The Splice Slugs: Media’s failure with community, Wirecutter’s sale, and ad blockers
I didn’t catch this when it was published about two weeks ago — but this is worth your time. Jeff Jarvis writes about the failure of media to understand what’s really going on in communities and societies… and yet we’re surprised (and aghast) when there’s support for Trump, Putin and Duterte. As journalists, we don’t understand what people need or want; we seem merely interested in informing — but only on our terms. Jarvis is calling for a fundamental reinvention of journalism so that we adjust our relationships with communities and therefore, help build business models that actually work. Here’s the rant of the week… and definitely a must-read.
Twitter is cutting 350 jobs — about 9% of its total staff. Most of the cuts are in its marketing and sales teams. “We’re getting more disciplined about how we invest in the business, and we set a company goal of driving toward GAAP profitability in 2017.”
The New York Times bought the consumer review service The Wirecutter for $30 million. The site makes money through affiliate links — i.e., it gets paid when people click through and buy stuff from e-commerce sites like Amazon. This is an important play for NYT as it tries to diversify its revenues beyond banner ads.
The Financial Times tried an interesting experiment recently: It blanked out words in articles to persuade people to turn off their ad blockers. It worked.
…And this is baffling: The FT had 40,000 followers on Instagram last year. Now it’s 286,000. How does a financial newspaper pull that off on a visual platform like Instagram? See this.
Videos on Snapchat have plummeted dramatically since the platform removed autoplay. It’s another sign yet that you shouldn’t look at Snapchat the same way you at other social platforms. “Snapchat is unlike Facebook because it never promises organic reach while Facebook made a big switch on that.”
Donald Trump launched a nightly Facebook Live show. There’s plenty of speculation that this is a pre-cursor to bigger plans to start “Trump TV”.
The shift toward platform publishing could leave some publishers in the cold. Google favors AMP results; Facebook favors Instant Articles; Apple News is a closed system too. So what becomes of the rest of the open web?
Facebook launched an online training program for journalists.One single place where you can find instructions on how to discover, create and distribute content.
…Facebook has a tremendous responsibility in shaping public discourse. So when Trump’s comments crossed the line into hate speech, it created an intense uproar within the company, especially among employees who review content on Facebook. Some had threatened to quit. The buck stopped with Zuckerberg himself, who ruled the it would be inappropriate to censor Trump.
…To that effect, Facebook updated its community standards policy. It will be more flexible in allowing content that it would otherwise have censored — as long as it’s deemed “newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest”. And Zuck says this isn’t a media company?
Melinda Gates called out the gender divide in access to tech.She’s concerned that more than a billion women can’t get access to something as simple as a mobile phone — and that means they’re missing out on basic services like finance.
As you may know, I’ve been building profiles of media entrepreneurs. Check out my interview with GadgetMatch’s Michael Josh Villanueva on finding your own identity in starting up outside the traditional newsroom. Lots of good nuggets in here.
…And I’ve also started a new section in the Splice blog on Medium(you mean you didn’t know I had one?!) called ‘Leading Millennials’.I’m looking to showcase emerging talent in the service of journalism around the world. I’m also hoping that this will be useful for newsroom managers who are looking for ideas on shaping and grooming young talent. The first profile is Jenni Reid from The Economist. Let me know what you think.
There are two interesting audio tools to check out. Audiograms makes it easier for creators to cut up snippets of audio for sharing. And Shortcut — now this is cool — works like this: You go through a transcript… mark out the text you want… and it automatically creates that exact audio snippet for you. Amazing.
…And another tool to try out: Hypothesis. It’s Chrome extension that allows journos working on the same project to annotate information and organize their research. Especially handy for investigative journalists.
You can now make video calls on WhatsApp. But it’s Android-only.
If you’re in Singapore, here’s your chance to check out Twitter’s office and learn how tools like DataMinr and CrowdTangle are helping journalists around the world uncover original stories.That’s on Monday November 7 from 6 pm. Details here.
Quote of the week:
“Data is just a pile of bricks until someone builds a house.” — Bob Hoffman, Ad Contrarian
Deals:
WAN-IFRA’s annual Digital Media Asia — the biggest conference dedicated to the news publishing industry — comes up on November 8–10 in Singapore. You can use our promo code DMA_SPLICE_#16Q9Pfor a 10% discount.
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I started The Splice Newsroom consultancy to help solve a difficult problem: getting newsrooms to adapt and evolve in the ongoing shift to digital with the right strategy, operations and training. I help transform traditional newsrooms and support the development of editorial startups. What can I do for you?
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