Publishers: Your Products Suck PLUS Podcasters, shorter is better, don't be so self-indulgent

July 15, 2021

It feels like I am challenging a younger, more prone to grenade-tossing self. But the first two items in today's newsletter resonate with me. Well, they strike a nerve, if I'm being honest. For the first item, my good friend Damian Radcliffe does an excellent job of summarising the latest Reuters Digital News Report. Two findings that he highlights: In the US, YouTube is the platform where most people consume their podcasts, which audience research that we've done supports. And podcasters would be wise to think about how much time people are willing to commit to listening to them. There is a sense that a lot of them are too long.

The next item triggers a bit of PTSD. Filloux of Monday Note fame excoriates publishers for lousy execution of their products. The thing that really hits for me is that most of these issues have been around and known for a long time - site search, personalisation, poor UX. I'm not surprised about site search because most people assume that you'll find what you want on the site via Google rather than search on the site. But Filloux has a point in that e-commerce and streaming sites have cracked this, why not media sites? Good questions.

The Digital News Report, the latest edition of which was published at the end of June, is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the behaviors of online news consumers.

Think about YouTube as a distribution platform and think about shorter.

I’m spending more than 1500 dollars/euros each year on a bunch of subscriptions for news websites and applications. They include all the usual suspects in English and French, plus some specialized…

Site search, personalisation and that horrible ad experience where the text moves around with dynamic ad loads are just a few of the product issues that Filloux highlights in this piece. What surprises me is that a lot of these issues have been issues for years, and the technology to solve them is getting more accessible.

Indian startup Inshorts, which operates an eponymous news aggregator service, has raised $60 million in a new financing round as its two-year-old bet — launch of a new social media app called Public — continues to impress, the startup confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. Vy Capital led the new round in Inshorts, which has raised […]

Announcing the 22 successful news innovators selected from the 2nd Middle East, Turkey and Africa Innovation Challenge.

The Google News Initiative announces its next round of funding for this region + Turkey. It's always fascinating to see what innovation is happening there.

Architectural Digest’s global editorial director Amy Astley does not want the 100-year-old magazine to feel stuck in a legacy mindset.

A good roundup of their work on YouTube and how they integrating e-commerce into their content.

By Frank Mungeam • LMA Chief Innovation Officer Journalists are experts in telling the stories of...

“When it comes to telling the story of journalism and its value to the community, newsrooms might take a lesson from the nonprofit world. While journalists might naturally assume that people in their communities understand and recognize the value a local news outlet adds to civic health, nonprofits often explicitly answer the question of value via annual ‘impact reports.’”

Local news websites have come a long way since the first published pages on the...

A great roundup of excellent local news sites in the US.

The Atlantic's challenges cast a shadow over what had been an otherwise sunny media story about a recent digital success.

"We were not going to quote Trump making his absurd claims about the election. We weren’t going to quote any of his many false statements. We were not going to give them oxygen."