Tag: Washington Post
RJI Fellow’s ongoing e-newsletter personalization experiment yields surprising results
Tracy Clark, a 2015-2016 RJI Fellow, believes newspapers with editor-selected email newsletters would have better engagement rates if the content were personalized to each user’s interest. She is in the midst of a pilot study with a large U.S. newspaper, which is simultaneously publishing two email newsletters: one includes editor-selected news content, the other features reader-selected stories. The personalized newsletters are based on Clark’s Reportory platform. This is a progress report.
How to make online news ‘brain friendly’
Online news can work with or against the brain. When RJI Fellows Alex Remington of The Washington Post and media researcher Paul Bolls applied brain science principles to news design, readers’ comprehension, recall and engagement increased. We interviewed the researchers (audio below) to learn how to make articles “brain friendly.” It’s all about the “reading path,” says Remington. “Classify the … Continued
FL#142: Enlisting product managers and automating more complex stories
This week we explore the role of product managers within news organizations, and we find out how more complex stories might be written by computers. PART 1: Product managers for news Borrowing from the tech and business worlds, several large news organizations have integrated the role of product manager into their workflows. The result can … Continued
The economics of structure: Could structured journalism make quality journalism sustainable?
Structured journalism, an emerging and somewhat obscure approach to digital news, has been getting a lot of attention lately. The last three months have seen articles in the Columbia Journalism Review and on the websites of The Poynter Institute and Nieman Lab. BBC News Labs published “A Manifesto for Structured Journalism,” and pilot projects are … Continued
Tracy Clark’s take on 15 news aggregation apps: Part 3
NewsRepublic NewsRepublic was founded in 2008 by CEO Gilles Raymond. In March 2012 it received a Series A $3 million investment and in October 2013 it received a Series B $6 million VC funding. As explained on an earlier version of their site, “NewsRepublic is a global news app that lets you be your own … Continued
Tracy Clark’s take on 15 news aggregation apps: Is your go-to app on this list?
The news customization market is still very early and fragmented yet extremely promising. In the past five years about 20 serious players have emerged filling niche areas of this market, with some acquisitions already occurring (Pulse by LinkedIn in 2013, Summly by Yahoo in 2013, Zite by Flipboard in 2014). Big players Facebook and Apple … Continued
RJI announces its 2015-2016 class of fellows
From exploring journalistic opportunities for wearable technology to helping smaller community newspapers provide digital services for advertisers, the ninth fellowship class of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute continues RJI’s commitment to nurturing and strengthening journalism’s service to citizens and their communities. This year’s residential, nonresidential and institutional fellowships were chosen from among 225 applicants … Continued
The opportunity for networks: Trust, antitrust and sharing users
This is the fourth of a series of blog reports about the status of the news landscape and a challenge to create a new one. The series is authored by Bill Densmore, a 2008-2009 RJI Fellow and originator of the Information Valet Project. View the series here. Banks do it. Airlines do it. Phone companies … Continued
Is it time for the news industry to get smarter about advisortising?
This is the third of a series of blog reports about the status of the news landscape and a challenge to create a new one. The first two were “The future begins with P: Privacy, personalization and payment” and “Imagining the 21st-century personal news experience — and how publishers need to collaborate to create it.” … Continued
News companies as tech companies: Some venture capitalists say yes
For years, the drumbeat among venture capitalists has been that content is expensive and is not worth their investment. But we’ve seen a turnaround, and the question is, why now? The answer may simply be optimism. As Hamish McKenzie and Sarah Lacy wrote in Pando Daily of the return to content: Large funding rounds don’t … Continued