The Weekly Bulletin | August 27, 2024

Hi SODP community,

Let’s recap on what’s been happening, the new content, industry updates, tips, and more.

TIP OF THE WEEK

Using too many plugins and add-ons can cause a website to bloat, eventually impacting performance.

So how can publishers go about planning their tech stack for maximum efficiency and performance? Aslam Multani, Co-Founder and CTO at Multidots, and John Levitt, formerly General Manager of Parse.ly, shared the following tips during one of our events.

These are pointers for publishers to keep in mind at the planning stage:

• Needs assessment: Be clear about the problem you are looking to solve, and the outcomes you expect when expanding your tech stack.
  

• Unintended consequences: Keep in mind that adding new plugins or integrations can also have unexpected unintended consequences and benefits. For instance, a monetization solution can impact editorial workflows and/or end user experience in both positive and negative ways. Be as clear about these potential impacts as possible to avoid surprises later on.
  

• Collecting baseline data: Baselines are important for measuring progress. Baseline data includes metrics such as active engagement time, search traffic, recirculation rate, conversion rate, etc. Start collecting baseline data from the planning stage itself rather than waiting till the launch or integration of the proposed change to the website. This helps with getting a clearer picture of the before and after situations.
  

• Research: This includes taking in the opinions of all the related stakeholders involved – end users, readers, customers, etc. The advantage here is that it highlights the areas on which the proposed project will have an impact.
  

• Set goals and outcomes: Set measurable goals before the start of the project. While doing this, it is vital to understand that not all outcomes will move up or increase in a desired direction. For instance, a change implemented to improve page speed may have no change on newsletter signups. It is still important to set down this “no change” goal at the outset to ensure that even if newsletter signups are not increasing, they’re not being negatively impacted either.

LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER

2024 Gen AI x Comms Q&A Webinar

If digital communications is part of your job, make sure you attend the Gen AI x Comms Webinar.

Media Collateral and SODP are hosting a panel discussion with the contributors of a research study that we recently announced – Gen AI x Comms Industry Impact Report.

🗓️ 29 August, 4:00 PM AEST

Panelists include:

• Binoy Prabhakar – Chief Content Officer, Hindustan Times Digital

• Scott Purcell – Co-founder, Man of Many

• Dr Lisa Dethridge – Senior Research Fellow, RMIT University

• Jaemark Tordecilla – Nieman ’24 Fellow, Harvard University

• Alicia Kokocinski – GM – Marketing & Communications, Equity Trustees

• Rachel Chita – Journalism Consultant, TrueInfo Labs

• Josh Mann – Head of Creative, Movember

SODP POSTS

How to Optimize Editorial Workflows for Better Content Experiences

The news industry is one of the slowest to embrace change, and rightfully so. Newsrooms have a lot of responsibility and must be cautious about how new tools impact them.

To effectively integrate new tools into editorial processes, publishers should:

• Make learning a dedicated part of newsroom culture. That means allocating time consistently to new tools and technologies. Some make it a part of their KPIs. Not every tool needs to or should be integrated.

• Minimize risks by starting small. To ensure technologies function as intended, publishers should start by applying them to lighter processes, where the output of technologies can be manually verified.

• Determine which business areas will benefit the most. Publishers should be selective about which tool they apply for which unit. For example, AI content creation tools can be a good fit for “dry” business news – e.g., live blogs related to the stock market. For other types of content pieces, it’s better to limit the assistance of AI content tools to creating summaries, helping determine headlines, etc.

READ MORE

Readers Prefer To Click On A Clear, Simple Headline − Like This One

In an era when people trust news less than ever, how can journalists break through and attract the attention of average people to provide information about their communities, the nation and the world?

By not complicating things.

Research, published in Science Advances, shows that simple headlines significantly increase article engagement and clicks compared with headlines that use complex language.

It also shows that typical news readers preferred simple headlines over complex ones. But importantly, those who actually write headlines – journalists themselves – did not.

READ MORE

JOB BOARD

➡️ Future is looking for a director of audience development to help accelerate the growth of Future B2B's email subscriptions, website traffic and webinar attendees (Remote, US). SEE MORE

➡️ The Guardian is seeking a solutions executive to provide sales support to the advertising team, across all advertising products (print, digital and podcast) (London, UK). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Newspaper giant Gannett is shutting down Reviewed, its product reviews site, effective November 1st, according to sources familiar with the decision. Last October, Reviewed staff publicly accused Gannett of publishing AI-generated product reviews on the site. READ MORE

➡️ Google is trying to reduce what it spends on commercial deals with some smaller digital news publishers, amid growing calls for a levy on technology giants to fund journalism after Meta walked away from the News Media Bargaining Code. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Brodie Clark on LinkedIn:

I would like to formally announce my blue tick verification services for Google Search...

On a serious note, Google is actually testing this feature right now. A blue tick similar to what social platforms use is now appearing as a test on desktop for organic listings.

When seeing how widespread the test is, it looks like the blue tick only appears for some eCommerce stores, with the test not looking to expand beyond this.

A notice appears when hovering over the blue tick, stating:

"This icon is being shown because Google's signals suggest that this business is the business that it says it is. Google can't guarantee the reliability of this business or its products".

CONTINUE READING HERE

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP