The Times’ attempts to wrestle with its digital identity was summed up last year by the company’s then head of branding as the “grandpa in a nightclub” problem. Avoiding such potential awkwardness, it would seem to follow, means either not going to the nightclub or being less of a grandpa.
It’s a vivid metaphor, but ultimately both the nightclub and grandpa are bound to change. For now, this tension comes as the journalism industry (legacy and upstarts alike) asks itself how much control it must concede to a digital distribution ecosystem built and run by 20- and 30-something engineers and designers. Even while new ways of producing and sharing content are certainly welcome, there’s a potentially fatal risk in abiding, almost desperately, by the conceit that youth is always both the medium and the message.
The documentary is being reinvented for virtual reality, but what challenges does this pose to content creators?
It’s easy to get started making your own GIFs with these easy-to-use tools for creative journalists
As Twitter turns 10, improve your use of the social network and reap the benefits
After dropping the paywall, The Sun goes looking for audiences where they are – and that includes Snapchat
The Washington Post has developed a tool that tracks the speed of its breaking news email alerts in comparison to nine other competitors. The tool, called BreakFast, has allowed the Post to streamline its own breaking news protocols and is part of its CMS.
Matter, the longform publication that started out as a Kickstarter-funded journalism project before being acquired by Medium in 2013, is now moving out on its own: Matter editor-in-chief Mark Lotto announced Monday that what was once an online magazine is now “an independent media company called Matter Studios.”
Blendle, the Dutch platform that lets users pay by the article, launched in a limited beta in the United States on Wednesday by partnering with 20 outlets — including premium publishers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Economist, and Time. It’ll be a significant test of its ability to bring its micropayment model to a market swimming in free content.
With the global growth of social media comes a challenge for anyone who uses it to report: How do you report on a language you don’t speak?
Spanish-speaking and Arabic-speaking countries have delved head-first into social media. When covering global events, you’ll find far more tweets in-language than not. Say a major dam breaks in Brazil. Few there are going to tweet about it in English, but in Portuguese. How does a newsroom cover that?
