Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

It’s been a remarkable year for the nation, and its press. Transfixed by the Trump phenomenon, election anxiety has all but consumed us. But soon, what has felt like a national colonoscopy will soon be over, and the press will march (or at least step) forward.

As we consider the most newsworthy U.S. press happenings of this year, let’s start projecting forward to 2017. Tronc may well disappear early into it, but in a sons-also-rise scenario, the Murdochs and the Sulzbergers maintain center stage, and the future of Gannett and GateHouse — two companies that collectively own almost one in five U.S. dailies — becomes even more important. Let’s take 10 storylines of 2016 and extend them into the year ahead....

Digital publishers may be pouring time and energy into cranking up their video operations, but for a lot of their potential viewers, text is still the way to go.

New data from Pew Research finds that, when it comes to the news, younger adults still prefer words over moving images. While 46 percent of Americans overall say they prefer to watch the news over reading it, that number is far lower for Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 — only 38 percent of that group named video as their preferred news consumption format. In contrast, 42 percent said that they actually prefer text (which they prefer to read online, of course). Just 19 percent of young adults named listening as their preference. (“Smelling the news” was not an option.)

Those preferences put young people at odds with those between 50 and 64 and those over 65, of which 52 percent and 58 percent, respectively, said they prefer to watch the news. Less than thirty percent of people in both those age groups said the same for text.These generational gaps in news consumption preferences join similar findings from back in July, when Pew reported that 54 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said that they prefer to get their news online — significantly higher than, say, the 38 percent of those ages 30 to 49, or the 15 percent of those ages 50 to 64 who said the same....

The Washington Post is enjoying a “remarkable” revenue picture, the paper said in a leaked memo.

The Post’s financial picture has been shrouded in secrecy since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took it private three years ago. So when figures do slip out, they often don’t tell the whole story. Still, they’re interesting because the Post is a rare legacy media outlet that, with Bezos’ deep pockets and patience, would seem to have the best shot at creating a sustainable online news model.

Now an internal memo got out that sheds a little more light on that financial picture. Yesterday’s memo, from Post chief revenue officer Jed Hartman, painted a rosy picture, saying, “We are a growing business.” The Post wouldn’t elaborate on the memo.

Hartman wrote that the Post’s annual digital ad revenue is a “nine-figure” business, which stands in contrast to the $60 million that New York magazine estimated in a recent profile. He wrote that total ad revenue is up year over year, led by a 48 percent increase in digital sales through August. Within digital, Hartman wrote that the biggest increase is in native advertising, up 275 percent; followed by programmatic, up 92 percent; and video, up 82 percent....

The 18-24 crowd has used the internet as its primary source for news for several years. Now it is specifying “social media” as its main source of news, with that niche overtaking television for the first time.

The information comes from a study done by The Oxford University Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. It looked at consumers of news and information around the world for its “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2016.” This is the fifth year it has issued such a report. It’s a fascinating read.

28 percent of 18-24 year-olds say social media is their main source of news, compared to 24 percent who cite television.

Since 2013, the number of people in the US who say they get their news from social media has doubled—46 percent now use social media for news....

The New York Times has embarked on a new form of storytelling to enhance its coverage of the Summer Olympics: Two-way text-messaging.

For two weeks, deputy sports editor Sam Manchester will be sending text messages from the Olympic Games in Rio to readers who sign up for the service.

Unlike email alerts or push notifications, these texts will give readers an informal, behind-the-scenes look at the Games, almost as if they had a friend texting them directly. Readers can also write back to Manchester. And while he won't be able to reply to each message, the responses can be used to personalize each reader's experience.

The innovation is an effort to reach readers on the platforms that are central to their lives, Andrew Phelps, the Times' Director of Personalization, told CNNMoney....

“We really hit a landmark this year,” Newman told the audience, highlighting how – for the first time – more than half of the DNR sample now uses social media for news each week. In tracking this trend, we’ve seen “enormous growth in most markets since 2013,” he added.

