Insights, tools and research to advance journalism
API’s daily Need to Know morning newsletter provides fresh, useful insights for people advancing quality, innovative and sustainable journalism. Most of the items that we curate for the newsletter each day also appear here on the website as a cumulative body of knowledge.
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Fresh useful insights for people advancing quality, innovative and sustainable journalism OFF THE TOP You might have heard: Rumors floated in August that The McClatchy Company would shutter foreign bureaus (Politico) But did you know: McClatchy expected to close foreign bureaus by end of year, cut back national coverage (Huffington Post) Michael Calderone reports that […]
You might have heard: Gannett will buy Journal Media Group, which owns Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Memphis’ Commercial Appeal and 15 other daily newspapers, for $280 million But did you know: Gannett’s acquisition of Journal Media Group makes a lot of sense, Rick Edmonds writes. By adding more newspapers and getting bigger, Gannett is adding […]
Aside from checking for spelling and grammar, Joy Mayer outlines a list of basic things to consider when writing and editing posts for social media. Among her recommendations, ask yourself what the post is designed to accomplish and make sure the tone and context are appropriate for the topic. Make sure the post is as […]
According to a new study by comScore and digital advertising platform 1XL, readers in the U.K. see advertisements on local news sites as “more trustworthy and relevant” than ads on national news sites. The study included more than 3,000 people and found that ads on local news sites were considered 17 percent more relevant and […]
Slack’s former product manager Kenneth Berger says in order for metrics to be useful, you need to know what your goals are and what metrics you should pay attention to that are relevant to those goals. Berger recommends getting in the habit of regularly revisiting your goals, providing context for the data. Berger says: “Quantitative […]
Google’s recently announced Accelerated Mobile Pages project aims to make the mobile web faster, but Mathew Ingram writes that there’s reason for publishers to be hesitant about whether to jump on board. AMP pages would likely require publishers to abandon Javascript-based analytics and tracking, which Ingram says has the potential to heavily affect their monetization. […]
When The Boston Globe launches health, medicine and life science news site Stat this fall, it will be the third such niche news site for the Globe. Those news sites are all part of the Globe’s strategy to attract more national and international readers, Ricardo Bilton writes. On how the Globe decides which verticals to […]
Fresh useful insights for people advancing quality, innovative and sustainable journalism OFF THE TOP You might have heard: Gannett will buy Journal Media Group, which owns Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Memphis’ Commercial Appeal and 15 other daily newspapers, for $280 million But did you know: By getting bigger through acquisitions, Gannett gains more corporate efficiency […]
You might have heard: Google was expected to announce its own version of Instant Articles, with a group of publishers as partners But did you know: Google announced Wednesday Accelerated Mobile Pages, its answer to Facebook’s Instant Articles. Accelerated Mobile Pages speed up mobile page load times through a new open framework called AMP HTML, […]
To increase their digital revenue, Matt Lindsay writes that publishers need to add subscription levels at different prices to appeal to subgroups of customers. To identify those niche groups, Lindsay writes that publishers can use the audience data they’re collecting. While a one-size-fits-all subscription strategy can eventually plateau in growth, Lindsay says different pricing levels […]