AdAge: Facebook's Subscription Plan Gives Publishers Hope at Last

A new development in Facebook will allow publishers to charge a paywall for Instant Articles. This will help publishers in that they will be able to charge for articles that are accessed on Facebook's website. The reason for the access on Facebook itself was to improve time to the article, since readers stay within the social network. This has proven to be the preferred format of social media readers, but has created a problem for actual monetization. Newspapers will now make money off of Instant Articles.

Perhaps traditional newspaper companies will continue to adapt so they have a strong presence in the digital news focused world.



http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-s-subscription-plan-publishers-hope/309819/

Facebook and the Commodification of News

By Blaire Townshend

A recent article on Wired by Julia Greenberg outlines the symbiotic relationship that currently exists between Facebook and news content creators. In recent years, Facebook has become a major content outlet for news companies, and with good reason—as the article states, "600 million people see a news story on Facebook each week." However, Greenberg claims that Facebook is misleading news content creators regarding the benefits of targeting their vast online audience, and that it is using its current market dominance to acquire this rich content: "It's false hope, or at its worst, a threat."

Media companies feel compelled to put their content on Facebook because of the site's astounding membership numbers. But who does this best serve? It certainly benefits Facebook, as their users' are exposed to experiential, engaging content that Facebook does not have to create. Facebook is currently capitalizing on the potential of such news content, and has developed the following initiatives to do so:

• Instant Articles: decreases loading time on users' phones
• Live: allows users to interact with content subjects in real time
• 360 Degree Video: allows users to experience news content as if they were there
• API: allows users to communicate with a "newsbot" in Facebook Messenger

These programs greatly enhance user experience. Yet Greenberg argues that Facebook has used these programs to become a "crucial distribution platform" for news companies, and has thus made itself indispensable to these companies—and in turn made them dependent upon Facebook to reach their audiences. To me, this sounds familiar—Google has similarly used its dominance of the online search market to ensure that companies have to go through their system (and pay them) to get business. Essentially, Facebook has leveraged its power and insured that the relationship between itself (as distributor) and news companies (as content creators) is inherently unequal.

 This unequal distribution of power in turn ensures that Facebook has control over the content that is created—after all, they need not disseminate what they do not approve of, and can refuse to promote content that goes against their own ends. For example, Greenberg cites the creation of the above Facebook programs as being responsible for the decisions that news content creators are making—their content is conceived and structured to cater to these programs.

To me, this is a concerning development. Greenberg argues that the problem here is that news companies must use up valuable financial and human resources to develop suitable content. I, on the other hand, am more concerned with the ethical implications of the issue. Facebook's apparent power over the creation of news content is just one more element that biases news content creators away from what is "relevant" and "true" towards what is palatable to one company. Of course, a plethora of other business, political, and religious biases already plague the ideal of unadulterated news content. It is for this reason, however, that one more influencing factor is, in my opinion, distinctly unwelcome.


Greenberg, Julia. "Facebook Has Seized the Media, and That's Bad News for Everyone But Facebook." Wired. 13 Apr. 2016. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. 

The End of the News Website

NowThis is a young media and news company that exclusively publishes its content on social media platforms. After being a news startup like many others, in february 2015 they decided to take their website with content offline and focus on tailored videos through external channels. This DIGIDAY article about how NowThis tries to crack mobile video made me generally think about the future of media businesses, websites and their mobile publishing channels.

"NowThis, founded by former Huffington Post execs Ken Lerer and Eric Hippeau and backed by $5 million in venture capital, plays to the sensibilities of an always-on, always-social, always-sharing audience." That's why they optimize their video content, with a goal of 15-20 daily videos published, for mobile platforms and screens. With a team of more than 30 editors and content creators in their New York office they are constantly producing news for a young generation of media consumers.

