Overview: Media

Written for journalists, but good for brand journalism & gov comms, where content is usually unfailingly sunny or relentlessly bleak: "Studies show that stories which explore solutions to problems rather than just the problems themselves prompt audiences to engage with the news and share ... the media should also pay attention to the responses p…

Others have written on the return of the enewsletter, but I don't think anyone saw it as the home page: "Yes, the homepage is still dead, which is why our new front door is quite different from most. ... we are offering an efficient briefing on global business news, ... intended to be read straight through, like a well written memo from a trusted…

Not all shortform content is clickbait - Chartbeat thinks Circa shouldn't worry. "The depressing truth of the Internet is that short-form content hangs out on the same end of the distribution curve of the Internet as long form when it comes to attention. ... the majority of pageviews get fewer than 15 seconds of engagement. Facebook is looking …

"more publishers are trying to opt out of the pageview rat race.... The Financial Times will next month begin selling time by the hour for any ad ... The Economist Group is rolling out a new set of “dynamic attention metrics” to help advertisers buy time rather than impressions for their ads."... The rise of clickbait ... can be tracked back to …

"Danielle Jones and Miki King have been named executive vice president for expansion and executive vice president for operations, respectively. Jones, who has been with POLITICO since its first year and was most recently deputy editor in chief, will lead POLITICO's expansion efforts into other states as well as the previously announced European …

"There's no clickbait, there's no fluff, no listicles... just articles." Apparently the new app "scours the Internet for content published by both news outlets and writers..." - but until they launch the Android & Web app (underway) I won't know if it involves semantic analysis... But: "the [article] publishers ... will get pageviews, as art…

"... It goes by many other pseudonyms — “native advertising,” “content marketing” — but the basic value proposition in most cases is the same. Publishers work with sponsors to create content that is “native” to the particular platform (in some cases looking very similar to editorial content) and is more engaging than display advertising.... This…

As I mentioned in my previous post, the past couple of years have seen a lot of innovation in online content strategy, coupled with growing disenchantment with "Big Internet".

Fascinating overview of a journalism sector in freefall, spotted literally 10 minutes before I saw the news that Libération is to axe one third of its jobs. Which makes this a great opening sentence: "Of all the papers and newsmagazines in France, one in particular should have been well prepared for the challenges of this digital era: Libération.…

"Libération is losing €22,000 a day. We have to streamline journalistic production." Libération's newsstand sales have fallen by 20% over the past year, and its editorial team is to be reorganised in order to boost the digital version. Le Monde ... is also switching 35 staff from print to online." - Libération to cut a third of its workforce to…

"The process of placing an ad on News Feed is a complicated dance. Facebook has to decide not only which ad to show to its users, but when to show it to them... any given user has around 1,500 stories they could see each day. ... a rather complex algorithm that weights how engaging each post is ... and a wide range of other signals ... For examp…

The first of 4 (so far!) posts on "PoliticoEU" by EurActiv's founder/publisher Christophe Leclercq: "This new attempt is by two large companies with a lot of money and with professional teams. A difference with some, but not all, previous attempts. And an asset but potentially also a curse, depending on answering 10 key questions." - EuRoman…

"Politico is launching a European edition ... with ... Axel Springer... to cover “not just Brussels but European politics and policy more broadly,”" CJR sees a few problems ahead: "- the 28 member countries have distinct identities and interests, so a one-size-fits-all outlet does not necessarily fit anyone... - the European Union has no shared…

"Marketers and PR professionals are hard-wired to put the product/company first. Journalists put the consumer first.... journalists should be in the box seat when it comes to running a newsroom - be it for the media or a brand." plus 5 or 6 more reasons, spelt out here - Why a journalist should run your brand newsroom | LinkedIn

"Displaying data can be a tricky proposition, because different rules apply in different contexts. A sales director presenting financial projections to a group of field reps wouldn’t visualize her data the same way that a design consultant would in a written proposal to a potential client. So how do you make the right choices for your situation? …

"Facebook seems to be trying to get more transparent about how the algorithms ... function, with a statement on Monday about cracking down on “clickbait.” ... But despite the attempts at openness, the bottom line remains the same: Facebook is a black box. No one really has any clue why the site chooses to show or hide certain content... what com…

"Few pieces of journalism — let alone narrative journalism — effect change in a matter of hours. But that’s what happened with “Working Anything but 9 to 5,” ... A rare combination of intimate narrative and exposé, Kantor’s Aug. 13 story followed a tumultuous month in the life of Jannette Navarro, a young single mother struggling to make ends me…

"I honestly doubt that there is an algorithm in the world that can reliably surface such unexpected content, so well. An algorithm ... cannot surface unexpected, diverse and sometimes weird content exactly because of how algorithms work: they know what they already know.... Twitter brims with human judgment, and the problem with algorithmic filte…

"Since it launched in March 2012, I F*cking Love Science has attracted more than 17.9 million Facebook followers—more than Popular Science (2.7 million), Discover (2.7 million), Scientific American (1.9 million), and The New York Times (8 million) combined. ... Her empire has since expanded to include a website, IFLscience.com, which has a staff a…

"Buying traffic isn’t so much a taboo as it is a poor business decision for most publishers in most instances ... It’s expensive, and the money could usually be better invested in editors who reach an organic audience.... There are times when paid promotion makes sense. Some do paid promotion on posts that have particularly high engagement alread…

It wasn't supposed to be this way... "The internet is ballooning with fluff, and bad content marketing is to blame. In our obsession with "engaging" our "audience" in "real-time" with "targeted content" that goes "viral," we are driving people insane... Although word on the street is that people want short, “snackable” content, the data says…

Unsurprising that LinkedIn promoted this post.... the comments rapidly turned into an interesting conversation on Linkedin v. Facebook... people seem to comment more on LinkedIn posts than elsewhere. Perhaps the return of blogging that people are starting to talk about is next.

A wonderful presentation from Jonathan Corum, science graphics editor at The New York Times, on creating infographics and data visualisations that truly add value: "Sometimes, I feel more like a translator than a designer. Trying to translate the point the scientist is trying to make to a wider audience, and removing all of the jargon. ... If I …

At least 1 year's reading right here: " ... the main projects, events, new sites, trends, personalities and general observations that have struck me as being important to help further the development of this field." A well-timed survey, given the recent publication of the UpShot's opus on the US economy and other daa visualisation ventures. But t…

Tracking #Ferguson on Twitter. Via @Mathewi, GigaOm

"... envisions a Yahoo that’s as ubiquitous as computers seem destined to be. Phones, watches, public terminals, brain implants — Yahoo wants to be able to deliver content to all of them... Yahoo Labs’ biggest focus appears to be on machine learning... a dedicated machine learning group based in New York; ... “hardcore science and some theory,…

"But the ramification of this fundamental shift in design is that we now consume content in headlines, thumbnails and mini descriptions. According to a recent study by Copyblogger, on average 8/10 people will read headline copy, but only 2/10 will read the rest. We have all become headline hunters." While I dispute the idea here that Facebook inv…

"Continuing its tradition of airing its internal discussions outside the office, the staff at Jezebel today called out the higher-ups at parent Gawker Media today over some pretty disgusting trolling at the site." I wonder how much more loyalty Jezebel's community feel for the site because they air their internal problems so publicly? I wonder ho…

Awesome takedown of native advertising. Via AdAge.

Lovely reflective longread. Anyone who can explore how we are being transformed by the digital media that we ourselves are transforming as we explore its transformative possibilities (did I get that right?), and succeeds in tying Lou Reed into that discussion, has to be worth a read. "... this eruption of knowledge-sharing is usually ... dismisse…