A “twelve-pack” of media news items you may have missed while you were busy saving local journalism.
- Sponsored content is coming to ESPN The Magazine in the form of a sidebar called “Cold Hard Facts presented by Coors Light.” AdWeek reports that the magazine’s editorial staff will have full control over the content of the sidebar and MillerCoors will not be able to preview the content prior to publication:
While integrating a brand’s logo in editorial may raise the hackles of purists, such a partnership isn’t unprecedented for the sports media giant. A decade ago, ESPN partnered with MillerCoors to create sponsored SportsCenter segments called “Coors Cold Hard Facts,” in which an ESPN anchor asks a sports analyst a “six-pack” of questions. The franchise has since expanded to include “Cold Hard Facts” content on ESPN’s Web and mobile platforms. “We think that the notion that a sports fan is able to discern SportsCenter content from advertiser content on-air or a homepage takeover on ESPN.com but isn’t able to do so in the magazine is just illogical,” said Eric Johnson, ESPN’s evp of multimedia sales.
- Revenue at the Washington Post’s newspaper division fell by 4 percent last quarter:
The first-quarter earnings indicated that its namesake newspaper can’t shake the problems clinging to the sector, mainly a drain in advertising revenue and the loss of readers, who are reading news elsewhere.
- So it looks like this mobile thing might not be going away, according to a new Reynolds Journalism Institute/Digital Publishing Alliance survey which says that news consumption on mobile devices is surpassing print and desktop computers.
- The Knight Foundation will spend $3.25 million to fund a project to measure the social impact of media:
Despite advances in big data, surprisingly primitive metrics are still commonly used to assess audience engagement with content and its effects on individual perceptions and behaviors. Page views, TV ratings, “likes” and retweets alone don’t reveal how media influences people’s awareness or actions. This is a challenge for organizations that hope to connect audiences with important social issues and support long-term change.
- The Nieman Journalism Lab previews the new Reuters “river of news” website:
The stream approach has become somewhat fashionable in the world of news, said Daniele Codega, design director for Reuters Digital, partially because audiences (and publishers too) no longer have a fear of scrolling … Go to an article page and you find that you’re actually placed in the middle of a larger stream of content — scroll up or down and you’ll find your story’s text actually lives in a bifurcated version of the Reuters front page. If every page is your homepage, why not treat them all like one?
- Poynter’s Rick Edmonds on the messy, confusing state of daily newspaper circulation reports.
- The Huffington Post received its 250,000,000th comment today.
- The unique position of hyperlocal publishers in a real-time bidding world.
- What news organizations are learning from diversity partnerships.
- “Can you make journalism for a non-journalistic outlet and keep your integrity?” Ann Friedman investigates.
- Six tips on innovating in the newsroom from a panel at the International Journalism Festival.
- And finally, how publishers — and the entire digital media industry — indirectly benefit from porn:
ComScore data reports three of the top four search terms bringing traffic to Complex.com in February were “black pornstars,” “porn stars” and “hottest pornstars,” for example, though those terms dropped down the list in March. Meanwhile, “teen strip” and “rape videos” were among the top 10 terms driving traffic to Daily Motion last month, and searches for “horse sex” were a major driver for search traffic to blip.tv. Vice also sees a lot of its search traffic from terms such as “pussy” and “ass.”
These sites could easily remove those pages from Google’s index if they wished, but they don’t because they continue to drive unique users, which enable them to tell more compelling stories to potential advertisers. After all, in the volume-driven digital ad game, bigger is not just better, it’s a necessity. According to some estimates, up to 15 percent of searches are porn-related. That’s a lot of potential eyeballs if you can find a way to appeal to them.
According to GetClicky, the number one search term bringing traffic to AltWeeklies.com this week is “porn capital of the world,” thanks to this 2009 Phoenix New Times story. Is it too much of a reach to think some of those visitors come for the porn but stay for the useful media links provided here?
