A combined GannHouse (Gatenet?) would own 1 out of every 6 daily newspapers in America. The goal? Buy two or three more years to figure out how to make money in digital.
“We’re ultimately trying to do this as small and nimble as possible so that we can be seeing what’s working and throw out what’s not — and quickly being able to shift in a way that’s a little bit harder when you’re working with a 150-year-old newspaper.”
When one news publisher has a story about something bad — a disaster, a death, or just general terribleness — other publishers move more quickly to match it than they do with good news.
“I really believe in the power of people to organize and advocate from the bottom up to create some solutions to this. I don’t think these solutions are going to come out of commercial media.”
A combined GannHouse (Gatenet?) would own 1 out of every 6 daily newspapers in America. The goal? Buy two or three more years to figure out how to make money in digital.
“We’re ultimately trying to do this as small and nimble as possible so that we can be seeing what’s working and throw out what’s not — and quickly being able to shift in a way that’s a little bit harder when you’re working with a 150-year-old newspaper.”
“The compulsory licence fee system is guaranteed until 2027, after which the broadcaster will have to negotiate a new funding arrangement with the government…’You could decide the BBC is a subscription service,’ Lord Hall of Birkenhead told MPs. ‘It would be very, very different to the sort of BBC you have now, because you would be giving subscribers what they want, not the breadth of the population.’ He added: ‘I would argue that’s the wrong model for supporting the BBC.'”
“…we are not ranking, rating or judging an individual article. The reason is that we fear such a mechanism, even if well-intentioned, could be easily misused and turned into a tool for censorship. Therefore, the [Journalism Trust Initiative] standard only looks at the environment in which journalism is being produced, the benchmarks of quality and safeguards of independence at the process level.”
“Slow down to speed up. Write code you can fix at 3 a.m. Get to the root of the problem. Make small changes often. Keep things secure. Favor existing solutions. Use data effectively. Treat unblocking others as your priority. Assume good faith.”
“We, like HBO, are advertising free. That remains a deep part of our brand proposition; when you read speculation that we are moving into selling advertising, be confident that this is false. We believe we will have a more valuable business in the long term by staying out of competing for ad revenue and instead entirely focusing on competing for viewer satisfaction.”
“For example, a number of news organizations are still not attuned to the need to have journalists of color cover the 2020 campaign. Imagine being responsible for shaping coverage for the presidential campaign and not understanding how fundamental to the debate issues of racism, identity and justice are going to be — and not understanding that journalists who live these issues are uniquely prepared to cover them well.”
“The inaugural ‘Summer of ’69’ issue will coincide with The New York Times coverage of the 50-year anniversary of that summer. As part of the collaboration, there are plans for five subsequent issues devoted to other historical events, significant milestones and cultural subjects.”
“For the first time in eight years, Netflix lost subscribers in the U.S. — dropping a net 130,000 for the second quarter of 2019…The company said the Q2 subscriber results were the result of a weaker content slate in the quarter, which drove fewer paid net adds than anticipated.” (You’re always re-earning your digital subscribers.)
“Maybe the formula for print subscriber retention includes increasing newshole to provide more national wire content and late previous-day box scores (that we all pay for anyway) and increasing the size of type to be friendly to aging eyeballs. What other kinds of content will inform and delight an older print audience? History and nostalgia, longer features, puzzles. They have leisure time to spend on these things that a younger audience does not.”
“Every single conversation I have had with a big-five tech company representative this year has been on background. It has become the default method by which Silicon Valley disseminates information to reporters. This is a toxic arrangement. The tactic shields tech companies from accountability.”
Nieman Lab is a project to try to help figure out where the news is headed in the Internet age. Sign up for The Digest, our daily email with all the freshest future-of-journalism news.
