What We’re Reading

We keep an eye out for the most interesting stories about Labby subjects: digital media, startups, the web, journalism, strategy, and more.

The Washington Post

Advance Local will use The Washington Post’s Arc publishing platform →

“Arc will power technology for Advance’s many sites, including NJ.com, NOLA.com, AL.com and Cleveland.com, among others.”

What else we were reading on April 30

Digiday / Lucia Moses

Mic faces an uncertain future in a post-Facebook world →

“Three sources who were privy to the numbers directly or from employees told Digiday that, as of earlier this year, Mic was on track to run out of funding by late 2018.”

BuzzFeed / Alex Kantrowitz

Real people are turning their accounts into bots on Instagram — and cashing in →

“Fuelgram creates fake engagement from real Instagram accounts. And it’s quite effective. Fuelgram makes posts appear more popular than they are, tricking Instagram’s algorithm into spreading them further, sometimes right into the service’s high-profile Explore tab.”

Business Insider / Mathias Döpfner

Jeff Bezos on owning The Washington Post (among other things) →

“They don’t need my help in the newsroom, for sure. First of all, that’s also an expert’s job. It would be like me getting on the airplane and going up to the front of the plane and saying to the pilot, ‘You should move aside, let me do this!'”

IAB

Nearly 60% of digital advertising budgets are allocated to video →

“Half of advertisers will increase spending on digital video, mobile video, and advanced TV, and two-thirds of advertisers will shift funds from TV budgets to fund their digital video advertising. Investments in digital video and mobile video have been climbing steadily since 2016 with over 50% growth with advertisers spending on average more than $10 million annually, especially in original digital video (ODV) programming, which is expected to grow by 68% from 2016 to end of 2018.”

Reuters / Paresh Dave

Publishers rebuke Google’s interpretation of EU privacy law →

“Publishers said Google’s requirement that publishers obtain consent on behalf of Google and its business partners in the ad-serving sector could enable the search giant to dictate what constitutes consent and which other ad services a publisher can use.”

Broke in Philly

Here’s the language guide for reporters collaborating on Broke in Philly’s economic justice project →

“Reporters working on Broke in Philly stories will ask the people we are reporting on how they describe themselves, or how they would like to be described in the article or broadcast. We will give people the power to define themselves — and then follow through by using that language in our stories. When referring to those we did not have a chance to ask, here are our guidelines.” —CS

JSK Fellowships

And here’s the new class of JSK Fellows at Stanford →

“Beginning in September 2018, the fellows will spend 10 months at Stanford working on projects that address some of the most urgent issues in journalism.” —JB

University of Michigan

Here’s the new class of Knight-Wallace Fellows at the University of Michigan →

“The group, which includes 12 American and six international journalists, is the 45th class of journalism fellows at the University.” —LO

Poynter / Daniel Funke

Is it satire or fake news? Depends on who you ask →

“It’s like, ‘OK, well how clear do we have to be here that it’s funny?’ Are you going to be like the Borowitz Report where it says ‘not real?’ That defeats the purpose of the satire because it makes it less funny.” —LO

Cult of Mac / Luke Dormehl

Apple News will offer an exclusive excerpt of John McCain’s upcoming memoir →

“The book excerpt includes a link to the pre-order page of iBooks. You can check it out inside the Apple News app.” —JB

Twitter / Cory Haik

Mic’s Cory Haik, in response to Digiday story, says Mic is not running out of money →

“1) Mic is not solely Facebook dependent (though we do our best to smartly reach audiences there, because, digital journalism + 2B people), nor is it running out of money (in fact we are on track to break even with the business by early 2019).”