At GEN, we focus on innovation and digital technologies for sustainable and quality journalism. But this week we are slightly shifting our focus to share with you an exceptional story of resilience and creativity in a post-war setting. A couple of months ago at the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London, we had the pleasure of meeting Shayda Hessami, Founder of Humanitarian Aid & Journalism (AHJ), an NGO that seeks to empower women in war zones through journalism education. …
At a time when most media ventures are struggling with monetising content and increasing audience engagement, a startup focusing at once on media, travel and entertainment has shown tremendous success.
GEN spoke with Dmitry Shishkin, Chief Content Officer at Culture Trip to learn more about the startup’s monetisation and editorial strategies. The startup has secured 100$m in funding and reaches about 18 million users per month. Shishkin says the goal is to build “an editorially powered online travel business”. He tells us more about how Culture Trip earns money from both media and travel sectors, and what steps it plans to take next. We also asked him the inevitable question — about being part of a travel business in light of rising climate crisis.
GEN: The media, travel and entertainment…
The initiatives to stop the spread of disinformation abound, but the phenomenon continues to rise. It not only undermines journalism, but also people’s trust in the media, resulting in the growing problem of news avoidance. What if journalists took matters in their own hands? That’s the goal of the Journalism Trust Initiative.
A recent initiative by Reporters Without Borders with the support of Agence France Presse, the European Broadcasting Union and the Global Editors Network (a disclosure!) aims to develop professional standards in the frame of the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI). It is a self-regulatory solution with defined indicators for trustworthy sources of information in the digital age. GEN spoke with Olaf Steenfadt, the Director of JTI, to understand what is unique about this initiative and how realistic it is to implement. …
The voice ecosystem has been drastically expanding in recent years. While smart speakers remain largely a North American phenomenon, the technology is evolving fast and will soon have implications for newsrooms across the world. What promise does voice AI hold for editors? Is there a sustainable business model for the voice economy?
GEN spoke with Matt McAlister, co-Founder and CEO of Kaleida Networks that recently unveiled its News Assistant Platform. Matt sees a lot of potential in voice AI that connects users to news organisations. While it is still too early to tell, he says ‘voice technologies are making a lot of things possible, and we need people thinking beyond platform distribution as a model for news’. You can download the new Kaleida report here.
GEN: You write in your report that personal assistants / smart speakers ‘have proven to be good at doing what the tech platforms do best. They provide data. Fast. Personalised. News orgs are not designed for that use case. They value stories over data. They prefer veracity to speed. And they talk to readers equally, not individually’. Are news organisations condemned to be the ‘hostages’ of Amazon, Google or Apple?
Matt McAlister: No, I don’t believe that at all. Distribution has moved to the platforms, but there is a lot of evidence that people value quality news…
How to keep a readership base at a time when readers are exhausted by the information clutter and have increasingly less trust in the news? Catarina Carvallo, Executive Editor-in-Chief at Diario de Noticias, moderated the GEN Summit 2019 main stage session on the state of paywall today.
The subscription fatigue is real. Cosmin Ene, Founder and CEO of Laterpay, pointed out that while publishers need all the available tools to entice the audience, such as combination of different paying models, the fierce competition doesn’t leave much space for experiments. …
John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg gave a very candor keynote at the GEN Summit 2019 about the way he sees the transitions that the world of journalism is going through. “The internet was never the problem, it was our reaction to it”, he opened, “we are the ones that convinced that readers that they don’t have to pay for our content”. He spoke about trends in AI and their impact on journalism.
The new thing troubling newsrooms is AI — how, and how much. “The two fears are that, one, journalists replaced by robots. …
The Day 1 Fireside Chat at the GEN Summit 2019 was indeed fiery. Jesper Doub, Director of News Partnerships, Facebook EMEA and Matt Kelly, Editor-in-Chief at The New European and chief content officer for Archant Group, discussed the complicated relationship between Facebook and news organizations.
Doub promised an eager crowd that Facebook is seeking new business models to work with publishers — one that will offer newsrooms fair compensation. “Facebook looms large in the thinking of publishers of all sizes. …
The future of media is ‘our native, 3D environment’, it’s around the corner, and the media need to take it seriously. This is what Dan Pacheco argues. A pioneer in the use of virtual reality for journalism and an XR consultant, he spoke with GEN about the latest updates on the technology that’s coming (from HoloLens to Magicverse) and laid out the implications for publishers, journalists, and audiences.
GEN: The public understands what immersive technologies can bring to entertainment, but what are the advantages of immersive storytelling for a journalist? Under what circumstances can it add to a journalistic narrative?
Dan Pacheco: VR, AR, and MR (what I and others are starting to call XR) headset makers currently cater to entertainment because they started in the gaming industry, and that’s where the big money is. But so did portable, high-quality colour screens that fit in your pocket. The first successful colour mobile device was Nintendo’s Gameboy. Ten years later, everyone was carrying around an iPhone or Android.
Using that Gameboy analogy, journalists should look past the entertainment value and take time to understand what XR devices are capable of doing from an information perspective. And that’s truly revolutionary. …
The New Yorker, an American weekly magazine founded in 1925, with a signature mix of reporting on national and international politics and culture, reviews, and cartoons, amongst other topics, appointed Dan Oshinsky in 2017 as their Director of Newsletters focusing on growing The New Yorker’s relationship with its readers through their multiple newsletters. With GEN, he shares his knowledge on best practices, new challenges, and why email is at the heart of The New Yorker’s editorial strategy.
If you want to keep up with the latest trends and insights in the journalism industry, newsletters are the way to go. Or are they? Today, readers expect more from a newsletter — more content, tailored to their interest, more insights and exclusivity. A good newsletter has become vital for newsrooms and readers alike, and an organisation’s strategy to grow its newsletter is more essential than ever. …
The world was watching as the roof of Notre Dame de Paris caught fire on Monday evening and the devastation of Parisians was broadcast to millions of screens around the world. Over the news and social media, the tragedy spread quickly and GEN spoke to Becky Pinnington, trends data curator for Google News Lab, and James Morgan, CrowdTangle/Facebook’s EMEA partner manager, about the impact of Notre Dame’s fire on social media, in particular, Google and Facebook.
Since the Global Editors Network is based in Paris, the fire at Notre Dame hits close to home and we were rushing to work together with Becky Pinnington from Google News Lab and James Morgan from CrowdTangle/Facebook, who quickly put together a very comprehensive overview of the impact of the Notre Dame fire on social media. …
Global Editors Network
The Global Editors Network is the worldwide association of editors-in-chief and media executives. We foster media innovation and sustainable journalism.
