Nieman LabParental Leave The Washington Post now offers 20 weeks of paid parental leave; here’s what other U.S. news orgs provideNieman Lab - Laura Hazard OwenThe Wall Street Journal: 20 weeks. The New York Times offers 16 to 18 weeks for birth mothers and 10 weeks for non–birth parents. The Washington Post is making its paid parental leave policy much more
Nieman LabWhatsApp Here’s how researchers got inside 1,400 private WhatsApp groupsNieman Lab - Laura Hazard OwenThey…joined them! Plus: YouTube beats Indian news organizations 65-to-1, and machines can make fake news pretty well, but it can’t detect it. The growing stream of reporting on and data about fake news,
Nieman LabMedia Industry“Publishers are going to live or die based on their relationship with readers”: How Quartz is rethinking its membershipNieman Lab - Christine Schmidt“It’s more similar to an Audible.com subscription, where you’re getting access to this huge library of journalism, than it is to a daily news subscription.” It has been a bumpy stretch for Quartz, one
Nieman LabMedia Industry The Los Angeles Times and its union now have a contract and (maybe) everyone is happyNieman Lab - Christine Schmidt“With this agreement, I am convinced we have assured the revival of The Times under local ownership.” The Los Angeles Times Guild was created out of burner phones and data journalism two years ago. (See
Nieman LabMedia Industry ProPublica and The Texas Tribune are teaming up on a full-time, Texas-focused investigative news unitNieman Lab - Laura Hazard Owen“This is not ProPublica Texas. This is a very different entity — a cobranded, co-managed operation that brings together the natural strengths of two different but compatible organizations.” ProPublica
Nieman LabMedia Industry The News Revenue Hub is launching a pilot project to help news orgs increase their readers’ loyaltyNieman Lab - Joshua BentonYou can turn loyal readers into members and subscribers. But first, you have to turn occasional readers into loyal readers. Everyone who’s had to sit next to a business-school student at Thanksgiving about
Nieman LabMedia Industry Twitter says it wants to solve the “journalists’ careers end because someone digs up an old tweet” problemNieman Lab - Joshua Benton“These are some of the biggest reasons why people don’t tweet. Which is why we actually take this very seriously.” Whenever the end-of-decade-nostalgia industry gets around to ranking The 500 Best Internet
Nieman LabMedia Industry“We repeatedly observed the same needs in our various circles of journalists of color.” This guide starts to address thoseNieman Lab - Laura Hazard Owen“We pass on information person-to-person in a fashion that sometimes can feel like an elaborate game of telephone,” Lam Thuy Vo, Disha Raychaudhuri, and Moiz Syed write in the introduction to their Journalists
Nieman LabMedia Industry Can Spotify be the one to finally get people listening to short podcasts?Nieman Lab - Nicholas QuahPlus: ESPN jumps into the daily flagship audio game, the podcast book tour, and more impeachment podcasts. Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 230, dated October 15, 2019. Mina
Nieman LabBrazil In a corner of Brazil, local reporters are switching to government jobs and the state is achieving “media capture”Nieman Lab - Joshua BentonA strategy of “capturing the main professionals from the newspapers, in their respective fields of work, and thus reduce the tensions of being disturbed by the journalists every single day.” “Memory is
Nieman LabMedia IndustryThe spirit of Gawker keeps finding new ways to die: G/O Media shuts down Splinter and warns staffers not to write about closureNieman Lab - Laura Hazard OwenSplinter is following in the footsteps of its predecessor, Gawker, in a not-great way: It’s being shut down. The site’s private equity firm owner is Great Hill Partners, which acquired Gizmodo Media Group,
Nieman LabMedia Industry Focus here, not there: These are the gaps in political misinformation researchNieman Lab - Laura Hazard Owen“Persistent debates about what constitutes ‘fake news’ and distinctions between other types of false information are mostly distracting.” Plus: A guide to covering misinformation without burning your org
Nieman LabCalifornia How are paywalled news outlets preparing to serve residents in California’s mega-power shutoffs?Nieman Lab - Christine Schmidt“If we’re going to have news that is paid for by audiences, we have to talk about the news that should never be behind paywalls.” In what would be the world’s fifth-largest economy by itself, at least
Nieman LabMedia Industry Tech platforms are where public life is increasingly constructed, and their motivations are far from neutralNieman Lab - Mike Ananny“Instead of thinking about platform companies as the next generation of newspapers, radio stations, or TV channels, we should see them as entirely new entities that shapeshift constantly. Sometimes they
Nieman LabMedia Industry Here’s The New York Times’ vision for its product team, now under Alex Hardiman’s leadershipNieman Lab - Christine SchmidtThe product team — people who float in between editorial, business, technology, etc. around the newsroom and keep the organization on track in developing useful products — is becoming an increasingly part
