Weekly Digest

Market Trends

2022 Trends | 2021 in Review A nicely put collection of round-ups of the year 2021, trends and predictions for 2022 in tech, media and consumer behaviours. spacecadet.ventures

The future's bright: 22 news industry leaders share their tips for success in 2022 Press Gazette has asked 22 news leaders from across the UK and US – to provide us with their media predictions and plans for 2022. pressgazette.co.uk?

Avoiding platform-dependence pitfalls in content-powered e-commerce The ecommerce boom was far and away the biggest trend to have come out of the pandemic – at least for digital media companies. digitalcontentnext.org?

In 2022, revenue will return to news organizations in style With the shift to the new normal comes lots of opportunities. One that is poised to grow in 2022 is how local and national media organizations will diversify revenue strategies, specifically by leaning into e-commerce. www.poynter.org

Marketplaces Year in Review 2021 2021 was the year of broken supply chains, Amazon aggregators, more advertising, Shopify’s almost-marketplace, and one unanswered question - did the pandemic boost e-commerce after all? For now, the world of marketplaces revolves around Amazon - it has doubled in size in two years. No one will challenge it directly, but a different paradigm might. www.marketplacepulse.com

5 themes that governed the news industry in 2021 2021 became the second year to be disrupted by COVID-19. Despite this, publishers continued to see renewed success and growth. Join us for a rundown of highlights from 2021 including the rise and fall of Clubhouse, the Substack revolution and the renewed customer obsession. www.twipemobile.com

French press is establishing itself as a trusted medium Dentsu Data Labs, the insights and data department of the Dentsu communications group, and the Alliance for Press and Media Data (ACPM), have presented a study on the levers of public trust in the media and brands. Seven determining factors were identified and collected in a white paper (French content) www.lefigaro.fr?

2021 in print: Newspapers' decline continues, but for magazines ... it’s complicated 2021 in print: Newspapers’ decline continues, but for magazines … it’s complicated whatsnewinpublishing.com

Chasing scale, as scale changes The pursuit of “scale” drives media companies to merge, such as in the Vox-Group Nine deal, but what constitutes sufficient scale changes when valuations shrink. www.cjr.org

The year advertisers stop boycotting news much of the advertising inventory on news sites is deemed brand-unsafe. A significant share of the ad inventory of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times falls into this category. For sites serving Black or gay communities, 70% of the ad inventory can be excluded because so many of their stories include words that keyword blocklists have deemed too risky for ads. www.niemanlab.org

The biggest challenges facing local newspapers — as determined by the people who work at them Ownership models, newsroom and source diversity, as well as the difficulty in attracting readers, audiences and journalists, all emerged as issues in this survey of newsroom employees. medium.com

Let’s Open Big Tech’s Financial Black Box Markets work best when everyone has access to the same information. That’s why the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires public companies to file 10-Qs and 10-Ks, and why insider trading rules prohibit trading on the basis of material nonpublic information. www.theinformation.com

It’s Not Too Late for Tech Companies to Spill Their Secrets Keeping track of tech policy debates in the U.S. was an almost impossible task in 2021. Well-intentioned government inquiries into privacy and competition got dragged into the culture wars, triggering a lot of high-drama political theater and very little sensible legislating. www.theinformation.com

Web creator Tim Berners-Lee on the future of data The acceleration of digital transformation necessitated by the coronavirus chaos is exciting, but there’s a responsibility for authorities around the world to keep pace with this incredible change. Those in power must set standards, encourage data to be opened and shared responsibly, and narrow the ever-widening skills gap. The quicker that data literacy in both private and public sectors can be improved, the better for?everyone. www.raconteur.net

The Third Web Web3 is not a mere technological update of the current web, a patch to bring in some new features and maybe fix some bugs but a complete technical but even more so a social and political redesign. tante.cc

From metaverse to metamedia, an attempt to decode a buzz Two possible scenarios are emerging for the future metaverse: on the one hand, the worrying dystopia of a world run by a small monopoly that will control our actions and ideas thanks to sophisticated technological interfaces (helmet, Neuralink brain chip), with an elite that will benefit from the “privilege of reality” that can escape to another planet if ours should ever fail. On the other hand, the promise of a truly participatory and creative Internet, including the appropriation of infrastructures, is a sort of new American dream on a global scale. (French content) www.meta-media.fr

Business Insights

How external products helped JP/Politikens Hus run a successful distribution service With the impending merger of distribution companies Bladkompagniet and DAO, Danish publisher JP/Politikens Hus is set to become the majority shareholder in the merged entity. wan-ifra.org

By dropping its paywall for a day, the FT lost out on subscriptions but found new, engaged audience During the United Nations Climate Change Conference last month, The Financial Times lifted the paywall across its site for almost two full days with the goal of transforming casual readers into paid subscribers. When the paywall was down, the site’s anonymous traffic was 28% higher than usual,?free registrations rose 200%?above average, and climate-related stories received seven times more traffic. New subscriptions, however, fell 12% during the stretch of free access. www.journalism.co.uk?

Axel Springer reports a total turnover of €2.97bn last year, down 5% from €3.11bn in 2019 Axel Springer reports 2020 revenue of €2.97B, down 5% YoY, with adjusted EBITDA of €653.8M, down 13% YoY, and says its US business is “booming” in 2021 pressgazette.co.uk?

Washington Post Grasps for New Direction as Trump-Era Boom Fades News outlet’s audience is down sharply, amid sector-wide declines, and subscription growth has stagnated as readers look beyond politics. www.wsj.com?

Launching A Newspaper During A Pandemic As the pandemic ramped up, Sipho Kings, NF ‘18, co-founded The Continent in an effort to maintain access to quality journalism across Africa niemanreports.org?

How The Times of India innovates across its printing process At India’s Bennett Coleman Company Limited (BCCL) product innovation was instilled into the organisation culture very early on. The publisher of The Times of India, India’s most read English daily, has introduced a multitude of innovations across its printing process in recent years. wan-ifra.org?

The Power of Data

Data architecture to create value for analysts and scientists How Mediahuis has built an architecture that can be easily adopted by data practitioners in its different news entities wan-ifra.org

Adtech vendors still tracking EU users who deny consent via IAB’s TCF, study suggests New research examining what happens after Internet users in Europe land on an ad-supported website and express their “privacy choices” — using a flagship ad industry consent management platform which is supposed to allow them to control the types of ads they receive (i.e. non-tracking vs “personalized”) — has raised fresh questions over the IAB Europe’s self-styled Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF). techcrunch.com?

Axel Springer Partners With InfoSum To Evolve First-Party Data Strategy Data protection and security top the priority list for media companies as they focus on first-party data, but their urgency has been diminished since Google announced in June that it is delaying its transition away from third-party cookies for a year. Media innovators are seeking to get ahead of the curve anyway. Axel Springer is moving to enhance its first-party data and ensure its security as the world moves into the post-cookie and enhanced privacy era. www.mediapost.com

How Data Scientists Deal with the Unknown 2022 is just around the corner, but the uncertainty most of us have had to cope with these past couple of years is still with us (it looks like it might stick around for a while longer). While we can’t do much to help with many of the unknowns you may be facing, a few of them are very much up our alley. towardsdatascience.com

Scaling Data: Data Informed to Data Driven to Data Led It is easy for orgs to settle into treating data as a set of tools or a team to implement. Meaning, the org thinks they just need to adopt a new technology or grow the data team in a certain way to fix their data needs. Often the sources of data problems are in other areas. www.reforge.com

How to make data work for your Enterprise Building a data platform, managing data as an asset and delivering value through analytics, visualisation and democratisation. These things are all part of the nirvana that is the data-driven organisation. Still, they are also really difficult, especially in combination. And they’re big. They take ages. If you get them wrong, you can be set back months or years of progress. technative.io

Does Personalized Advertising Work as Well as Tech Companies Claim? Meta for Business, Think with Google, and Twitter for Business…. All of these sites have the same basic goal. They want you to understand their tools and services as powerful and highly personalized — and they want you to invest your marketing dollars in them. hbr.org

French Senate report advocates the publication of algorithms A report by the French Senate proposes to make the publication of the algorithms used by the major internet platforms compulsory, a measure fiercely opposed by the latter. The report is dedicated to the Digital Services Act, a European law in preparation that aims to better regulate internet platforms (French content) www.lefigaro.fr

The Lawfare Podcast: Free the Data! The Platform Accountability and Transparency Act, sponsored by Senators Chris Coons, Rob Portman and Amy Klobuchar, would create a process through which academic researchers could gain access to information about the operation of these platforms—peering under the hood to see what’s actually happening in our online ecosystems, and perhaps how they could be improved.? www.lawfareblog.com

The Craft of News

Inside the Guardian: six years of candour, courage, and craft | Membership The Guardian ends its Inside The Guardian series, which gave readers a behind the scenes look at the newsroom, after six years and over 250 pieces. www.theguardian.com

Since the Taliban takeover, 40% of Afghan media have closed, 80% of women journalists have lost their jobs | Reporters without borders The arrival of the Taliban has radically changed the media landscape. Of the 543 media outlets tallied in Afghanistan at the start of the summer, only 312 were still operating at the end of November. This means that 43% of Afghan media outlets disappeared in the space of three months. rsf.org

World’s Press Urges Polish President to Veto Media Bill If signed into law, passing of a controversial media bill in Poland will have alarming effect of silencing critical media. wan-ifra.org

OK, boomer: Time to think of your PlanB Not all of us have the luxury to decide to dial back. We’re living longer. We have legitimate financial constraints. The prospect of pivoting and finding our next opportunity is challenging, especially when you’re in your 60s or 70s. 2022 will be an unprecedented year of turnover at the top of the news industry. It is already happening across broad sectors of the economy. www.niemanlab.org

The New York Times Has 3 Oscar Contenders The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has selected three films from The New York Times for Oscar consideration. “Day of Rage,” from The Times’s Visual Investigations team, and two Op-Docs are among the shortlisted contenders for the Documentary Short Subject category. The three short documentaries are among 15 films chosen to move forward in the competition. www.nytco.com

WAN-IFRA Press Corner

Technology Guide & Directory 2021-22 The strength and importance of partnerships is never more apparent than the topics covered in this year’s WAN-IFRA Technology Guide & Directory, where publishers can find the most relevant tech providers to our industry. wan-ifra.org?

Zimbabwe Media Freedom Committee Takes Root Gathering discusses the newly established WAN-IFRA Zimbabwe Media Freedom Committee (MFC), and its position in the media support landscape. wan-ifra.org

That's a wrap!

World News Media Congress 2021: If you registered and missed any of the sessions, or if you would like to watch them again, simply log back on to the?Virtual Event Portal?and click on the session you are interested in. Then, click on the red “PLAY” button on the right side. The platform works best with the Google Chrome browser.

Outside of interest

The average American would need to set aside almost 250 hours to properly read all the service agreements they accept while using online services. The service agreements of your favourite apps are an insight into the legal mumbo jumbo that exists when it comes to regulating the use of these apps. There are a multitude of agreements that go even further into depth about what rules govern developers, online cash transactions and much more.