In my opinion, this is further intensifying the battle about the future of the news industry. Traditional players are not only challenged by how to monetize their content in a digital world. The concept of a website with paywall, also known as "walled garden", is still an experiment to many while startups like NowThis are already moving beyond this and claim that a website is out of date.
There are numerous young companies like Circa, Quartz, or Insider that are innovating distribution and content creation.  Insider for example is a Business Insider spinn-off from the German media conglomerate Springer, starting exclusively with a Facebook page. Bild Online, the web spinn-off of Germany's most popular daily newspaper produces their own daily news in a smartphone screen format. What you can observe there is that not only the distribution of content is changing, but the entire storytelling. Original content from print or web media is not just cut down to make it fit into another platform like Instagram or Snapchat. NowThis and its ambitious peers are creating original content individually for all relevant mobile platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and Kik. That's how they are able to respect the particular cultures, tones, and follow the best practice success codes of every platform.

Mobile is a great opportunity for innovative news companies but it is also an additional stress factor that challenges traditional players.

Why You Shouldn't Escape Into Social Media To Avoid Holiday Stress

As media penetrates throughout our life in various aspects, we become more and more dependent on it and always unconsciously follow the message it delivers. According to Dr. Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, social media is full of all kinds of anxiety and it is liable to increase our anxiety during stressful times. Take the terrorist attacks from the past to nowadays as examples, the 9.11 attack, the earthquakes and missing fight MH370, especially the recent terrorist attacks in Paris; they are troublesome when experienced online. No one says to avoid the news, but for terrifying things to happen, social media always makes it easy for the most intense elements to occur as all the experts and social activists keep updating the tragic news with violent imagery, outraged commentary and so on.

Gradually, people start to feel they are unsafe and live in a very scary place on earth. Thanks to the propagation of our smartphones and various apps, our upcoming holiday season is likely to be surrounded by anxiety and frustration. For people live in New York, a relaxing weekend is not longer about picnic, movies at Time Square or a job at Central Park because people are scared that the terrorists are going to bomb the area. Certainly, some degree of consciousness and alertness are helpful when planning on trips, but being blindly scared about the world and suspect that danger sticks around us is not a healthy thought and eventually will paralyze our ability to make correct judgement as we become too paranoid.

As Dr. Anne Marie Albano, director of the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders, said that "What happens to individuals who may be depressed or anxious, they develop a bias to selectively find information that validates what they're feeling or fearing." In another words, you feel anxious, thus you unconsciously tend to focus more on negative feelings online.

However, holidays are supposed to be celebrating and enjoying; therefore, experts provided several tips to maintain a healthy mind:

1. We need to admit the fact that flights will get delayed; a good way to pacify ourselves is to download some books and movies while waiting or on flight.

2. Talk to friends and family about our concerns; this will help us to relieve stress as we spill out our frustration and worries; by hearing others with the same anxiety, we will have a feeling of alliance and being helped.

3. Go outside for fresh air. When you see the sun is still up high in the sky, you know today will be a beautiful day.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/social-media-anxiety_56534766e4b0d4093a587400

The New York Times Gets Instagram!

In the face of hyper-digitialization, one could say that the newspapers struggled the most to find ways to survive. It was no exception for the worldly renowned company like the New York Times in its 160-year history. Last year was especially difficult with the executive editor Jill Abramson suddenly fired and leak of an internal report how the paper has been struggling to keep up with digital trends.

Well, it seems like this year has brought a fresh scene of change for the beloved newspaper company. Earlier this week, the Times got -- drumroll please -- Instagram! 

Already with 27.9k followers in four days, they have been posting photographs and snippets from their articles on the theme of "Beginnings" as exemplified by their first post on Insta:

On the company's new presence in social media, the new executive editor, Alexandra MacCallum said, "It's raising our profile with a different set of people than we're used to reaching, and I think that's a really important thing for the Times going forward." (source: Mashable article) 

So what does this mean for the Times and social media in the long run? People have increasingly been using social media as a source of their news feed (literally), and does the Times' Instagram acknowledge that? Is it simply a way to reach out to and engage more variety of audience for them? Or, is this a new way for the people get the real news fed into their minds while spending infinite hours on Instagram? How will the stories be curated anyways?

So many questions aside, many are responding with warm welcoming into their Insta world, instead of raising their eyebrows. I have a gut feeling that we could be witnessing a milestone moment in the history of news and journalism.