Indie local online news summit focuses on sustainability
LION Publishers' annual summit in Chicago is less than a month away, and an array of speakers, discussions and workshops have been lined up to provide local independent online news entrepreneurs with ideas, advice and information they can take home and put into practice.
This year's summit - Sept. 29-Oct. 1 at Columbia College in Chicago - will include training in ramping up advertising sales, diversifying into native advertising and sponsored content, launching membership programs, and other revenue categories and ideas.
It will also provide practical advice on choosing content management systems and other tech tools that support journalism and business operations.
As always, the best thing about the LION Summit is the personal connections one makes with other local independent online news publishers from across the country who are faced with the same challenges and opportunities you are confronting.
There's still time to register - HERE. And check out our LION Summit blog for updates on speakers, hotel accommodations, things to do while in Chicago that weekend, and lots more.
As legacy media cuts, local online sites sprout across U.S.
Poynter looks at the growth of local independent online news sites - and LION as an organization supporting them, including what makes an indie local news site successful and sustainable, whether they can provide the type of investigative reporting newspapers used to do.
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FROM A SPONSOR: This year's LION Summit in Chicago has been made possible by sponsors that include Bizyhood. As a local digital publisher, you are the authority for all things happening in your community. If you had your way, you’d focus 100% of your time on telling great stories and producing well written and compelling journalism. But how can you do that when the revenue side of the business takes up so much of your attention? Ad revenue is generally not enough, and it’s hard to keep up with the changes and innovations that Facebook, Google and other tech platforms do to pull your readers in other directions.
Bizyhood for Publishers was created to help you even the field with tech platforms and generate new revenue sources by letting you take advantage of your superpower - your knowledge of the local community and ability to connect readers and business owners better than any other online platform.
Bizyhood for Publishers is a Community Network Platform - a suite of tools that allows you to connect all the members of your community on your site. Stop relying on 3rd party sites to drive traffic. Keep readers on your site longer and give them ways to engage with their community and get the answers they need. Be a local SEO powerhouse that offers benefits to local businesses simply by them having their own dedicated page on your site. Offer a search experience that is highly relevant locally and allows businesses to present themselves in search results just like they would with Google. And engage your audience where they spend nearly all their time - mobile.
It’s time to join the publishing platform that makes your brand the authority in your community and gives you new and sustainable ways to generate revenue. Help the businesses in your community be found. Offer your readers the ability to find anything locally - not just great stories, but events, places and services they need. You create the content, we’ll provide the technology!
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Have Google and Facebook killed free media?
Almost no one but superpowers Google and Facebook is making real money from digital ads, forcing everyone else to find new business models or die trying.
Google says it wants to help publishers fight Facebook.
Meanwhile, Facebook has tweaked its News Feed again to favor ‘personally informative’ stories. The friends-and-family Facebook algorithm change doesn’t seem to be hurting traffic to news sites. But wait ... Facebook traffic to U.S. news sites has fallen by double digits, a new report says.
And Facebook retools Trending Topics to reduce human involvement in news selection. It almost immediately results in a right-wing fake news story showing up as a trending topic for millions of people.
John Oliver on the state of newspapers
In case you missed it, comedian John Oliver's funny and too-honest look at the state of newspapers and media today caused a stir recently.
Many took it as an homage to journalism and the role that local media plays in our democracy.
The Newspaper Association of America doesn't have as much of a sense of humor.
Ken Doctor's take: After John Oliver, the you-get-what-you-pay-for imperative has never been clearer.
Paying for investigative reporting
Mother Jones spent $350,000 on their investigation, made $5,000 in advertising from it. Federal policy changed because of it.
News About Local Independent Online News Sites
AUSTIN: Three tips from KUT and Austin Monitor on making media collaboration work.
CHICAGO: We’re not doing it alone: How City Bureau builds with community groups.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Know your customers’ “jobs to be done.”
NEW JERSEY: Jersey Shore Hurricane News celebrates fifth anniversary.
STEALING STORIES: A TV station rips off an exclusive story produced by local independent online news site ARLNow.com and provides no attribution whatsoever.
Tools and Tips: Advertising and Revenue
AD BLOCKING: Cat-and-mouse game continues: Adblock Plus has already defeated Facebook's new ad blocking restrictions. Facebook's now the leader in the fight against ad blocking.
AD TECH: Breaking News 1: How monetizing became malvertising.
AUTOPLAY: Facebook tests video ads with sound automatically turned up.
CUSTOMERS: Can you detect when digital customers are struggling?
DATA: Making the most of audience data.
FACEBOOK ADS: 98 personal data points that Facebook uses to target ads to you. Facebook makes it clear that advertisers are more important than you are. Why P&G decided Facebook ad targeting often isn't worth the money.
INTERSTITIALS: Google warns it will crack down on “intrusive interstitials” in January.
LOYALTY PROGRAMS: What local consumers really want from a loyalty program.
MICROPAYMENTS: Blendle reaches 1 million users, but is it here to stay?
NATIVE ADVERTISING: Why native ads are now the primary display unit. Brand content isn’t journalism, but it’s still all about the story. Report from Online Trust Alliance says 71% of content sponsored by marketers doesn’t provide enough disclosure. Stand out by blending in: Making native advertising work on mobile. The lines between native advertising and editorial content are still blurred. Why publishers struggle to renew native advertising. Making the case for better native advertising definitions. Native advertising: Another false messiah?
