribute 11M documents, totaling 2.6TB, of the Panama Papers to 100+ publications and about 400 journalists — From Encrypted Drives To Amazon’s Cloud — The Amazing Flight Of The Panama Papers — It was an epic haul.
From Encrypted Drives To Amazon’s Cloud — The Amazing Flight Of The Panama Papers
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/04/05/panama-papers-amazon-encryption-epic-leak/#79d086091df5
It was an epic haul. Whoever caused the Panama Papers breach at tax avoidance and offshore company specialist Mossack Fonseca leaked an astonishing 11 million documents and 2.6 terabytes of data, the largest of all time. Previous mega-leaks were in the gigabyte territory – Wikileaks Cablegate at 1.7GB, Ashley Madison 30GB, Sony Pictures an estimated 230GB.
The logistics of the journalistic operation behind the Panama Papers were equally astounding, a year of exchanging information over bespoke open source software between more than 100 publications, from the Guardian to the BBC, and 400 journalists. All Mossack Fonseca’s emails, files and images had to be stored on encrypted drives then moved to the cloud securely to keep the story from spilling ahead of time or to uninvited parties, whilst remaining usable for both technical and non-technical journalists.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Struggles to Stop Decline in ‘Original’ Sharing
https://www.theinformation.com/facebook-struggles-to-stop-decline-in-original-sharing
Less than a year ago, leaders at Facebook convened to address a serious problem: people using the social network were posting fewer things about their personal lives for their friends to see, according to confidential company data about several types of content sharing that happen on Facebook, which was viewed by The Information.
Thus began an effort to deal with this long-term threat to Facebook’s primary moneymaker, the News Feed. Facebook set up a team in London to help develop a strategy to stop the double-digit decline in “original” sharing that happens on Facebook, according to four people with knowledge of the situation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Personal sharing shifts from Facebook to more intimate audiences on Snapchat and Instagram
Facebook Wants You to Post More About Yourself
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook-said-to-face-decline-in-people-posting-personal-content
Staff said to call lack of intimate sharing `context collapse’
Facebook tries prompting more personal types of posting
Facebook Inc. is working to combat a decline in people sharing original, personal content, the fuel that helps power the money machine at the heart of its social network, according to people familiar with the matter.
Overall sharing has remained “strong,” according to Facebook. However, people have been less willing to post updates about their lives as their lists of friends grow, the people said.
Instead, Facebook’s 1.6 billion users are posting more news and information from other websites. As Facebook ages, users may have more than a decade’s worth of acquaintances added as friends. People may not always feel comfortable checking into a local bar or sharing an anecdote from their lives, knowing these updates may not be relevant to all their connections.
According to one of the people familiar with the situation, Facebook employees working on the problem have a term for this decline in intimacy: “context collapse.” Personal sharing has shifted to smaller audiences on Snapchat, Facebook’s Instagram and other messaging services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This is the scariest sentence you will ever read about the internet
http://fusion.net/story/287086/this-is-the-scariest-sentence-you-will-ever-read-about-the-internet/
For those of us who care about democracy and the importance of a healthy political discourse, a story published by Bloomberg this week, “How to Hack an Election,” was incredibly distressing.
In it, Colombian hacker Andrés Sepúlveda comes clean about eight years he spent allegedly using dark, and often illegal, computer skills to help conservative candidates throughout Latin America; some won and a few lost. He describes exploits in major elections in Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico.
In his most noteworthy alleged victory, he claims to have assisted the increasingly unpopular Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto win his 2012 election. Sepúlveda claims that he was given a budget of $600,000 to rig the election in favor of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate. He says he installed malware in his opponents’ routers, which let him tap their phones and computers; sent prerecorded messages to tens of thousands of people in a critical swing state at 3 a.m. on election night, purporting to support another candidate to anger voters; and set up fake Facebook accounts of gay men who purported to support a conservative Catholic candidate, angering many. Bloomberg says that it has verified some of what Sepúlveda claims to have done, but there is no way of verifying it all.
This was, according to the report, the tactic that likely had the most impact. It’s a technique that academics call “cognitive hacking”—in which an attacker attempts to change people’s perception of reality.
“When I realized that people believe what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to make people believe almost anything.”
- Andrés Sepúlveda, Colombian hacker
What’s notable about this tactic is that it’s not even illegal, only against Twitter policy.
he’s telling the story from behind bars
Going back to at least 2010, the use of Twitter bot armies have been decried for their ability to influence the outcome of elections in the U.S..
In the latest Pew Research Center survey, 14% of all people polled said they primarily get news about the 2016 presidential election from social media, a tie with local television. Cable television leads the pack, with 24% of all surveyed. But among 18- to 29-year-olds, social media is the top source, with 35% of them saying it’s their primary news source. That makes young people much more susceptible to this kind of manipulation.
How to Hack an Election
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-hack-an-election/
Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji
http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/
To your smartphone, an emoji is just like any other character (e.g., lower-case ‘a’, upper-case ‘B’) and needs to be rendered with a font. Since each smartphone platform (e.g., Apple, Google) has its own emoji font, the same emoji character can look quite different on different smartphone platforms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nieman Lab:
Reuters Institute report: TV news must experiment and innovate to confront challenges of digital disruption
Digital disruption is coming quickly to TV news; how can broadcasters adapt and respond?
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/04/digital-disruption-is-coming-quickly-to-tv-news-how-can-broadcasters-adapt-and-respond/
“The question should not be what will replace traditional television news. Nothing will. The question has to be: How can we move beyond television news as we know it?”
Television was supposed to be different, more resilient to digital disruption than print. For a long time, it was. It no longer is. Television today faces the full gales of creative destruction and digital disruption on a scale similar to what other media industries have faced. It is still an important medium, and will be so for years to come, but television will not remain the dominant force it was in the second half of the 20th century.
Viewing in countries like the U.S. and the U.K. has declined by three to four percent per year on average since 2012. These declines are directly comparable to the declines in print newspaper circulation in the 2000s. If compounded over 10 years, the result is a decline in viewing of a quarter or more. The average audience of many television news programs is by now older than the average audience of many print newspapers. The decline in viewing among younger people is far more pronounced, both for television viewing in general and for television news specifically.
Meanwhile, we see a rapid rise in online video viewing driven by video-sharing sites, video-on-demand services, and the integration of video into social media sites. The move to a “post-broadcast democracy” heralded by the rise of cable and satellite multichannel television in the 1990s and 2000s now point towards a “post-television democracy” as digital media are on track to overtake television as the most important sources of news.
The implications for journalism are potentially profound. Even as newspapers waned and digital media waxed in the 1990s and early 2000s, television remained the single most important and most widely used platform for news in many countries, and both private and public television news providers invested serious money in journalism serving international, national, and local audiences. Both the reach and the revenue will decline in the years ahead.
As television overall changes, television journalism too will have to change..
Because the environment is changing so rapidly right now, and because no clear set of best practices has been developed, the most important thing television news providers need to do to be in a position to respond effectively is to ensure that their organizations are capable of constant adaptation and change. Standard workflows and organizational forms can be very efficient, but they are rarely good at experimentation.
These approaches to experimentation, exploration, and innovation can help television journalists and television news providers confront the challenges television news face after more than half a century of pretty much uninterrupted dominance — how to reinvent its core social and political mission in a new environment, and how to find ways of resourcing it. The question should not be what will replace traditional television news. Nothing will. The question has to be: How can we move beyond television news as we know it?
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Geraci / Harvard Business Review:
Inside The New York Times’ struggle to innovate: products were repositioned, executing innovation and entrepreneurship didn’t work in corporate atmosphere — What I Learned from Trying to Innovate at the New York Times — When I worked at the New York Times, from 2013 to 2015 …
What I Learned from Trying to Innovate at the New York Times
https://hbr.org/2016/04/what-i-learned-from-trying-to-innovate-at-the-new-york-times
When I worked at the New York Times, from 2013 to 2015, my job was to lead a team in the creation, launch, and development of a new, revenue-driving product that would help restore growth to the company’s bottom line — which, like the bottom lines of all newspapers around the world, has been endangered by wave after wave of new technology.
During those two years, I got to see and be part of a great, mission-driven company’s effort to grapple with moving into the 21st century, trying — for the first time in its existence, really — to be innovative and find new paths to growth. As someone who had spent most of his career working in and cofounding startups, it was big, heady stuff.
It was also a resounding failure. By the end of my two years there, two of the three products the company had launched to drive new revenue had been repositioned as free offerings intended to drive engagement, and the third had been shut down entirely; there were no meaningful plans for new products underway.