Key stats:

• 51% use social media for news each week.
• 12% say social media is their main news source.
• More 18-24s now prefer social media (28%), as a news source, to TV news (24%).
• 44% of the DNR sample uses Facebook for news each week.

Facebook’s news reach is more than double its nearest rival, You Tube (19%), although the video network plays a prominent news role in some countries. Twitter (10%) meanwhile has an impact due to its popularity with heavy news users and influencers....

Breitbart, the website at the center of the self-described alternative online media, is planning to expand in the United States and abroad. The site, whose former chairman became the chief executive of Donald J. Trump’s campaign in August, has been emboldened by the victory of its candidate.

Breitbart was always bullish on Mr. Trump’s chances, but the site seems far more certain of something else, as illustrated by a less visible story it published on election night, declaring a different sort of victory: “Breitbart Beats CNN, HuffPo for Total Facebook Engagements for Election Content.”

It was a type of story the site publishes regularly. In August: “Breitbart Jumps to #11 on Facebook for Overall Engagement.” In June: “Breitbart Ranked #1 in the World for Political Social Media; Beats HuffPo by 2 Million.” Late last year: “Breitbart News #6 for Most Comments Among English Facebook Publishers Globally.”

These stories were self-promotional. But the rankings, released on a monthly basis by a company called NewsWhip, which measures activity on social networks, represented a brutal leveling. They were unelaborated lists that ranked outlets in terms that were difficult to dispute — total shares, likes and comments....

Celebrities and gossip are one of the most talked about and sought after types of content on the internet. Many people will start their first website or blog as a celebrity fan site, then potentially turn it into much more over time. A great example of this would be Perez Hilton, who ended up turning his passion for celebrity gossip into a blog, which then transformed into a multi-million dollar business.

So, now the question is… how can you start a celebrity fan site of your own?Good news! That’s exactly what we are going to be covering in this article today.

By the time you finish reading through this simple five-step formula, you will have everything you need to go live with your first celebrity fan blog....

No need to seek out the news. Today, we can just click around on cat videos and find it by accident.

A poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans (62%) now get news from social media. That includes 66% of Facebook FB -0.10% users — a big deal because more than two-thirds of Americans are on Facebook.

The math works out to about 44% of all Americans getting news from Facebook. It’s a number that could scare users angered by the recent censorship controversy. In early May, a staffer accused Facebook of preventing conservative stories from appearing in the small Trending Topics section that appears to the right of the main News Feed column.

Facebook has denied it has a bias, but that hasn’t stopped the conservative backlash. Liberals, too, have complained about the power that Facebook has over the news media.

Well, it turns out that that social media does have a lot of influence when it comes to how people get their news. It’s not just Facebook. On Reddit and Twitter TWTR +5.59%, 70% and 59% of users, respectively, say they use their networks to find news....

From LocalLabs to GoLocal24 to Everyblock, hyper-local news startups have consistently collided with foreboding economics: Narrow audiences tend to be small audiences, and small audiences are hard to monetize.

But Ripple founder and CEO Razmig Hovaghimian, who previously made splashes with Embrace and Viki, thinks his latest project could build a more successful business model for hyper-local news — and several heavyweight funders are buying in.

"I want [Ripple] to be a platform where storytellers get not only recognition and satisfaction from it, but compensation as well." -Razmig Hovaghimian

EarlIer this month, Hovaghimian and his six-person team launched Ripple, a hyper-local news app that uses geo-location technology to help users discover the stories closest to them. Backed by Greylock Partners, Knight Foundation, MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito and other funders, Ripple has now launched in ten cities, including San Francisco and New York, and Hovaghimian says more locations are coming soon.  

 source of enthusiasm for Ripple is two-fold: First, by combining geo-mapping technology with a voting system that allows stories to “ripple out” to a wider audience, Ripple creates an opportunity to produce hyper-local news at scale — a big step toward business viability....