Nieman LabMedia Industry From live blogs to time capsules: How CNN is trying to put its breaking news into contextNieman Lab - Christine Schmidt“We needed a product to push out news faster to a consumer, even if it’s just one to two sentence updates.” What do you do when the breaking news is coming in from all over, all the time? Some people using
Nieman LabGannett Newsonomics: The Gannett–GateHouse merger is really happening, but expect to see more than 10% of jobs cut off the topNieman Lab - Ken DoctorThe number of employees soon to be cut at the No. 1 U.S. newspaper chain is about the same number as the No. 2 chain has in total. But newsrooms should mostly be spared — for now. The megamerger is really
Nieman LabMedia Industry A thumb on the scale: Research says hiding likes can make Facebook fairer and reduce misinformationNieman Lab - Marian-Andrei RizoiuShowing markers of content’s popularity makes a marketplace of information more unequal and less predictable. Hiding them strengthens the correlation between popularity and quality. You may have read —
Nieman LabMedia Industry Fundraising like reporting: How eight nonprofit newsrooms majorly increased their major giftsNieman Lab - Christine Schmidt“These skills are in some ways very similar to doing journalism. As that was impressed upon the cohort, that helped make a shift: It helped give people a mindset where they felt more confident and realized,
Nieman LabMedia Industry Which podcasts have truly shaped the medium? And do they fit in convenient list form?Nieman Lab - Nicholas QuahThey do! Plus: Apple aims for a “super-bundle,” Luminary shuffles executives, StartUp tells its own tale, and Dolly Parton’s America. Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 229,
Nieman LabFacebook Facebook will pay $40 million to settle a lawsuit claiming that it misled advertisers about the success of videoNieman Lab - Laura Hazard OwenThat advertiser lawsuit has now been settled: The Hollywood Reporter reported Monday that Facebook agreed to pay the advertisers $40 million, though the company maintains it did nothing wrong. Twitter,
Nieman LabMedia IndustrySubstack’s first media company is The Dispatch, a center-right site founded by former Weekly Standard and National ReviewNieman Lab - Laura Hazard OwenIt’s a step forward for Substack, which had been focused on individuals’ newsletters but is now testing out broader offerings for media companies. Stephen Hayes (former editor-in-chief of the now defunct
Nieman LabMedia Industry Here’s a roundup of the latest and greatest research on local news’ impact and futureNieman Lab - Christine SchmidtYou’re pretty sure that local news contributes positively to democracy. But do you have the research to back that up? In addition to this collection Democracy Fund assembled in June 2018, take a look this
Nieman LabMedia Industry One subscriber or 48,000 pageviews: Why every journalist should know the “unit economics” of their contentNieman Lab - Matt Skibinski“With the advertising people looking at the ad metrics, the subscription people looking at subscription metrics, and journalists looking at outdated metrics…nobody was looking at these metrics together
Nieman LabMedia Industry 12 local newsrooms, seven states, one big problem: How an INN collaboration is nationalizing the rural healthcare crisisNieman Lab - Christine Schmidt“If the Iowa Falls newspaper writes about its hospital for two years, it’s an Iowa Falls problem that Iowa Falls has to solve…And by the time you’re talking about a major region of the nation like that,
Nieman LabKroger Supermarkets are ditching their newspaper and magazine racks (and publishers aren’t happy)Nieman Lab - Laura Hazard OwenPicking up a daily paper at your local coffeeshop, grocery, or convenience store is a dying art — and a dying business. You can still get a wine advent calendar at an Aldi store in the U.K., but you can’t
Nieman LabFacebook Facebook is opening up a fact-checking loophole for satire creators. Hope all their motives are good!Nieman Lab - Laura Hazard OwenPlus: All those researchers who were supposed to get Facebook disinformation data will have to wait a bit longer. The growing stream of reporting on and data about fake news, misinformation, partisan and
Nieman LabMedia Industry The business case for listening to your audience is still murky (but early results are promising)Nieman Lab - Christine Schmidt“Newsrooms generally reported increased levels of engagement and higher-quality conversations with audiences. Nearly all of the grant reports we reviewed reported increased engagement.” That (still) doesn’t
Nieman LabMedia Industry A merger of chumbox-mongers might leave publishers a little bit poorer (and their websites a little less revolting)Nieman Lab - Joshua Benton“Gut doctor: ‘I Beg American Publishers To Throw Out This Ad Unit Now!'” I had an idea for a joke website once. It was about at all the gross, exploitative, soul-debasing ads you see at the bottom of articles
Nieman LabMedia Industry A soccer league, job fairs, and local news: How this Spanish-language news org in New Orleans reshaped its mission post-KatrinaNieman Lab - Christine Schmidt“When we see a need, we are able to get volunteers. We organize and make it happen, so people feel like they are closer to us.” Jambalaya News is one of those organizations that’s hard to pin down — because
