Die Zeit’s efforts to connect with millennials, Android’s advantages for mobile journalism and more in this week's Digital Media Mash Up, produced by the Center for International Media Assistance.
How Germany’s Die Zeit is trying to reach a younger audience (while also putting up a paywall)
Last September, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, Zeit Online — the digital presence of Die Zeit, the weekly German newspaper — held Z2X, a two-day ideas festival in Berlin for people in their 20s.
People had to apply to attend, and Zeit Online received more than 10,000 applications for just 600 spots, Zeit Online CEO Christian Röpke said in a presentation at the WAN-IFRA Digital Media Europe conference in Copenhagen last month. Based on the success of the original festival, Zeit Online put on smaller events last month in cities around Germany, and it plans to hold another iteration of Z2X this fall. (Nieman Lab, 5/10)
Is Android the future of mobile journalism?
With higher-quality apps and a larger developer base, iOS is undoubtedly the favourite operating system for mobile journalists (mojos) in the Western world.
As Eliot Fitzroy, founder of Epic Tutorials, explained at Mojocon last week, broadcast-quality content can indeed be produced on both Android and iOS, but the fragmentation of Android – the hundreds of different versions running on thousands of different devices – has made it much more difficult for developers to work with this operating system. (Journalism.co.uk, 5/11)
Digital media world tries to decode Facebook’s latest algorithm tweak
It‘s that time again. Facebook is changing its News Feed algorithm, and online publishers and ad companies are trying to figure out who’s in the crosshairs this time around.
In what Facebook described as an effort to surface fewer links to “low-quality web experiences,” the company said Wednesday it will begin de-emphasizing links that drive people off Facebook to webpages with “little substantive content” and “a large number of disruptive, shocking or malicious ads.” It may also prevent people from running ads on Facebook that drive users to those pages. (The Wall Street Journal, 5/10)
‘We want to take the secret sauce from the U.S.’: How The Atlantic is planning European expansion
Like many U.S. publishers with global growth ambitions, The Atlantic has recently pitched up in London to expand international readership and foster closer relationships with advertising clients in Europe and Asia.
The London office will have 10 employees, half on the editorial side and the other half on commercial. Another two reporters, based in Paris, will create Europe-focused content. Anyone outside the U.S. will see the global homepage, which the London editorial team curates. The homepage is still weighted to American content at this point, although more European stories are emerging, such as how the Eurovision Song Contest will be extra political this year. (Digiday, 5/11)
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Main image CC-licensed by Flickr via Mario Antonio Pena Zapateria