Yahoo Digital Magazines turn to professional journalists, not the crowd, for content creation

Oct 30, 2018 в Digital Journalism

While a growing number of news outlets call on the crowd to provide content, tech firm Yahoo is turning to an old-school source of news and information: professional reporters.

Content for the new Yahoo Digital Magazines will come from celebrated writers like former New York Times technology columnist David Pogue, announced Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer at International CES (also known as the Consumer Electronics Show) this week.

According to a post on The New York Times’ Bits blog, “David Cooperstein, an analyst with Forrester Research, said that Ms. Mayer’s focus on content was ‘going where no tech company has gone before’ and that the move would appeal to advertisers who are seeking quality and a more mainstream audience."

The post continues: “Ms. Mayer ‘is taking the road not yet traveled,’ Mr. Cooperstein said in an email, noting that this is the first time a tech company is using big-name talents to create content. 'The other folks — Google and Facebook — are more reliant on audience participation to grow content."

While journalists will provide the content, Yahoo Digital Magazines will of course rely on the crowd to bring in readers: The magazines are powered by blogging platform Tumblr, which has social sharing at its core.

Yahoo acquired Tumblr for about $1.1 billion last year, and announced this week it will expand Tumblr's advertising tools. What better way to sell ads around all that smart new content?

_Via New York Times Bits._

Photo courtesy of internets dairy with a Creative Commons license.