Quartz’s conversational App, NYT en Español, and the costs of platform publishing
Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
edited by Marco Nurra
- Quartz released its new app, and it looks very much like a messaging app. Which is smart, for two big reasons: reach and branding, as felix salmon has explained on Fusion. The news organization sees its readers’ behavior evolving, so it’s evolving with them. The Guardian has spoken to Quartz’s editor-in-chief about the latest innovation.
- Talking about apps… Most publishers wouldn’t launch an app that aggregates third-party news. Trinity Mirror did it. The plan is to manually curate 10 stories from other publishers, which will run as a daily edition. Three different articles, often with opposing viewpoints, will run on each story, representing the left, neutral and right-wing political perspectives on the same story.
- The New York Times has launched a Spanish-language news site, in order to grow its audience internationally aiming south of the border. Juliette Melton, design researcher at NYT, explains on Medium how they have set the scene for The New York Times en Español.
- India has blocked Facebook’s Free Basics. Mark Zuckerberg lost the right to offer a free mobile internet service in India after the country’s telecoms regulator ruled in favour of net neutrality. After losing the battle, Facebook decided to shut it down in the country.
- Did Facebook unwillingly helps ISIS? “Let’s admit it: Social media has been used to help brands and businesses all around the world — and they help ISIS too, in spite of everything they think they are doing”. An interesting analysis published on The Daily Dot.
🔊 Hossein Derakhshan will be #ijf16 speaker. - Twitter is changing the way users see new tweets in their timeline, but that doesn’t mean the end of real-time posts for journalists. Here’s how to stop Twitter’s new timeline affecting your newsgathering.
- When Guardian Australia reporter Paul Farrell requested his federal police file, the response demonstrated chilling threats to press freedom: more than 200 pages of heavily redacted police files.
- Journalists turn activist. “If journalists won’t take a stand for core liberties like free expression — and then be leaders in the campaign to save or restore them — we’ll be fit to call ourselves entertainers, and not much else”.
🔊 Dan Gillmor will be #ijf16 speaker. - If you want to learn how to use Snapchat, maybe you can ask for help from your little sister. That’s what Ben Rosen of BuzzFeed actually did.
- With Google’s AMP coming this month, the company aims to “reinvent the mobile web”. On the other hand, publishers have said it’s getting easier to generate ad revenue from Facebook’s Instant Articles. Digiday explains the hidden (and not so hidden) costs of platform publishing.
- How do you reach an audience to pay attention to your publications in a world where media power is shifting and the terms of the communication trade are becoming more complicated and subjective? “Of course, anyone now seeking attention for their work must navigate a much more complex media landscape with an almost endless range of platforms, channels, networks and influential re-distributors of information”.
🔊 Charlie Beckett will be #ijf16 speaker. - The Independent will close its print editions. Evgeny Lebedev is expected to announce later on Friday that the print editions of the Independent and Independent on Sunday will be closed. The newspaper was launched 30 years ago, it was the phenomenon of its age: this is its history.
- Vertical video is becoming more popular, but there’s no consensus on the best way to make it. Some outlets are turning their cameras sideways. Others are cropping horizontally shot video to fit a vertical screen.
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