Around the Wire: Newspapers Follow BuzzFeed’s Lead, J-School Moves from Print to Medium & More
Welcome to the latest installment of Around the Wire, PR Newswire’s round up of journalism, blogging, and freelancing stories from the past week.
1. Advice for Newspaper Editors: Pay Attention to BuzzFeed (Poynter)
Newspaper editors and other media executives gathered in Chicago this week for the 2014 ASNE-APME conference where they discussed trends in digital and legacy media, how to save community journalism, the importance of news literacy, and how to better serve African-Americans and Hispanic news consumers.
During one of the presentations, Amy Webb, CEO of Webbmedia Group, advised editors take a page out of BuzzFeed’s digital strategy playbook. A cross-platform approach, a deep understanding of audience and analytics, and specialization are just a few of the strategies editors must incorporate to be successful. Poynter has put together a great Storify from this and other ASNE-APME panels.
2. Four Ways to Crush Your Email Challenge and Build Your Blog’s Subscriber List (ProBlogger)
Second to fantastic content, it’s become clear that a strong email list is essential for blog success. However, there are four major challenges facing bloggers who are trying to build that list: collecting emails, providing the right kind of content, and keeping your email open rate up and unsubscribe rate down. Luke Guy offers steps to help you crush those problems.
3. From Free to Fee: How U.S. Dailies Decide to Use Paywalls (American Press Institute)
The decision to shift to a paywall model is a major one. It impacts not just site traffic and business, but also the news organization’s audience. But a new study from the University of Missouri School of Journalism reveals that publishers are not researching and consulting with their audience when making this decision. Could this be why paywalls are seeing mixed results?
4. Thirteen Questions About the Future of Participatory Journalism (Groundswell)
After moderating a panel on the legal, educational and practical debates around citizen and participatory journalism, Josh Stearns put together a few recordings from the discussion. The segments are worth a listen, touching on issues around net neutrality, citizen journalists’ safety and rights, participatory journalism’s critical role in human rights work, and the steps some j-schools are taking to educate students on this growing form of journalism.
5. Journalism School Shuts Down Print Newspaper, Will Publish Everything on Medium (Gigaom)
At Mount San Antonio College near Los Angeles, the school’s print newspaper was not being read. So a journalism professor there decided to try something different. Toni Albertson reached out to Medium, and the publishing platform proposed a partnership. Although it’s an experiment in its early stages and getting mixed reactions from media critics, Albertson’s students now are excited about producing stories and learning valuable lessons in digital journalism.
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Amanda Hicken is a media relations manager with PR Newswire for Journalists. Follow her at @ADHicken for tweets about the media, comic books, and her love of Cleveland.
