Facebook whiplash: It now says local news will be prioritized
Local news publishers had been noticing a drop in their reach on Facebook, then were told that their ability to organically reach readers there might all but disappear.
Now Facebook says it will push more local news stories into your News Feed.
Here’s how it’ll determine what’s “local” and “news.”
Publishers, including members of LION, welcomed Facebook's new local news emphasis, but remain wary of its effect.
Related: Facebook launches local news section in Olympia, Wash., and 5 other cities. Following Facebook's changes, publishers can use these strategies to overcome the loss of traffic. Local news on Facebook: The top sites, and tips to succeed. Zuckerberg's latest changes show why news needs to break the Facebook habit.
The number of people using Facebook daily in North America dropped for the first time. But Facebook is still raking it in.
Layoffs accelerate at corporate chain-owned newspapers
Digital First Media made deep newsroom cuts at its newspapers in Los Angeles and the Bay Area this week, a year after an already severely shrunken staff won a Pulitzer. Layoffs also hit The Oregonian.
Layoffs, firings, shutdowns, and other forms of downsizing in the media industry are nothing new, but the pace seems to be picking up speed.
From the Guild: Layoffs, buyouts across DFM newspaper chain follow hedge fund’s profit-extraction strategy.
Navigating the digital transition is a huge challenge for newspapers. Absentee ownership by private equity predators makes it all but impossible.
DFM's fingerprints were also on the announcement that West Virginia's largest daily newspaper, also fresh off a Pulitzer win, was filing for bankruptcy, would be sold, and expected layoffs. A court judgment ordering its local owners to pay DFM $4 million forced the Gazette-Mail into bankruptcy.
All of this news prompted many journalists to urge people to "subscribe to your local newspaper," but LION Executive Director Matt DeRienzo questioned whether that gets at the real problem behind cuts in California and elsewhere: "What do you do if your local newspaper is owned by a company that's destroying it?"
Related: Local owners bought this newspaper back from a cost-cutting national chain. Next step: Bringing back the readers. Study finds locally owned newspapers did a better job with election coverage than those owned by big corporate chains.
Reader Revenue Summit travel aid available for LION members
LION is offering a limited number of travel assistance stipends to members who want to attend an April 6 Reader Revenue Summit the organization is co-hosting with the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
The event will feature speakers and workshops on subscription and paywall models for local news sites, and how to launch and/or grow a voluntary paid membership program with readers.
LION members Jay Senter, who successfully implemented a subscription program at the Shawnee Mission Post in Kansas last year, and speakers from The Membership Puzzle, the News Revenue Hub and American Press Institute will be among the participants.
As the Tronc turns: Turmoil in Los Angeles and New York
What a year the past month has been for Tronc. Its newsroom at the Los Angeles Times voted to unionize. Its new L.A. Times publisher was placed on leave pending a sexual harassment investigation. And its new L.A. Times editor was moved to a corporate job after losing the confidence of the newsroom, partly due to a furious quest to find out what reporters were leaking to media outlets covering the newspaper's turmoil.
Meanwhile, the newly acquired New York Daily News was without an editor and publisher, and then the top two remaining newsroom editors were both fired over sexual harassment allegations.
Jim Kirk, the former Chicago Sun-Times editor and publisher, was named editor of the Daily News, then named editor of the L.A. Times about a week later, a job he'd previously held on an interim basis. Then Jim Rich, the Daily News' former editor, pre-Tronc, was hired to fill his old job.
Meanwhile, L.A. Times staffers fear that Tronc is building a shadow newsroom full Of scabs, L.A. Times Staffers Fear. Who and what is the new L.A. Times Network?
The inevitable talk about some wealthy local buying the L.A. Times has resurfaced. And the New York Daily News was set to implement a paywall Feb. 1.
Related: ‘Anything could happen’: Amid newsroom clashes, Los Angeles Times becomes its own story. What the heck went wrong? As Disney-LA Times Spat Resolved, Paper’s President Never Revealed She Lived With Disney VP.
Fixing journalism's trust problem ... by really listening to readers
"Focused listening" can help address journalism’s trust problem, according to an American Press Institute report that highlights four examples, two of which are local independent online news organizations:
How Richland Source held an event to serve local mothers — and listened, too.
How a Boston nonprofit newsroom starts its listening by popping up where people live and play.
How The Tennessean hosts meetings with alienated audiences to listen and understand.
How Alabama Media Group uses simple text-messaging to listen to diverse voices.