But the exercise wasn’t a complete failure. Those three products fit into a bigger story: how one company was trying, desperately, to discover the ingredients it needed to become truly innovative.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Sterne / Politico:
Publishing startup Slant News, which paid writers 70% of ad revenue generated by their posts, is shutting down; funder Mobli pulled out — Publishing start-up Slant News shuts down — Online publishing start-up Slant News is shutting down, sources confirm to
Publishing start-up Slant News shuts down
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2016/04/8596136/publishing-start-slant-news-shuts-down
The publishing platform, founded in February last year, paid freelance writers 70 percent of the advertising revenue generated by the articles that they wrote for the site.
“I’m sad to say that Mobli, the company that has been funding Slant since its beginning, has decided to stop funding it – as can happen with startups. These are unpredictable and unfortunate circumstances, but most importantly, not reflective of the success Slant has truly been,” Gutterman said in a statement.
Mobli, the company that has been funding Slant since its beginning, has decided to stop funding it
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab:
Facebook announcements important to publishers included a bot platform for Messenger, with a CNN demo, a Save to Facebook button, and quote sharing for apps
Here are the important announcements for publishers at Facebook’s F8 keynote
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/04/here-are-the-important-announcements-for-publishers-at-facebooks-f8-keynote/
A big step forward for news bots, new sharing tools, and Facebook Live goes pro.
— A bot platform for Facebook Messenger. As predicted, Zuckerberg announced a developer platform that lets companies (including news companies) create bots that interact with Messenger users. One of the two sample bots he showed off was from CNN — a news digest with a carousel of stories, each of which you can choose to interact with (“Read story,” “Get a summary,” and “Ask CNN” are the three options shown — it’s unclear what Ask CNN leads to). Zuckerberg also noted that the app will learn from your actions and personalize its content mix over time.
It’s the next step down the long road of distributed content, for better or worse. In case you’re doubting the scale of the opportunity (or this shift), Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp now process 60 billion messages a day, three times more than SMS did at its peak.
A wave of distributed content is coming — will publishers sink or swim?
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/03/a-wave-of-distributed-content-is-coming-will-publishers-sink-or-swim/
Instead of just publishing to their own websites, news organizations are being asked to publish directly to platforms they don’t control. Is the hunt for readers enough to justify losing some independence?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Facebook launches “share quote” feature for web publishers and integration into Kindle
You can now share quoted text directly to Facebook
No more screenshorts
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/12/11411330/facebook-quote-sharing-button-f8-conference-2016
Every social network eventually becomes home to screenshots: important nuggets of textual wisdom that, for whatever reason, are more convenient to capture as an image than they are to transcribe and post elsewhere. The practice is particularly popular on Twitter, where BuzzFeed’s Mat Honan christened them “screenshorts” — a way of highlighting text that gets around Twitter’s 140-character limit. Facebook is much more generous on that front — you can post updates of more than 60,000 characters there — but the company still sees plenty of screenshots anyway. Today it’s introducing quote sharing, a feature developers can use to enable native sharing of quotes from their apps onto Facebook itself.
Facebook is launching quote sharing with Amazon, which built quote sharing into its Kindle e-reader. Now instead of copying and pasting text from Kindle into Facebook, you can simply highlight it and share it to Facebook. Facebook will paste the text into a new post in block quote format, and include a full preview of the original URL. It’s similar to a feature that Medium introduced last year for sharing highlights on Twitter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook’s buried Save feature has 250 million users a month, and a new button to help it spread
A new DVR for the web
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/12/11411312/save-to-facebook-button-announced-f8-conference-2016
It’s been almost four years since Facebook introduced “save for later,” a way for storing articles, videos, and other things you find in the service in a dedicated part of the app. But your list of saved items has never had a prominent place in Facebook’s apps — to access it, you must first tap the dreaded “more” button, then scroll halfway down the list of options. And yet despite its relative obscurity, Facebook says 250 million people take advantage of the save feature every month — and the company has a new strategy to make that number grow.
Today at the F8 developer conference, Facebook is introducing a Save to Facebook button for the web. Publishers can now add the button to their standard article templates, and whenever a user taps the button, it will save the article or video directly to their Facebook queue. If that sounds a lot like Pocket and Instapaper, well, it is — it’s just baked into one of the most popular apps in the world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joseph Lichterman / Nieman Lab:
Twitter generates 1.5% of traffic for typical news organizations, 8 tweets per post, 3 clicks per tweet, says Parse.ly report that analyzed data from 200 sites
Twitter has outsized influence, but it doesn’t drive much traffic for most news orgs, a new report says
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/04/twitter-has-outsized-influence-but-it-doesnt-drive-much-traffic-for-most-news-orgs-a-new-report-says/
Twitter generates 1.5 percent of traffic for typical news organizations, according to a new report from the social analytics company Parse.ly that examined data from 200 of its client websites over two weeks in January.
