There’s been plenty of focus on how publishers are catering to advertisers by producing “native” advertising, including sponsored content — but a much bigger trend is brands and advertisers that are becoming publishers themselves. Read more »
Digital First Media chief executive officer John Paton says that paywalls aren’t the answer for newspapers, and that print is eventually going to go away — which is why the company needs to take more risks. Read more »
BuzzFeed has become the poster child for what some call sponsored content or “native advertising,” but despite the skills of founder Jonah Peretti, the secret to making ads go viral is not quite as simple as it appears to be. Read more »
Film critic Roger Ebert talked about how much Twitter meant to him as a form of conversation, and his enthusiastic use of it as a way to connect with readers is a lesson to journalists of all kinds. Read more »
Newspapers have been a blend of the serious and the entertaining for decades — why is it so surprising that a site like BuzzFeed could broaden its appeal into more serious topics as well as funny cat photos? Read more »
I may disagree with them about the benefits of a hard paywall, or the wisdom of cutting 90 percent of the newspaper’s blogs, but at least the owners of the Orange County Register are putting their money where their mouths are. Read more »
It’s a risky bet, but the new owners of the Orange County Register — two entrepreneurs with no background in traditional media — are pouring money and resources into the newspaper, and not just online but in print as well. Read more »
Founder Henry Blodget tells New Yorker magazine that Business Insider’s audience is larger than many established financial news outlets, but the company also lost $3 million in 2012 or almost a quarter of its revenues. Read more »
The Daily Mail, the world’s sixth largest news site, says it is not only growing digital revenue faster than most other papers, but has engagement levels that put it above Yahoo and even YouTube. Read more »
Flipboard’s new curation tools for creating custom magazines may appeal to individual users, but they will likely also appeal to advertisers and other brands — and therein lies the potential for real media disruption. Read more »
Flipboard has become a leading player in the digital news-consumption field, and now it wants to hand the same filtering and curation tools employed by its editors over to users of the app, to create their own magazines. Read more at GigaOM »
In buying Summly, a mobile news-consumption app created by teenaged entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio, Yahoo gets to inject some much-needed fresh thinking about mobile content, and also shows it is serious about change. Read more at GigaOM »
Eliot Higgins, an unemployed British blogger with no military background, has become a crucial source of information about illegal weapons being used in Syria for both human-rights organizations and traditional journalists. Read more »
Some of the larger traditional brands in journalism will probably wind up prospering in the new digital era, and some hyper-local ones will as well — but what happens to the players in the middle? Their future remains uncertain. Read more »
The Pew Center’s latest report on the state of the media shows the financial woes affecting the traditional news business continue, and this is having an effect on consumers — but there are a few bright spots as well. Read more »
Devices like Google Glass are going to change the way that we consume the news and other information — how will media companies have to change the way they think about the news and how it is constructed? Read more »
If LinkedIn were to buy the Pulse news-recommendation app — something a number of reports say could be in the works — it would give the corporate social network a powerful way of filtering content for its users. Read more »
The controversy over writer Nate Thayer’s failure to credit his sources, which some alleged amounted to plagiarism, is just part of an ongoing debate over how we use — and give credit for — information in a digital age. Read more »
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says that the social network is trying to create “the best personalized newspaper” with its news feed. But we all know what has happened to newspapers — can Facebook somehow avoid suffering the same fate? Read more »
Freelance writer Nate Thayer touched off a debate this week about media outlets wanting to publish content for free — but the reality is that the economics of content have changed forever, and the supply of free content is almost infinite. Read more »
The Washington Post has launched a feature offering advertisers the ability to place sponsored content on its site, and while this form of advertising has come under fire, other media outlets should consider doing the same. Read more »
Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler says that WikiLeaks clearly qualifies as a media entity, and argues that by pursuing Bradley Manning for aiding the enemy, the government is putting journalism at risk as well as whistle-blowing. Read more »
One of the biggest trends in media at the moment is “sponsored content” or what some call “native advertising.” But is it the savior of online media, or just another mirage in the advertising desert? Read more »
Google is trying to paint a new German law regulating news excerpts as a victory, just as it did with the deals it cut with France and Belgium . But it feels like Google is losing more than it is winning. Read more »
During his court-martial trial, Bradley Manning said that he tried to contact journalists at the New York Times and the Washington Post but got no interest and then decided to leak classified military documents to WikiLeaks. Read more »
Existing players in an industry almost always fail to appreciate how disruption will affect them or understand how to adapt to it, Harvard professor Clay Christensen says, and media companies are making all of those same mistakes. Read more »
When news shows rely on “viral” videos for their programming, without bothering to even try and verify whether they are real or not, all they do is push their viewers towards the original source of that content. Read more »
New owner Jay Penske is shutting down Variety magazine’s daily print edition and removing the paywall around the century-old tabloid’s online content. But will these radical moves help the paper survive against more nimble rivals? Read more »
Marco Arment softened the paywall around his iPad-only magazine because his content was not benefiting from the social-sharing effect that the web enables — a microcosm of the dilemma that many other publishers are also facing. Read more »
After a fan posted a video of a horrific crash at a NASCAR event, the organizer removed it claiming copyright infringement, but Google over-ruled the company — an example of a decision that happens all too rarely. Read more »
Google has reiterated a warning to publishers that its ban on links that are designed to enhance a site’s PageRank applies not just to paid links but to sponsored content and advertorial as well. Read more »
Twitter’s new advertising API is just part of an ongoing seismic shift in the way advertising works online, where algorithms and self-serve networks are taking over from traditional ad buying and further destabilizing the media industry. Read more »
Maria Popova, who writes and curates content at the Brain Pickings blog, will be speaking at our paidContent Live conference in New York on April 17 about alternative monetization models and the future of self-published content. Read more »
The Obama administration has shown what is possible when a government becomes a media entity in its own right. But is that good or bad for a free press and for society in general? Read more »
The head of the research lab at the New York Times says the newspaper has launched an advertising product called Sparking Stories that allows advertisers to insert ads into specific content that is trending on Twitter. Read more »
A British man has found some sympathy in the courts because Google did not delete false comments about him made on Blogger fast enough. Does his case open a backdoor to internet regulation? Read more at GigaOM »
One thing that Tesla’s’ battle with the New York Times has reinforced is how the balance of power has shifted in media now that everyone — companies included — has the ability to publish their side of a story. Read more »
Blogger Maria Popova has come under fire from a number of critics for her use of undisclosed affiliate links on her blog Brainpickings, which highlights how heated the debate over alternative forms of advertising has become. Read more »
According to Harvard business professor and best-selling author Clay Christensen, the disruptive effects of the web are being felt the most by the media and advertising industries, but the education business is next in line. Read more at GigaOM »
Dutch newspaper publisher Jan-Jaap Heij talks about why he decided to launch a mobile app that allows readers to subscribe to individual writers for a monthly fee, and how personal brands are the future of journalism. Read more »
