News

The Guardian’s new membership scheme: a viable business model for public interest journalism? Or just a paywall by another name?

According to many commentators, The Guardian’s new membership scheme is either an innovative way to avoid the pitfalls of the subscription business model or a sly new form of paywalling. But Amelia Loewensohn and Julie Posetti argue that it’s both an exciting option for media brands that have built up a loyal community of interest around their content, and a fresh tributary to tap in the multi-streamed news business model of the future.

Apple’s new iPhone 6: What it means for your newsroom

Apple has this week unveiled its new iPhone products to consumer and media fanfare. The company’s move to ‘phablets’ includes the usual range of upgraded specs, but the real news for journalism is in the change of the device screen size and its technological capabilities. Both have potential impacts for media organisations and the business model of delivering news.

WSJ’s Sarah Marshall on newsroom responses to Google’s authorship changes and the Great Facebook Algorithm Debate

How are newsrooms responding to Google’s decision to remove bylines for journalists in search results and the Great Facebook Algorithm Debate? The World Editors Forum asked Sarah Marshall, The Wall Street Journal’s Europe, Middle East and Africa Social Media Editor for her reaction to these debates and insights into the way The Journal is adapting.

Paid digital content: the journey continues

It has been nearly a year since the SFN Report “Paid digital content: The journey begins” was published, so we met with Valérie Arnould, author of the report, for an update on the rapidly evolving paid-content situation.

The Italian recipe for collaborative investigative journalism

“We can’t forget organised crime in Italy is one of the strongest in the world. …Therefore, to keep up we have to follow the same transnational and cross-border, interconnected, global approach,” Italian journalist Cecilia Anesi told the World Editors Forum. She is a co-founder of Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI), the first investigative journalism centre in the country, fully focused on international collaborations.

The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson on freelancers, Edward Snowden and the Arab Spring

Jon Lee Anderson is one of the world’s leading war correspondents. Currently working for The New Yorker, he has covered conflicts in Syria, Libya and Ireland over the course of his 30-year career. Anderson recently delivered an address to the School of Journalism at Paris’ Sciences Po university, in which he tackled issues ranging from the risks of freelance conflict reporting, to the murder of his friend James Foley, the perils of social media, and the role of Edward Snowden: “[He] is a spy, he’s not a journalist”.

How editors and journalists can produce better and fairer reporting on people with disability

Partnerships between advocacy groups and the mainstream media are a hallmark of the rise of Advocacy Journalism as a conduit for meaningful social change. And some of the most prominent collaborations seeking to facilitate self-representation for minorities have involved people with disability (PWD). However, as Shawn Burns reports, there’s still much work for editors and journalists to do in this area.

Case study: Australia’s ABC experiments with feeding youth audience social media-generated ‘news bites’

A new ABC project, Go Fact Yourself, aims to inform young Australians about current affairs via Instagram, Facebook and Twitter in a way that resonates with them, using casual language and vlog-style production.

Expo preview: Six things you need to consider when looking for a paywall solution

So you are heading to World Publishing Expo 2014 and your online department has asked you to look for the best paywall solution to enable your paid-content activities. In this article, author and WAN-IFRA Principal Associate Consultant Gregor Waller (pictured) says there is one factor to keep in mind above all else: Once you have chosen a solution, you are pretty well stuck with that technology; you cannot easily swap it for another one.

Tracking consumers across platforms is key to mobile ad revenue

To grow their mobile business, publishers need beautiful apps and good data – but above all they need a reliable way to follow each user along his/her daily digital journey.