Related: Local independent online news publishers can apply now for funding to use GroundSource and Hearken reader engagement tools. And a new initiative, Finding Common Ground, offers funding for newsrooms to expand existing engagement projects.
News About Local Independent Online News
HOODLINE: Hoodline is trying to "fix" local news deserts with a new automated news wire.
LIBRARIES: The Libraries Bringing Small-Town News Back to Life.
PRO PUBLICA: How the public fueled Pro Publica's investigations in 2017. In its annual report, the national online news nonprofit says its "next frontier is local."
RUSSIA: The Bell: meet the Russian media start-up fighting for the precarious future of independent media.
SOUTH AFRICA: Digging for dung, unearthing corruption: This South African investigative nonprofit could help take down the president.
SPIRITED MEDIA: Inside Billy Penn's, Denverite's and The Incline's pivot to reader revenue.
Tools and Tips: Advertising and Revenue
AD TECH: Trust in traditional media rises, while there’s a ‘crisis in confidence in advertising.' How Much Privacy People Will Give Up for Personalized Experiences. Tackling the Internet’s Central Villain: The Advertising Business.
MOBILE: Advertisers See Cost For Mobile Clicks Rise Steadily. 2018 Will Be A Year Of Reckoning For Mobile App-Install Fraud. The Ever Changing Face of Mobile Advertising and What It Means for Marketers.
NEWSLETTERS: Four Ways Newsletter Publishers Can Hit Open Rates Between 50 and 60 Percent. Why Quartz has gone niche with newsletter topics.
OUTBRAIN: In a shift, publishers can no longer count on content-recommendation guarantee checks.
PAYWALLS: Learning from the New Yorker, Wired’s new paywall aims to build a more “stable financial future.”
PODCASTING: Podcast Listeners Really Are the Holy Grail Advertisers Hoped They'd Be. Turns out people really like podcasts after all (and now we have numbers to prove it).
Tools and Tips: Journalism and Technology
CLIMATE CHANGE: At Climate Feedback, scientists encourage better science reporting. But who is listening?
COLLABORATION: How USA Today Network’s collaborative journalism project ‘The Wall’ shined a light on border security. How a Collaborative Project Supports Reporting In Post-Maria Puerto Rico.
CURATION: Why publishers should consider the “Smart Curation” market.
DATA: How The New York Times used Google Sheets to report congressional votes.
DESIGN: How journalists and developers can work together on creative solutions for the audience’s needs. Why Journalists Need to Think Like Designers. Five Lessons For Creating Good Immersive Storytelling.
ENGAGEMENT: Opinary is building new tools to help news orgs use polls to inform their coverage.
FACT CHECKING: How to Check a Source’s Statistics.
METRICS: Why Scroll Depth Is A Key Metric for Individual Pages and Article Formats.
MOBILE: Publishers eye push notifications in aftermath of Facebook news feed changes. How to design motivating push notifications. ABC News has more than 400,000 followers to its Apple News alerts.
OPIOIDS: Apply for all-expenses-paid training session on reporting about opioids. A photographer who once was addicted to heroin on how to fairly and ethically depict addiction.
PR: The city of Detroit is publishing 'propaganda stories' on an online news site it created.
REPORTING: Low-tech resource helps reporters focus on the story at hand. In an era where journalists can do much of their research on the Internet, how much on-the-ground “shoe-leather” reporting still occurs?
SECURITY: Two solutions for creating safe and unforgettable passwords (and preventing nuclear scares).
SEX ASSAULT: To tell the stories of sexual assault victims, it's time for a new look at anonymity policies.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Inside the business of selling massive numbers of fake social media followers. Twitter has been ignoring its fake account problem for years. Fake Followers? Exposé On Devumi Spurs Backlash On Social Media's Black Market. How to tell if you have fake Twitter followers (and how to remove them).
STORY COMMENTS: Better comments, codes of conduct and how to create positive online communities.
TRUST: Can the media earn the public's trust?
WRITING: Nine ways to conquer writer's block.
Industry News
ALT WEEKLIES: A tennis team, mansions and now an alt-newsweekly: The Washington City Paper is a tycoon’s new project.
AMAZON: How Amazon’s Ad Business Could Threaten Google and Facebook. It grew 60 percent this quarter.
APPLE: The iPad Lost Years for Apple's Media Partners.
ARCHIVES: New service will "archive the alternative press threatened by wealthy buyers."
BUZZFEED: Buzzfeed CEO is optimistic about Facebook's algorithm change. Is a Buzzfeed News spinoff in the works? Why Laurene Powell jobs buying it is a great idea, even if it doesn't happen.
