Media innovation through experimentation (or check your assumptions!) by @Flipping_Pages PLUS Three projects to get your analytics ready for 2023

October 14, 2022

Peter Houston (who I have had the privilege of sharing a podcast or two with) looks at the value of editorial experimentation. It's an overview of a talk given by workflow expert Kilian Schalk, and one of the first points that Schalk makes is that when you create an experiment, you need to understand and critically assess your assumptions first.

What's New in Publishing has an excellent piece looking at the changes coming in analytics. While the piece is pitched at advertisers, all of these changes will also affect editorial operations. What makes this piece valuable is that it also has actions that you'll want to take such as making the switch from Google's UA to GA4. Don't wait until next July!

I also liked the piece by Nia Springer-Norris about how local news operations can use AI. I completely agree that one place to start is to apply AI to tasks for jobs that have been lost. When I look back at the newsrooms that I used to manage at Gannett, local news clerks who took in community events are gone. Most of the local sports reporters are gone. And I also think and thought then that rather than treat reporters like robots, let repetitive tasks be done by actual robots.

Plus industry news, including a report out of Australia that quantifies the impact of inflation on news operations. As we speak to industry leaders for the Pugpig State of the Digital Publishing Market report, dealing with rising costs - especially the cost of paper, ink and delivery for print products - is one of the major challenges in 2023.

Innovation is the go-to buzzword for ambitious publishers, but there’s no such thing as plug-and-play innovation. Experimentation is the key.

Test your assumptions because if you don't, you can waste time and resources and damage the faith that staff have in leadership.

In digital advertising, 2022 has been everything but boring. Namely, from a publisher’s perspective, the data-related challenges are quickly piling up ahead of 2023. Anton Liaskovskyi, CEO of AdPlayer.Pro explains more… Despite its quick bounce-back from the disruption of the last few years, the global digital advertising market is dealing with new, serious challenges in …

An excellent article that reviews three of the major shifts that advertisers but also editorial teams will need to address in their use of analytics in the coming year:

1) The loss of third-party data

2) A shift towards attention metrics

3) Sustainability.

This is a good piece for business leaders to start reviewing and planning the workstreams for now.

How you’re already using it and how it can help your newsroom.

I like the tack of this piece. Local outlets can (and should) use AI to automate the work of the jobs that have been lost.

The New York Times is stronger than ever—lightyears ahead of the Post in subscription, acquisitive, by far the most influential beacon of journalism on Earth. And yet a string of amicable high-profile journalistic departures has led some Media Cassandras to shriek. Big deal? No deal? Well, it’s the Times, after all, so it’s a thing.

Even the New York Times is having some retention issues.

Industry Headwinds: Economic headwinds in the UK and inflation in Oz

Press Gazette has been reporting on British journalism without fear or favour since 1965. Our mission is to provide a news and information service which helps the UK journalism.

The Press Gazette in the UK has just released numbers about that the number of job cuts in the news industry. The numbers are quite high since June.

Australia’s news sector has experienced the third largest market contraction within a single quarter since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest findings from the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI).

As we conduct research for the Pugpig State of the Digital Publishing Market report, we're hearing about the pressures of rising costs - particularly paper, ink and deliver for print. In Australia, research has found out just how many outlets have had to shutter due to inflation hitting their bottom line.

Mediagazer presents the day's must-read media news on a single page.

Substack works to re-position itself as a creator platform rather than simply a newsletter platform.

KPMG: Metaverse Awareness Up To 56%, As Paid Streaming Love Affair Cools - 10/12/2022

But "Just 8% have actually engaged in the metaverse, and only a third of those have spent any money there." Lots of folks at the top of that funnel, but will they move to conversion anytime soon?