NEWSLETTERS: The case for email newsletters. How personalized email newsletters can increase engagement. Secrets of a successful newsletter. RJI Fellow’s ongoing e-newsletter personalization experiment yields surprising results.
PAYWALLS: Newspapers rethink paywalls as digital efforts sputter. The Wall Street Journal is changing up its paywall, offering guest passes and expanded link-sharing on social.
PROGRAMMATIC: Winter is coming to ad tech: Obliteration, not consolidation. Mobile programmatic ad growth propelled by geotargeting.
PUBLISHERS: “It feels antiquated”: The job of the publisher is evolving (and even disappearing) at media companies.
Tools and Tips: Journalism and Technology
ACCESS: Nine guidelines to access public and private property.
CLICKBAIT: Investigating the influence of “clickbait” news headlines. Readers perceive question-based headlines more negatively, study shows.
CODE: Bloated HTML, the best and the worse.
COLUMNS: Seven pointers for writing a kick-ass column.
COMMENTS: NPR is getting rid of story comments. How do you measure comment quality?
DATA: Materials have been posted from Pro Publica's 016 Data Institute, including slides, exercises, links and assignments. How to avoid 10 common mistakes in data reporting.
DESIGN: Designing news products with empathy: How to plan for individual users’ needs and stresses.
DRONES: The new drone rules: What journalists need to know.
ELECTION: This election year, journalists must be watchdogs — and word dogs.
FACT CHECKING: It’s time to fact-check all the news.
FREELANCE: Thinking about making the jump to freelance? What you need to know. Four tips for leading teams of freelancers.
GEOTAGGING: Free tool enables publishers to geotag their articles, allowing readers to filter hyperlocal news stories.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT: Why business reporters should write on municipal contracts.
METRICS: Five strategies for reporting metrics in your newsroom. Be real-world smart: A beginner's advanced Google Analytics guide. Seventeen ways to measure a feature news story.
MOBILE: Five takeaways from RJI study on millennials reading long-form stories on mobile.
REVIEWS: Google lets any publisher apply to have “critic reviews” of local businesses.
SEXISM: What’s behind sexist reporting at the Olympics? Lack of newsroom diversity and experience.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT: Women journalists share their stories of sexual harassment.
SHIELD LAWS: Shield laws and journalist’s privilege: The basics every reporter should know.
SOCIAL: Your homepage: A leading indicator of social success.
SOCIAL SEARCH: Speed up your social newsgathering with these Twitter search shortcuts.
STORY COMMENTS: The case for keeping comments. As sites abandon comments, The Coral Project aims to turn the tide.
TRAUMA: Journalists need to tend to the trauma we experience covering horrible news.
Industry News
ENGAGEMENT: TV and web-focused newsrooms are more likely to invest in audience engagement than newspapers.
FACEBOOK LIVE: Armed with analytics, publishers are already changing their Facebook Live strategies.
FCC: FCC retains media cross-ownership rules.
FOIA: Will a new law really make Illinois’ FOIA stronger? Journalists there aren’t so sure.
GANNETT: Gannett owns two college newspapers in Florida — it’s closed one and cutting costs at the other.
HUFFPO: The Huffington Post's midlife crisis. Love her or loathe her, Arianna Huffington woke the news industry up.
INSTAGRAM: Publishers flock to new Instagram Stories.
LINKEDIN: Secrets to Business Insider’s success on LinkedIn.
MOBILE: The New York Times is shutting down its lauded, younger-reader-seeking NYT Now app. How Google AMP will affect the wider web.
NEWSPAPER ADS: How retail ad decline is hurting newspapers — even in Hawaii.
NEWSPAPER CUTS: Layoffs hit San Diego Union-Tribune in restructuring. Columbus Dispatch employees again offered job buyouts. Buyouts hit GateHouse newspapers across the United States. Another Gatehouse paper in Florida moves to unionize. Torstar cuts 52 jobs, drastically reducing tablet edition staff.
NEWSPAPER SPINOFFS: Newspaper companies lag behind their broadcast siblings after spinoffs.
PINTEREST: Pinterest traffic to publishers drops. Pinterest's Instapaper acquisition goal is to "accelerate discovering and saving articles on Pinterest."
REPORTED.LY: If Reported.ly folds, social media will lose an important gatekeeper.
TRONC: Gannett sweetens bid for Chicago Tribune parent Tronc. A tech mogul’s fight to keep control of a newspaper empire. Michael Ferro suggested journalists investigate rival shareholder amid battle for company: The content aggregation network Michael Ferro set up for the Chicago Sun-Times is dead.
TWITTER: Twitter will open Moments to everyone soon. Inside Twitter’s 10-year failure to stop harassment.
VENTURE CAPITAL: VC funding is drying up for media startups.
VERMONT: Rutland Herald and Times-Argus in Vermont will be sold to owner of Maine's Portland Press Herald.
Is Your LION Publishers Membership Up for Renewal?
For many of our LION Publishers members, it's time to renew! Your membership includes participation in the LION Publishers Den on Facebook, networking and support from fellow LION publishers, our new newsletter, discounted rates on media liability and directors and officers insurance and more.
Plus, being a member gives you access to a members-only rate to the LION Summit – a savings of up to $175 compared to the non-member rate. If your membership is due for renewal, please go to http://www.lionpublishers.com/members/dues/renew to submit your payment. Those who opt for multi-year membership save, and easy, secure payment options are available via credit card or through Paypal. (Not sure when your membership expires? You can look it up easily on LIONPublishers.com.) |