The Pew Research Center recently released its “State of the News Media 2014” report, which contains some unsurprising information about the growth of digital news consumption and publishing.
Consumption of news on mobile devices and via social networks is still trending upward: About half of Facebook’s users read their news on Facebook for instance, whether they intend to or not. And while many of us still turn to newspapers—print or online—for our news, the industry’s face is changing. The Pew Center analyzed employment numbers at newspapers and at digital news outlets, and it found that these digital outlets employ about 5,000 full-time editorial professionals. Many of these positions were created in the last year. The print world still accounts for a bulk of editorial jobs (38,000, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors and Pew), but that number is trending downward.
Given these trends, it’s not surprising that news outlets like The Washington Post, newly bought by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, are expected to focus more and more on digital, or that there are a few newcomers on the block making waves in the digital space. For public relations teams, it’s clear that there is tremendous opportunity to start building relationships and working with new, native digital outlets.
With that in mind, here are a few outlets that we are keeping our eyes on in 2014 (from our smartphones, of course):
Vox.com’s editorial team wants to bring greater depth and understanding to the biggest topics in the news, issues like the crisis in the Ukraine, Obamacare enrollment and GM’s unfortunate recall. It looks like its editorial team will be looking for in-depth stories, backed by data and visuals – each of its articles is published with a series of “cards” that provide more context or detail around topics featured in an article. I am curious to see if Vox.com will succeed in building readership around this approach to in-depth coverage, and what approach their editorial teams take to covering topics other than trending, global news.
Medium’s articles are organized into collections (topics) which range widely in specificity. Musk’s article was included in Medium’s “Tesla collection,” but other collections include topics like “College and Careers” or “Today’s Tech.” Interestingly, Medium just announced a deal with ESPN FC to produce a collection of articles on soccer’s upcoming World Cup. While anyone can publish stories to the collection, Medium’s editors will choose articles to feature on ESPNFC.com. This is a great opportunity for writers to get their content noticed.
I suspect we will see more arrangements like this coming out of Medium. While its content can feel a bit like “inside baseball” for Silicon Valley—or a collection of TED talk scripts—Medium is attracting quality writing talent and its authors are producing interesting, thought-provoking content. When The New York Times covered Medium in March of this year, it cited that the site receives about 13 million unique visitors per month.
The site recently began accepting sponsored content from companies, such as its recent deal with Unilever to sponsor certain sections of the site. Upworthy may be straddling the line between viral content and spam, but it has certainly proven that media outlets can drive views and engagement via social media. More broadly, there is a lot to be learned from Upworthy’s sharing model and how it can apply to more in-depth, quality journalism.
New blogs and digital news outlets appear every day, and these are just a few of the outlets that we have our eyes on for 2014. I expect these outlets to make a splash this year and our team at Communiqué is looking forward to staying on top of these trends. If you have a favorite native digital news outlet, we would love to hear it in the comments!
Tags: digital news, online media, Pew Research Center, State of the Media 2014 Filed under: COMMUNIQUÉ PR, PR trends, Social media, Tech Industry