CHICAGO: A toast to undercover journalism’s greatest coup, when reporters bought a bar.
CNHI: CNHI forms regional editor system.
CNN: CNN to shutter more digital projects in 2018.
FACEBOOK: You Can’t Trust Facebook’s Search for Trusted News. Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s head of news feed, has become an unlikely good guy to publishers. Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies — including bitcoin and ICOs. How do we measure Facebook’s video business? Facebook still hasn’t told us. How Facebook could really fix itself.
FAKE NEWS: Facebook Pushes ‘False Flag’ Amtrak Conspiracies in Trending Section. The era of “truth decay”: 12 things we still don’t know about our weird time. Facebook: Russian agents created 129 U.S. election events.
FOIA: Vermont's public records should actually be public. ACLU Challenges Lawmakers Who Block People on Social Media.
GOOGLE: Google expands controls to let you mute those annoying ads that follow you on every site. Google aims to get 'diverse perspectives' into search results. Google Rivals Ask EU to Toughen Measures in Antitrust Case.
GUARDIAN: How the Guardian US got profitable: pivoting from ads to reader revenue (and cutting costs). Guardian US reaches milestone with over 300,000 paying supporters in America.
HARASSMENT: Sexual harassment in the newsroom: An oral history. A Top Reuters Editor Was Fired After Sexual Harassment Allegations. Then He Got An Even Better Job At Newsweek.
HUFFPOST: Goodbye, Contributor Network. And thanks for nothing.
INSTAGRAM: What if a Healthier Facebook Is Just … Instagram? Will the Facebook News Feed changes affect Instagram? Instagram’s new ‘type mode’ lets you add text-only pages to your stories.
LIBEL: Judge tosses $50 million defamation suit against The Berkshire Eagle.
MEDIUM: Medium pivots again with hire of a top editor to oversee original content.
NET NEUTRALITY: AT&T says it wants Congress to pass a net neutrality law. Trump team considers nationalizing 5G network.
NEWSWEEK: The Publisher of Newsweek And The International Business Times Has Been Buying Traffic And Engaging In Ad Fraud. Chair of embattled Newsweek Media Group resigns.
PAY EQUITY: Massachusetts newspaper editor claims he was fired for advancing equal pay, but publisher, former colleagues push back.
PHILADELPHIA: Lenfest is helping to bring The Washington Post's content management system to Philly (and beyond). Out of Its Rocky Recent Past, Philly.com Seeks to Be ‘Indispensable.’
POLITIFACT: PolitiFact hired Democratic and Republican reader reps. Then it fired one.
PRINT: New paper tariffs could cost jobs at US publishers.
PUBLIC MEDIA: After leaving PBS, a California TV station struggles with its independence. New York Public Radio Demotes Key Exec After Harassment Scandals but Insists It's Unrelated. After Revelations Of Gender Pay Gap At BBC, 4 Male Hosts Agree To Salary Cut.
SINCLAIR: Sources: DOJ Close to Approving Sinclair-Tribune.
TEXAS MONTHLY: Texas Monthly editor wades into an ethical gray zone.
TWITTER: Bloomberg’s Twitter network TicToc is getting 750,000 daily viewers. Twitter now lets advertisers sponsor publishers’ Moments. News organizations, not blogs or commentary sites, are Twitter users’ most-shared sources (at least on one issue), Pew finds. Twitter Is Sending More Clicks To Publishers As Facebook Sends Fewer, New Data Show. Twitter Has Doubled The Number Of People It Says Interacted With Kremlin-Linked Trolls.
YOUTUBE: YouTube's Latest Shake-Up Is Bigger Than Just Ads. Small Publishers Could Be Cut Off.
Upcoming Events
AD SALES CRM WEBINAR: LION will host a webinar on customer-relations management software for local advertising sales at 1 p.m. Feb. 20.
AD RATE BASICS WEBINAR: LION will host a webinar on how to determine advertising rates and packages at 1 p.m. March 20.
YOUTUBE FOR PUBLISHERS WEBINAR: LION will host a webinar on YouTube for local news publishers at 1 p.m. April 24.
READER REVENUE SUMMIT: LION and the Center for Cooperative Media will host a day-long summit on Reader Revenue April 6 at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
LION ANNUAL CONFERENCE: LION's annual conference, the country's largest gathering of local independent online news organizations, will be held Oct. 11-13 at Columbia College, Chicago. |