By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>

Nov. 8, 2016: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.

1. From surviving to thriving — The Star Tribune: The Star Trib in Minneapolis has come a long way from the daily that wobbled through a tumultuous period. It’s gone from hanging in there to an aggressive attitude that has transformed the newsroom. Here’s how they did it, with a number of concrete steps. By Kristen Hare for Poynter.
2. How Microsoft’s ‘Clippy’ changed the world … through #AI: Remember Clippy, that much-maligned personal assistant from Microsoft? That stupid animated paperclip you couldn’t wait to turn off? Yeah, me too. But Clippy was on too something — he was the great-grandfather of Siri and a whole new generation of AI assistants who are slowly becoming indispensible to us. A thoughtful ode to one really annoying (but prescient) critter, by Brian Feldman for The Vindicated.
3. Google + Facebook = All digital ad growth: Maybe that ad thing for newsrooms isn’t working out so great, after all. An analysis by Digital Content Next of digital advertising for the first half of the year shows that Google and Facebook saw their advertising shoot up more than 60% and 20%, respectively. Everyone else? Down 3%. That’s not to say individual newsrooms did not make gains — some did quite well — but the overall digital advertising trend is clear: It’s all about Google and Facebook. Better keep diversifying those revenue streams, newsrooms. Story by Peter Kafka for Recode.

• Get notified via email: Send note to 3toread (at) gmail.com

Matt Carroll is a journalism professor at Northeastern University.

By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>

Nov. 1, 2016: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.

1. Why digital newsrooms need to embrace premium: Digital newsrooms embraced scale, hoping to sell advertising — and that was dumb, argues Frederic Filloux in Monday Note. Instead, newsrooms should market their best, quality content to advertisers based on who is reading, not how many people clicked through. Focus on the demographics of readers, he says. It would be a total change in mindset for many publishers, but he raises interesting points. A good read.
2. A welcome return to badassery: Megyn Kelly of Fox fenced with Newt Gingrich over Trump, with Gingrich accusing Kelly of being “obsessed with sex.” Kelly suggested Gingrich get some help with his “anger issues.” Oh yes, that was fun, and a return to form for Kelly, says Margaret Sullivan of the WaPo. And it led to the wonderful use of “badassery” in a headline.
3. Ouch (but a funny Ouch), in a journalistic take down: Young journalist pontificates about why newspapers are doing so bad. Veteran reporter brutally and efficiently eviscerates reporter as an ignorant pup who maybe should keep his mouth shut if, you know, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. It ain’t pretty, but it’s a heck of a read. By Dan Horn of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

• Get notified via email: Send note to 3toread (at) gmail.com

Matt Carroll runs the Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab.

By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>

Oct. 25, 2016: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.

1. The newspaper industry’s colossal mistake (or not)?: The big (non-election) buzz this past week was a column by Politico media critic Jack Shafer, who argued that newspapers screwed up — they stood have stuck with their strengths (print), rather than chase digital dollars, which has been a bust for most. His column sparked immediate pushback from a number of people, including Fortune’s Mathew Ingram, who argued that any decline in newspapers’ fortunes was only accelerated by the Internet, not caused by it, and Steve Buttry, who said newsrooms’ problem was being way too defensive, rather than aggressivve. Lots of interesting comments here.
2. How the Web became unreadable (it’s a design thing): What I know about design can fit into a thimble, but this was interesting. Kevin Marks of Backchannel is a dev who thought his eyesight was going, because he was finding it more and more difficult to read text on his phone and computer. Nope. “There’s a widespread movement in design circles to reduce the contrast between text and background, making type harder to read. Apple is guilty. Google is, too. So is Twitter.” So if you too are having a problem reading your phone, don’t blame your aging eyesight. It’s those damn designers. 😉
3. Empathetic journalism for the right: The pillar of Trump’s support is the “angry, underemployed, conservative, white man,” says Jeff Jarvis of CUNY. And this is a group that has not been served well by the media, he argues. To better understand this group, the media needs to listen, with “ empathy — empathy not with Trump’s racism, misogyny, and hatred, of course, but with the real lives of at least some of the people who are considering voting for him.” An interesting essay on how to reach a group that seems to have totally turned away from main-stream media.

A personal note: After 2–½ wonderful years at the MIT Media Lab, I’ve joined Northeastern University as a professor in the journalism department, to both teach and start some other initiatives. I’m very excited about my new challenges.

• Get notified via email: Send note to 3toread (at) gmail.com

Matt Carroll runs the Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab.

By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>

Oct. 12, 2016: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.com.

1. Yahoo: We were just following orders: Margaret Sullivan, the public editor of the Washington Post, eviscerates Yahoo (rightly) for secretly letting the government read your emails. It’s a sordid tale of corporate cravenness, especially when balanced against the far-more principled stand of Apple.
2. Can an app making staying in touch too easy?: “Engagement” is a word heard constantly in newsrooms. But is there a downside to creating apps that promise to engage ever more easily? Are they leading to commoditization of “warm feelings,” as suggested by Kaveh Waddell in his piece for The Atlantic. Are they perhaps even increasing disengagement? Interesting reflections in a piece about a new app called Thoughts.
3. When social media becomes a newsroom’s digital strategy: The strained relationship between newsrooms and platforms such as Facebook has been mostly framed in a binary way — good or bad, in or out. But Greg Piechota of the Harvard Business School takes a much more nuanced view — or views. A newsroom’s relationship with platforms should be part of a broader business strategy, and levels of engagement with platforms should vary accordingly, he writes. An interesting look that encourages editors to take a much hard look at what they really want before they decide on how to deal with platforms.

• Get notified via email: Send note to 3toread (at) gmail.com

Matt Carroll runs the Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab.