Facebook forges new partnerships with news organizations, Mic pushes its video series, the case for coding in academia and more in this week's Digital Media Mash Up, produced by the Center for International Media Assistance.
How Facebook could kill the news brand
It seems my prediction is coming true: Facebook wants news stories to live within its own app. That’s better for Facebook’s readers, who don’t need to click on links and wait for clunky external websites, and it’s better for Facebook, which gets to keep those readers within its own ecosystem and collect more data on exactly what kind of stories they like to read. It’s also good for companies like BuzzFeed, whose CEO, Jonah Peretti, says that “it increasingly doesn’t matter where our content lives.” (Fusion, 2/24)
Millennial news site Mic premieres first video series in 2015 push
Opening up a video division has become new-media companies' way of announcing their arrival. In the past couple of years, BuzzFeed and Vox Media have seriously stepped up their video games, launching in-house production studios with names like BuzzFeed Motion Pictures and Vox Entertainment.
Now it is Mic's turn in the spotlight. (AdAge, 3/24)
Why universities need to embrace coding across the curriculum
Recently, I spoke at the SXSWedu conference in Austin about the opportunity to teach coding across university disciplines. Computer programming is quickly becoming an expected 21st century literacy, but coding is no longer limited to the realms of computer and information sciences. Technology can be used to solve problems across a range of fields, but only if we have people in those disciplines who understand how to apply it.
Here are a few of the realities we’ll need to consider before we can effectively introduce coding across the curriculum. (PBS MediaShift, 3/25)
South African police repeatedly force journalists to delete photos
South Africa is synonymous with crime in the eyes of many--as evidenced by the recent mugging of a TV crew live on camera--but for the press, a more sinister threat to freedom lies in the growing number of cases where it is the police, in flagrant denial of their orders, who intimidate and threaten journalists, forcing them to delete photographs of police on the job. (Committee to Protect Journalists, 3/20)
As Twitter introduces Periscope, tech titans bet on live streaming video
Apps that help users broadcast themselves live from their phones are catching the eye of tech heavyweights and venture capitalists. Periscope is Twitter’s big entry into this realm. (The New York Times, 3/26)
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Main image CC-licensed by Maria Elena.
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