Parse.ly’s network includes publishers like Upworthy, Slate, The Daily Beast, and Business Insider.
The median publisher saw roughly 8 tweets per post, 3 clicks per tweet, and 0.7 retweets for each original tweet, Parse.ly said. The top five percent of publishers performed better on Twitter, averaging 11 percent of their traffic from the network.
The key to success on Twitter — and social media in general — is to know what your audience “finds interesting and make sure that you are creating content that reflects this,”
There are two main types of posts on Twitter, Parse.ly says: conversational news and breaking news
“Typical content on Twitter tends to be conversational in nature, with thousands of people engaging with a particular topic for an extended period of time. Breaking news stories, on the other hand, often drive large spikes in traffic over shorter periods of time.”
Despite its conversational and breaking news value, Twitter remains a relatively small source of traffic for most publishers. According to Parse.ly, less than 5 percent of referrals in its network came from Twitter during January and February 2016.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jordan Valinsky / Digiday:
How the 20-strong Bloomberg Graphics team creates interactives using algorithms and low-tech manual persistence — How Bloomberg’s 20-person graphics team visualizes the news — Last month, Washington D.C.’s Metro system experienced an unprecedented situation: It was shutting …
How Bloomberg’s 20-person graphics team visualizes the news
http://digiday.com/publishers/bloomberg-graphics-team/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Politico:
Inside the European Commission’s efforts to create a digital single market and how the creative industry is pushing back
Copyright fight club
http://www.politico.eu/article/copyright-fight-club-eu-regulation-european-commission/
EU wants to change how millions watch Hollywood films and YouTube videos, but legacy media groups are pushing back hard.
“They want to read articles, watch movies and TV programs online wherever they are, whenever they want, on whichever device they happen to be using”
The biggest tech fight on the Continent this year doesn’t involve Google or Uber, though those are big. Nor is it the raging Transatlantic policy debates over net neutrality or the privacy shield so steeped in technocratese of little relevance to most people.
The biggest is the fight over copyright. A looming overhaul of the morass of laws and regulations across the EU will impact how millions of people consume images, words and music on their various devices.
It’s moving on various fronts, investigating contracts between Hollywood studios and TV stations while preparing new legislation that could change everything from watching movies and sports to publishing videos on YouTube. President Jean-Claude Juncker and his Commission pledged from the start to tear down regulatory walls and create a truer European single market.
If advocates of open Internet came with the stronger hand and enjoyed the support of the Juncker Commission, the lobbying countercharge from the so-called creative industry has succeeded at least in toning down Brussels’ ambitions. The old boys of media have won a few battles. They’ve not yet won the war.
“It’s still very hard to read what is happening exactly and what the plan is,”
Ansip, the former Estonian prime minister, is famously digitally savvy. An avid gadget user, he is rarely seen without his iPad. He came in openly determined to ensure European citizens should not face cross-border restrictions. In one speech, in April last year, Ansip described geo-blocking as a “clear example of a practice that should not exist in the 21st century.”
In the other camp was Günther Oettinger, the EU’s digital society and economy commissioner. The German didn’t even have a computer in his office when he took up the post. He had no experience in tech
Where Ansip was perceived as sympathetic to the technology platforms and open Internet advocates, Oettinger was seen as more aligned with the traditional media companies.
“Hollywood studios are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with independent producers, emphasizing the creative industry’s economic and cultural importance to the EU.”
“They put a lot of pressure on themselves with that extremely ambitious agenda [at the beginning of Juncker’s presidency], putting copyright as one of the main objectives,” one lobbyist said. “But unfortunately they’ve put so much pressure on themselves that I don’t really see how they could stop.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nicholas Lemann / New Yorker:
Sources: ICIJ didn’t ask NYT to collaborate on Panama Papers because NYT previously resisted ICIJ requirement to operate as a co-equal member of a large team — The Panama Papers and the Monster Stories of the Future — The movie “Spotlight,” which for many journalists provided a jolt …
The Panama Papers and the Monster Stories of the Future
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-panama-papers-and-the-monster-stories-of-the-future
A lifetime ago, the Watergate and Pentagon Papers stories, at least as told by journalists, went this way, and more recently the WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden stories, if you squinted, could look as if they did, too. There were renowned, heroic papers involved—the Guardian, the Times, the Washington Post—and their involvement seemed to be essential to the large effects of the revelations. What’s unusual about the monster story of the moment, the Panama Papers, at least in the United States, is that it lacks one lead actor, which usually has been an organization from the top rank of the journalism establishment. The coördinator of the coverage is the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nineteen-year-old subsidiary of a nonprofit news organization in Washington called the Center for Public Integrity. The I.C.I.J. has only eleven full-time employees. The heart of their work, in this and other cases, was not “doing the story” by themselves but organizing an international network that took on the project, with all the parties agreeing to abide by a single deadline and to share credit. There were a hundred and seven media partners, some large (the BBC), some tiny (Inkyfada, in Tunisia). The Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the big American broadcast networks are notably absent from the list.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chava Gourarie / Columbia Journalism Review:
Journalists should investigate and hold algorithms accountable in addition to reporting about them — Investigating the algorithms that govern our lives — On March 15, Instagram posted a note on its blog that sent the internet into a frenzy: “To improve your experience …
Investigating the algorithms that govern our lives
http://www.cjr.org/innovations/investigating_algorithms.php
On March 15, Instagram posted a note on its blog that sent the internet into a frenzy: “To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.” Panicked Instagram users protested, afraid their posts would get lost in the revised stream, and began posting pictures with the hashtag #turnmeon, pleading with followers to turn on notifications for their accounts. In response to the uproar, Instagram posted a tweet that amounted to, “Hey, calm down. We’re not changing the algorithm yet.”
At first glance, a tweak to the flow of narcissism and latte art is hardly a significant story. But there’s more at play here.
As online users, we’ve become accustomed to the giant, invisible hands of Google, Facebook, and Amazon feeding our screens. We’re surrounded by proprietary code like Twitter Trends, Google’s autocomplete, Netflix recommendations, and OKCupid matches. It’s how the internet churns. So when Instagram or Twitter, or the Silicon Valley titan of the moment, chooses to mess with what we consider our personal lives, we’re reminded where the power actually lies. And it rankles.
While internet users may be resigned to these algorithmic overlords, journalists can’t be. Algorithms have everything journalists are hardwired to question: They’re powerful, secret, and governing essential parts of society. Algorithms decide how fast Uber gets to you, whether you’re approved for a loan, whether a prisoner gets parole, who the police should monitor, and who the TSA should frisk.
They’re also anything but objective. “How can they be?” asks Mark Hansen, a statistician and the director of the Brown Institute at Columbia University. “They’re the products of human imagination.”
Algorithms are built to approximate the world in a way that accommodates the purposes of their architect, and “embed a series of assumptions about how the world works and how the world should work,” says Hansen.
It’s up to journalists to investigate those assumptions, and their consequences, especially where they intersect with policy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Verge:
The history of content moderation, the laws that govern internet speech, and how safety works online — The secret rules of the internet — Julie Mora-Blanco remembers the day, in the summer of 2006, when the reality of her new job sunk in. A recent grad of California State University …
The secret rules of the internet
The murky history of moderation, and how it’s shaping the future of free speech
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderator-history-youtube-facebook-reddit-censorship-free-speech
Mora-Blanco’s team — 10 people in total — was dubbed The SQUAD (Safety, Quality, and User Advocacy Department). They worked in teams of four to six, some doing day shifts and some night, reviewing videos around the clock. Their job? To protect YouTube’s fledgling brand by scrubbing the site of offensive or malicious content that had been flagged by users, or, as Mora-Blanco puts it, “to keep us from becoming a shock site.” The founders wanted YouTube to be something new, something better — “a place for everyone” — and not another eBaum’s World, which had already become a repository for explicit pornography and gratuitous violence.
On the table before them was a single piece of paper, folded in half to show a bullet-point list of instructions: Remove videos of animal abuse. Remove videos showing blood. Remove visible nudity. Remove pornography.
Videos arrived on their screens in a never-ending queue. After watching a couple seconds apiece, SQUAD members clicked one of four buttons that appeared in the upper right hand corner of their screens: “Approve” — let the video stand; “Racy” — mark video as 18-plus; “Reject” — remove video without penalty; “Strike” — remove video with a penalty to the account. Click, click, click. But that day Mora-Blanco came across something that stopped her in her tracks.
“Oh, God,” she said.