Media
Don’t dwell on “democracy,” and other new findings about how to market local news
It turns out that "we're protecting democracy and our industry is dying, please pay us money" is not a great sales pitch.
Media
What I learned in the first five years of Platformer
Casey Newton's annual updates are always great. This year, perhaps predictably, the biggest highlight for me is his ambitions around community. We need stronger community platforms to support newsrooms.
Media
More UK news publishers are adopting 'consent or pay' advertising model
"Sixteen of the 50 biggest news websites in the UK are now using a “consent or pay” model to allow users to pay to reject personalised advertising or even avoid ads altogether." It should be illegal.
Media
The 19th's Strategic Plan
"The 19th developed seven key initiatives to guide our priorities for the next three years." Doing this work in public is such a smart move.
Media
Did Craigslist decimate newspapers?
"Here in six short chapters is the tale of Craigslist’s rise to a business generating hundreds of millions of dollars a year, how Newmark has used that fortune and how newspapers, slow to adapt, failed to respond effectively to the digital shift.”
Media
Curate your own newspaper with RSS
"In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder."
Media
If I ran NPR and PBS
Building community-driven public media for the post-federal funding era.
Media
Senate Votes to Strip $1.1 Billion From Public Broadcasting in Blow to PBS and NPR
Without public media funding, local stations will close, creating news deserts and allowing political corruption to thrive.
Media
Substack's Secret
"Substack's One Weird Marketing Trick was leveraging the economic interests of traditional media employees against their publishers to get positive "earned media"."
Future of News
When people trust humans more than brands: the incubator newsroom
How we might rebuild journalism from the ground up by rethinking what a newsroom is.
Media
The Substack Election
[Lauren Egan at The Bulwark] If I was Substack, this is exactly what I'd be doing. But then again, if I was Substack, I wouldn't have paid Nazis to post on my network. "The company sees an opportunity. Its employees have been meeting with congressional
Media
Building our "native-AI newsroom"
[Henry Blodget] Henry Blodget, former co-founder of Business Insider, has started a new, "AI-native" newsroom. It's not, in my opinion, a positive use of AI, but it does indicate how some people are thinking about using the technology. This apparently includes harassing your newly-created virtual employees: