BuzzFeed, lots of data to conquer all
Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
Published in
3 min readFeb 19, 2016
edited by Marco Nurra
- Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about BuzzFeed? Fast Company published on Monday a longform analysis and an enlightening interview of Dao Nguyen about BuzzFeed’s technology and data infrastructure. In fact, the real secret to BuzzFeed's success isn't cat GIFs, it's data. “Anything that has 200 million monthly visitors and about five billion video views is probably worth taking seriously as a media outlet. Not to mention the fact that BuzzFeed appears to have built a fairly substantial — and serious — journalism operation inside that viral hit factory,” wrote Mathew Ingram on Tuesday (here). And if you want to know more about this topic, here are a few noteworthy thing by NiemanLab and Poynter.
🔊 Three BuzzFeed country editors — Craig Silverman (Canada), Cecile Dehesdin (France) and Alfredo Murillo (Spain) — will discuss BuzzFeed’s international strategy at #ijf16. - The results of the Financial Times’ digital migration and paid content strategy are stunning. But before general news publishers routinely refer to the FT as a proof of concept for paid content, ask yourself these simple questions (via Wolfgang Blau).
- Facebook Instant Articles will be available to all publishers. As of 12 April, almost a year after launch, anyone with a website and a Facebook page will be able to host content directly on the social media site.
- Meanwhile, Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is almost here. But publishers still have 4 big questions about monetization, speed, video and costs. We know one thing for sure; it will support paywalls.
- Are you still clickbaiting your audience? Well, you shouldn’t. While clickbait may produce a momentary spike in traffic, those techniques will be rejected by users in the long run. In the end, quality generally wins — in nature and in marketing.
- Photo of refugee family wins World Press Photo of the Year. A man passes a baby through the fence at the Hungarian-Serbian border in Röszke, Hungary, Aug. 28, 2015. By Warren Richardson.
- Encryption, trojans, backdoor: cyber-security has become mainstream news (we know you have read something about the FBI-Apple tussle). What’s at stake? Why is cyber-war such a hot topic? And how is it that abstruse technological issues have become items on the agenda of international politics?
🔊 We’ll discuss this topic at #ijf16 with Marcel Rosenbach, Carola Frediani and Claudio Guarneri. - Journalists’ perception of digital risks is not so different to that of other users. If you feel that you could be at risk, you will want to protect yourself.
🔊 #ijf16 offers 13 sessions by digital security experts on digital self defense, big data analytics and techno-political answers from threatened groups. - What’s the difference between the most shared stories and the most engaged stories from The New York Times? NewsWhip has analyzed NYT’s top 100 stories of the year, ranked by total time spent.
- For their dogged work, the Boston Globe team rightly earned a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service back in 2003. And now, 12 years later, the movie ‘Spotlight’ is winning rave reviews and being talked about for an Academy Award. Here are 8 lessons on investigative journalism from Spotlight.
International Journalism Festival is the biggest annual media event in Europe. It’s an open invitation to interact with the best of world journalism. All sessions are free entry for all attendees, all venues are situated in the stunning setting of the historic town centre of Perugia. Come and join us!
