Overview: Media

IAB/Edelman study on in-feed sponsored content: "The potential success of sponsored content is directly linked to how consumers already feel about the brand advertiser and the publisher hosting the content.... [Brands must] Create value for audiences ... publishers should ... be willing to walk away from advertisers who aren’t relevant/trusted" …

"I’ve long said that if you have to put a link next to a label saying “what’s this?” then the label clearly isn’t clear enough. ... when I see a link to Forbes on Twitter, I don’t know whether it is going to take me to (1) the good work of a Forbes journalists, (2) the good work of a Forbes contributor, (3) the bad work of one of many Forbes cont…

"When you’re very interested in a single topic, it’s great to have a place that constantly aggregates news and commentary, adds new information and, in general, speaks to your passion. And because the writers of blogs often are invested in the subject – “they tend to be labors of love,” Mr. Fisher said – their deep interest and knowledge paid off …

"When asked to pay for well-reported news content, there’s a growing swell of readers who understand the value and are willing to invest in it. ... We’re seeing a renewed, if still small, consumer commitment to funding journalism ... these models are developing outside the United States... there is relatively little European foundation support…

" News cooperatives have long thrived in Europe ... and Mexico. Yet, with a few exceptions they never really took root in the U.S. That may be changing. " - Kickstarter Bets On Bringing The Slow Europe Model Of Journalism To The U.S. | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

"blogs are ... just one specific kind of publishing format, with posts that appear in reverse chronological order.... this is a little like saying that a sonnet is just a specific way of ordering text, featuring iambic pentameter and an offset rhyming scheme. Obviously not every blog post is a poem, but there is something inherent in the practice …

"where this style of reporting was once reserved for a newspaper’s resident weird .... [it now] represents a sort of merging between the opinion page and the front page. ... helps keep journalism outlets more accountable for backing up their opinions. No longer can the Wall Street Journal espouse climate denialism from the fact-less safety of the …

As if blogs were just a question of conversational tone and reverse-chronology ... "We’re going to continue to provide bloggy content with a more conversational tone ... We’re just not going to do them as much in standard reverse-chronological blogs.” " - ‘Almost half’ of the NYT’s blogs will close or merge | Poynter.

Fascinating article in Issue 14 (theme: Evolution): "It is a case of convergent evolution—where different species separately developed similar biological adaptations when faced with the same environmental pressures. Salamanders are Wake’s go-to example when asked a decades-old question in evolutionary biology: If you could replay the “tape of lif…

For those still confused: "Content marketing is not PR as such... But there is a basic realization that people are tired of ads and having promotional messages pushed on them. So called “branded journalism” is ... often compelling high-quality content that many newspaper editors would wish their journalists could produce.... brands seem sometimes …

New data supporting old news: "According to Gallup ... of 18,000 consumers surveyed, 62 percent said social media had no influence on their buying decisions. Among millennials, 48 percent said social media didn't make a difference... Many social media advertisers have ... neglected the essence, and potential, of social media: people talking to …

Good example of CMS innovations emerging from newsrooms - wish I'd added to my recent weekly LinkedIn tour: "a multi-faceted piece of newsroom infrastructure, a set of building blocks that will allow organizations to turn on or turn off various engagement features with relative ease ... a bunch of parts that you can assemble and reassemble ... …

Part 2 of my second weekly roundup, where the overriding theme is innovation.

@baekdal explores "a complete and total blind spot in the newspaper industry ... based on a business model that used to work in the old days of media, but was as a result of scarcity." Newspapers, he argues, are "the supermarket of news ... [but] upermarkets only work when visiting the individual brands is too hard to do... But on the internet, e…

Good piece from @digitaltonto pointing out that "data journalism ... falls short when confronted with complexity and nuance... Traditional journalists could benefit from more data literacy and objective analysis, while data journalism would be much improved by real world context. Unfortunately, little integration has occurred. Traditional journa…

"it appears that the FT is adopting a model similar to that of a wire service in its mobile approach, with mobile news being complemented by context, comment, and analysis in the print product, as well as to a certain degree on the web." - “From a news business to a networked business”: The FT pushes its workflows to digital » Nieman Journalism L…

"publishers like the Economist Group are still trying to get their salespeople on board with a way of selling that they're either confused by or outright hostile to - so hostile, in fact, that some buyers have encountered salespeople who have actively tried to talk them out of programmatic sales." - How the Economist Group is retooling for prog…

The NYT's "Snowfall" of native advertising. Great quality. Still don't like native advertising.

... We are statistically closer to the next recession than to the last one, and another year or two of double-digit ad declines will push many papers into 3-day printing schedules, or bankruptcy, or both. " Clay Shirky giving it straight. What will the world be like in 5 years time? - Nostalgia and Newspapers, Clay Shirky

"an interesting glimpse at the technology responsible for publishing 700 articles, 600 images, 14 slideshows, and 50 videos on a daily basis." I find the article fascinating because of what the CMS is not - it: "does not render our website or provide community tools to our readers. Rather, it is a system for managing content and publishing d…

The implications for CMS and responsive design of these "three key points to consider for adaptive storytelling" are potentially huge. - Advice for 'adaptive storytelling' from the Washington Post | Media news

One for @richardmedic ... "Smydra ... he wants to find a way to allow the public to benefit from all the knowledge of future news events locked up inside newsrooms.... He'd love your thoughts" - Can you turn future news events into structured data? » Nieman Journalism Lab

"With the launch of new site after new site in 2014, it's been a fascinating time to watch digital media try to figure itself out. Amid the turmoil of disruption, buffeted by tech companies' control over information distribution, but aware of new fields of possibility, the past few years were filled with defending legacy brands. So this new round…

Apparently we are all now "little more than webs of flesh spun over packages of saleable data", according to a searing indictment of Google's anti-anonymity policy specifically. This is required reading for anyone interested in a balanced view of anonymity, privacy and public discourse: "The Google+ so-called "real name" policy can best be descr…

Particularly like reason 1: "1. Content curation provides a variety of perspectives. Offering diverse points of view enhances your credibility. This is particularly important on social media platforms where participants get annoyed with businesses that just shout me, me, me. " Remind you of anyone you know? - The Top 10 Reasons You Need Content…

New report ”examines the current state of data journalism... calling for more transparency on how data is collected and used in journalism, anticipating an explosion in news apps as a way of producing information, and ways newsrooms can address security around their data and reporting. " In particular, I love this: "...the advice that newsroom le…

"Huffington Post’s U.S. site and mobile apps will shift to using only Facebook comments, CTO Otto Toth announced. “This is far from an an end to conversation; it’s the start of conversation where you want to have it — and where you’ve been having it already,” he wrote. Readers are having a Facebook conversation under Toth’s post, but many of the…

"We’ve been on Livefyre comments for a little under a year now, and while we weren’t the biggest fans of Facebook Comments* while we were using them, we’ve since realized that there is no perfect solution for commenting. And Facebook Comments, as troubled as they can be, are actually not that bad. ... until someone invents a perfect solution... w…

" a buggy Livefyre launch, with lots of you using it and breaking it, is still better than Facebook Comments." - Commenters, We Want You Back | TechCrunch

"Though the political conversation about Europe has gained in importance everywhere in recent years, the truth is that Europeans are not having the same conversation. That is a serious problem for Europe’s leaders: the electoral earthquake is big enough for them to feel compelled to respond to their citizens’ economic and political discontent; but…