David lafontaine's
Sips from the firehose
A site that attempts to render the internet down into one easy-to consume mental beverage.
The Equivalent of Google Analytics in 1928: Newspaper Readers Are Liars
Readers have always wanted candy. Even back in the “Golden Age” of newspapers, Gallup found that 1928 readers mostly … read the funnies.
Yes, Investigative Journalism CAN Pay. And Pay Well.
Mediapart in France is profitable because it gives readers what they are willing to pay for. Imagine that. Quick hit here for my students, who are increasingly upset about their job prospects after graduation. I shared an article from Neiman about the upheaval in the...
Why newspapers are losing subscribers: “failure of the last mile”
Web-native companies strive to eliminate "transactional friction." Newspapers? Not so much. I've been a subscriber to the LA Times for as long as I've lived in Los Angeles, and I've watched as the big beast evolved from a gray morass of 100-inch stories to the...
Ukrainian Journos Use Digital Tools to Fight Disinformation
The battle is against Putin’s propaganda machine – basically, Russian TV and their associated army of hackers and online purity trolls – and they are having to fight on multiple fronts against the every-shifting narrative of manufactured outrage, faked provocations and deceptive spin that is coming out of the Kremlin.
Institutionalized piracy in Russia – Russia’s Facebook (vKontakte) sued by music labels
Russian ISPs openly brag about how much pirated content they have - it's their market differentiator Years ago, working in Russia, back when the whole "Content Pirates" project was just the mere glimmering of an instinct, I was talking with the local techies about how...
Brazilian Journalists DIY a Solution: IndieJournalism.com
The business model here seems to be selling stories one by one, the way that Atavist or Byliner do. I’m not sure that there’s enough of an audience base, particularly in Brazil, for this to be the main support for long-form journalism. Additionally, this front-loads the cost of doing a story.