audience strategy
Why did some publishers gain traffic from the Facebook outage?
Despite many publishers using Facebook to attract readers, some sites saw a boost from the extended outage last night. And some took a hit. Here's why.
Latest
Single point of (Facebook) failure
Facebook has wiped itself, WhatsApp and Instagram off the internet. And the longer they stay down, the more some publishers will be suffering…
Video
I miss deadlines. Would you?
Some thoughts on B2B newsletters, the endless pivot to video, and Substack's growing moat.
stress
Stress and burnout in post-pandemic journalism
The summer's nearly over, and as people return to their desks, we need to start asking ourselves some hard questions about how hybrid working will change our working lives.
Weekly Digest: the calm before the crisis
A week's worth of useful reading on audience strategy and online publishing. Plus a pretty photo at the top. Bonus.
Marcus Rashford, The Spectator hoax and the power of confirmation bias
For a story we know next to nothing about for sure, a Spectator piece that was never published has occupied a huge amount of media attention.
links
Lunchtime links: subs, Google News and the problem with Wikipedia
It must be the silly season. LinkedIn is getting into subs? Plus some useful stuff on Google News and a critical look at the media/Wikipedia intersection
X (Twitter)
Twitter Social Distancing
I’m stepping back from Twitter for a month or so. Here’s why.
digital journalism
Are you tempted by shiny things syndrome?
Are we letting ourselves get distracted by cool new formats, rather than doing the really hard work of rethinking our journalism for the post-digital age?
newsletters
Newsletters: problems, potential and pop-ups
Oh, god, look. It's another post about newsletters. Run. Run while you still can.
X (Twitter)
Fleets were fleeting, and there's a lesson in that
Twitter's clone of the Stories feature lasted less than a year. That should serve as a warning to those who love jumping on the early adopter train.
newsletters
The four things that define a good newsletter
Illustrated by explaining just how crap my own newsletter is.