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Denverite merges with Billy Penn, but will be managed locally
Spirited Media, the company that operates Billy Penn in Philadelphia and The Incline in Pittsburgh, has merged with local news startup Denverite, but each site will be managed locally, according to CEO Jim Brady.
Poynter asks: Can Brady, a LION member, create the ‘BuzzFeed of local news?’
In an interview with Ken Doctor, Brady describes his revenue strategy, including that the three sites will do a combined 100-125 live events this year.
In other merger news, the owner of DNAInfo sites in New York and Chicago has acquired the Gothamist news sites in New York and beyond and is merging leadership. Gothamist greeted the news by deleting negative coverage of its new owner, Joe Ricketts, a billionaire who has bankrolled right-wing causes.
Haven't hit bottom: More cuts loom for newspaper companies
Cost cuts loom large for newspaper companies in 2017.
Canada's local news crisis and the way forward.
And in Milwaukee, "the daily newspaper is on life support and the plug is being pulled."
New LION podcast explains expanded role supporting publishers
Episode 4 of the LION Publishers podcast, hosted by ARLNow.com Publisher Scott Brodbeck, features an interview with the organization's new full-time executive director, Matt DeRienzo, who explains LION's expanded role in supporting indie publishers thanks to funding from the Knight Foundation.
Previous episodes feature Joe Hyde of San Angelo LIVE!, Howard Owens of The Batavian and Kenny Katzgrau of Broadstreet ads and can be found here. You can also subscribe to the LION podcast on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher.
News About Local Independent Online News Sites
MEMBERSHIP: Richland Source in Ohio, led by LION member Jay Allred, launches "Positively Local" membership program. Benito Link in California offers "locally-brewed news," plans individual donor campaign this spring.
PROGRAMMATIC: How San Angelo LIVE!, led by LION member Joe Hyde, is making programmatic advertising work in West Texas.
PRO PUBLICA: A Q&A with Louise Kiernan of ProPublica Illinois, who says the organization will ‘find areas where we can have impact’. ProPublica launches new collaboration project to track and document hate crimes.
Tools and Tips: Advertising and Revenue
DATA: Big Data’s path to ubiquity at media companies.
MOBILE: Will native-social ads dominate mobile? What you learn from subscribing to push notifications from 12 news outlets for 3 months .
NATIVE ADVERTISING: How four international news outlets are creating truly digitally native content (and making money off it).
NEWSLETTERS: The first step to an excellent newsletter? Stop calling it that. Email newsletters are the original social media channel.
PLATFORMS: The sometimes tense relationship of publishers and platforms. Should we fear the future of Facebook?
PODCASTING: “The radical act of women making media and owning it, too”: The (podcasting) future is female.
PROGRAMMATIC: How publishers can improve their revenue — Ezoic’s experts spell it out.
SPOTIFY OF NEWS: Discors piles new publishers into its pay-once-read-everything service.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: Trump bump grows into subscription surge -- and not just for the New York Times. Mother Jones magazine sees a surge in reader support. How Mother Jones used its prison exposé to turn readers into donors. Why Australia's Herald Sun values subscriptions, e-mail — not clickbait. Subscriptions: how the big platforms could help publishers.
Tools and Tips: Journalism and Technology
ARTICLE FORMATS: Is it time for media to move ‘beyond the article’?
DATA: The Associated Press’ plan to put hyperlocal data in the hands of reporters.
DEMOGRAPHICS: How demographics play into local news habits.
DESIGN: When bad metrics are good metrics: Things learned from redesigning a landing page.
ENGAGEMENT: How can community journalism avoid the trickle down effect of distrust? Reporting on communities that aren’t your own. Social journalism is about finding solutions with a problem.
FACEBOOK: Since Facebook made Crowdtangle free, more than 150 local newsrooms have adopted it.
FOIA: How the Indy Star navigated a public records minefield to break its Pence email story.
FREELANCE: RIP contributor networks as a publishing shortcut to scale.
NICAR TOOLS: Here are roundups, links, and other resources for those who didn’t make it to this year’s NICAR conference.
NUMBERS: Stop the "I'm not good at math BS." If you can't do basic things with numbers, you aren't qualified to be a reporter http://www.thefunctionalart.com/2017/03/you-arent-qualified-to-be-journalist.html
OPEN SOURCE: The field guide to open source in the newsroom. With its new book, OpenNews wants to help more newsrooms adopt open source projects.
OPIOIDS: How to address the challenges of covering the opioid epidemic.
STORY COMMENTS: Site that requires readers to pass a quiz before commenting on stories offers it as open source.
VIDEO: Facebook, rushing into live video, wasn’t ready for Its dark side. How long should your Facebook videos be?
WEB TRACKER: Klaxon, an open-source tool from The Marshall Project, helps journalists track newsworthy changes to websites.
WORDPRESS: New add-on turns Google Docs into WordPress posts.
Industry News
ALGORITHMS: New research shows students are largely unaware of news personalization.
EXTORTING GOOD PR: Company tries to extort journalists for positive coverage.
FACT CHECKING: There are now 114 fact-checking initiatives in 47 countries. The New Yorker’s chief fact-checker on how to get things right in the era of ‘post-truth.’
FAKE NEWS: Facebook has started to flag fake news stories. Obama conspiracy theories, brought to you by Google. Google's highlighted search results are often shockingly false. Google’s pragmatic approach to the truth, and its pitfalls. Google's dangerous identity crisis. Google isn’t actually tackling ‘fake news’ content on its ad network. Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda. People just don’t launch non-partisan news sites anymore: Updates from the fake-news world. The story behind viral websites that reject science. The University of Michigan is offering a new class on fake news and fact-checking. Two professors created a course on how to recognize bullshit. A field guide to fake news.
KNIGHT: How the Knight Foundation is helping accelerate digital transformation in news organizations.
MOBILE: A bug in Google’s AMP pages is inflating traffic metrics. The Guardian is getting 60 percent of its Google mobile traffic from AMP. Forbes rebuilt its new mobile website as a high-speed Progressive Web App.
PUBLIC BROADCASTING: Farewell, tote bags: PBS Passport draws younger donors as membership reward. Beyond-broadcast strategies key to survival of local public TV stations. After conflict-of-interest questions, NPR is tweaking its financial disclosure rules. Is it time for a new definition of local news?
TULSA: Celebrated heartland news outlet drops magazine, keeps T-shirts and soaps.
TRUMP: Putin destroyed Russia’s independent press. Trump seems to want the same.
TWITTER: Twitter’s New Order: Inside the changes that could save its business — and reshape civil discourse.
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.) |
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