Simon Owens | Nieman Journalism Lab

Articles by Simon Owens

Simon Owens is a contributor to the Nieman Journalism Lab. He was previously director of PR for JESS3 and is based in Washington, DC, and is a former assistant managing editor at US News & World Report. You can read his blog or email him at simonowens@gmail.com.

@simonowens

May 20, 2015

Crossing the streams: Why competing publications are deciding to team up on podcasts

Low financial risk and a desire for word-of-mouth sharing have led news sites to collaborate, sharing audience and infrastructure.

March 25, 2015

How a hobby foreign affairs blog became a paywalled news destination — and a business

World Politics Review has grown from one man’s side project to a small news operation supported by a niche paywall.

February 6, 2015

Slate’s podcast audience has tripled in a year, and its bet on audio over video continues to pay off

With 6 million downloads a month and a growing set of live events, Slate is showing one potential path for publishers in the post-Serial world: using conversation to build connection.

Shuffle wants to use Tinder-style swiping to learn what news you want on your phone

It’s one of a number of new news apps trying to reinvent mobile news around a card metaphor.

December 10, 2014

From silos to aggregators: On mobile, apps that cross news org boundaries continue to have a pull

Publishers thought mobile devices might let them retake control of the distribution channel. But they haven’t had as much success as they’d hoped for driving users to their single-source apps.

November 17, 2014

It’s small touches that can make a difference in New York’s layouts

Footnotes and floating drones: The magazine is working on putting a little more pizzazz into its feature stories’ presentation online.

February 21, 2012

How ‘Grammar Girl’ turned a single hobby podcast into a growing media network

Once Mignon Fogarty developed a formula for an engaging five-minute podcast, extensions into other formats and other subjects came naturally.

December 14, 2011

NPR’s StateImpact project explores regional topics through focused, data-driven journalism

The network is taking the resources of a national news organization and applying them to the local level.

November 22, 2011

How a photographer generated over $100,000 through Facebook

When your customers are your advertisers, a hobby can become a business.

Is the Huffington Post reinventing the art of liveblogging?

How the “Internet newspaper” is building the future of context, one update at a time.

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