Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Chris.
User needs are at the heart of building a true bond with your audience – one that is based on trust and value. The new User Needs Model shows that it pays off to make fewer ‘Update me’ articles and seek a better balance of coverage across all needs, preferences and pain points of your website visitors.
In this whitepaper, we provide tools, techniques and examples, showing you how the model can work for you.
Today’s Media Roundup is brought to you by Smartocto. (Book this ad slot)
Automation vs. AI: What publishers need to know
Our very own Peter Houston is about to release a report into AI for publishers, as trailed in our latest episode. Here, he outlines many of the tangible benefits that come with embracing the new technology, as well as doing some myth-busting about what is and isn’t AI. For one thing, he points out that when we talk about artificial intelligence we’re actually speaking of a large number of tools:
“What ties this disparate collection of technologies together is their ability to process large volumes of information, to a greater or lesser degree, on their own. At the practical AI end of the spectrum that’s algorithms that follow strict rules to filter, extract and format information from huge datasets. The secret is a well-structured spreadsheet.”
While the ‘magic’ of AI is most apparent at the moment in the generative-AI powered acts of creation, the real power in AI for publishers lies in the way it can transform the underlying processes that make a media business tick along. Do give it a read – and keep an eye out for the report.
Twitter’s new label makes it hard to differentiate between legacy and paid verified accounts
It’s almost not worth including news about Twitter in these newsletters. Between me hitting schedule at night and the letter going out the following morning, it could all have changed again. But for now this is a good summation of the issues with the current melding of legacy/paid-for ticks on Twitter — and the chaos and misinformation that will follow.
FT acquires majority stake in Endpoints News
Smart acquisition here form the Financial Times. Endpoints News is a US-based B2B news outlet that reports on the medical and drugs sector. Not only does this bring an extra 163,000 subscribers into the FT’s ecosystem, it also allows the business-focused paper to own a greater proportion of the pharma-adjacent publishing sphere.
Inside the Guardian’s civil war over trans coverage
Well this is a thoroughly depressing read. You expect anti-trans rhetoric from most of the British press, but Max Tani’s look at how pervasive it is at the Guardian is gutting. Bigotry is bigotry wherever it’s published, and in an ideal world it would have no place in our news media — but until then it’s up to outlets like Pink News to actually defend trans rights against the small and petty-minded who would strip them away.
More from Media Voices
Listen again: How publishers are addressing diversity and inclusion
It’s important to remember that we are winning the battle for inclusion — even if it’s painfully slowly. Richard Reeves, CEO of the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) here in the UK, talks to us about the issues and roadblocks surrounding diversity and inclusion efforts in media.
