Guiding media innovators toward solutions, around the world
Publishers can fill a big void in coverage, but they need the right people A media entrepreneur asked me recently if I was optimistic about the future of local news organizations. Actually, I am. Let me run through some of the reasons and end with some caveats. First of all, there is a shortage of […]
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Local and national competitors adopt previously unthinkable sharing tactics Recently I have been doing a lot of research about how news organizations have turned to collaboration rather than competition as a business model. This would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Editors and publishers jealously guarded their exclusive stories and competed to unearth […]
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Publishers are figuring out how to generate revenue with data, machine learning The covid-19 crisis has accelerated trends away from advertising and toward reader revenue for news publishers. And now everyone is talking about how to use data from online reader behavior and tastes to drive the business models for quality journalism. At an academic […]
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Big databases help news organizations predict who might subscribe or donate If it seems like this blog is turning into a book review section. It could be because classes have ended here in Pamplona and I am reading more to “sharpen the saw”. (Can you guess which book that quote is from? Answer at the […]
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Success is really the exception, but there are strategies to make it more likely Recently I read an enlightening book by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-prize-winning economist–Thinking, Fast and Slow. The book is filled with rigorous economic and psychological studies of how our instincts and reason mislead us, especially when we are dealing with statistics. His […]
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The best days are ahead for news organizations that adapt and innovate Jakub Parusinski is an optimist for the future of quality journalism, even in Eastern and Central Europe where press freedom is under threat. He believes the problems the media are facing–censorship, lawsuits, layoffs–are manageable. And he has a solution that is simple but […]
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Mediapart’s digital subscription model succeeded slowly, then spectacularly The French digital news startup Mediapart’s five founders—well known journalists from the venerable publications Le Monde and Libération— defied conventional wisdom of the time when they launched the investigative journalism site in 2008. The media industry graveyard was already littered with examples of failed subscription models for […]
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