The Pew Research Center recently released its “State of the News Media 2014” report, which contains some unsurprising information about the growth of digital news consumption and publishing.
Consumption of news on mobile devices and via social networks is still trending upward: About half of Facebook’s users read their news on Facebook for instance, whether they intend to or not. And while many of us still turn to newspapers—print or online—for our news, the industry’s face is changing. The Pew Center analyzed employment numbers at newspapers and at digital news outlets, and it found that these digital outlets employ about 5,000 full-time editorial professionals. Many of these positions were created in the last year. The print world still accounts for a bulk of editorial jobs (38,000, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors and Pew), but that number is trending downward.
Given these trends, it’s not surprising that news outlets like The Washington Post, newly bought by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, are expected to focus more and more on digital, or that there are a few newcomers on the block making waves in the digital space. For public relations teams, it’s clear that there is tremendous opportunity to start building relationships and working with new, native digital outlets.
With that in mind, here are a few outlets that we are keeping our eyes on in 2014 (from our smartphones, of course):
- Quartz: Quartz launched in 2012 with a focus on delivering news to tablets and mobile phones. Its layout, content and even its short URL (www.qz.com) are optimized for mobile viewing. Its coverage focuses on business and economic topics—what it calls “the new global economy.” Quartz beefed up its editorial staff with heavy hitters in journalism, pulling talent from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, The Economist’s CFO magazine, The Financial Times and others household names. I have been impressed with Quartz’s reporting on economic trends, its coverage of technology and business news and its emphasis on reporting on and visualizing data. It has become a fixture of my Twitter timeline and my morning news reading, and I expect it will become a go-to outlet for business interest stories this year. In January 2014, Quartz topped 5 million monthly unique visitors.
- Vox.com: Vox.com is the newest outlet on this list: It launched officially on Sunday, April 6, 2014. The outlet made a tremendous splash in media circles when it pulled public policy writer Ezra Klein away from The Washington Post to lead its newsroom, a move reminiscent of BuzzFeed’s hiring of Ben Smith from Politico. At launch, Vox.com’s home page doesn’t feel fully fleshed out, and I expect to see significant changes to its design and features relatively quickly (its editors indicated as much in a blog post at launch).
Vox.com’s editorial team wants to bring greater depth and understanding to the biggest topics in the news, issues like the crisis in the Ukraine, Obamacare enrollment and GM’s unfortunate recall. It looks like its editorial team will be looking for in-depth stories, backed by data and visuals – each of its articles is published with a series of “cards” that provide more context or detail around topics featured in an article. I am curious to see if Vox.com will succeed in building readership around this approach to in-depth coverage, and what approach their editorial teams take to covering topics other than trending, global news.
- Medium: Ev Williams, the founder of Twitter, launched Medium in 2012. Medium is a blog publishing service that lets anyone with a Twitter account contribute. Readers can vote an article up or down, either increasing or decreasing its visibility on the site. The platform has grown considerably since is launch and it has attracted more and more big names as contributors. Elon Musk, for example, recently wrote an article detailing an update to Tesla’s Model S electric vehicle—the type of piece typically reserved for a corporate blog or newsroom.
Medium’s articles are organized into collections (topics) which range widely in specificity. Musk’s article was included in Medium’s “Tesla collection,” but other collections include topics like “College and Careers” or “Today’s Tech.” Interestingly, Medium just announced a deal with ESPN FC to produce a collection of articles on soccer’s upcoming World Cup. While anyone can publish stories to the collection, Medium’s editors will choose articles to feature on ESPNFC.com. This is a great opportunity for writers to get their content noticed.
I suspect we will see more arrangements like this coming out of Medium. While its content can feel a bit like “inside baseball” for Silicon Valley—or a collection of TED talk scripts—Medium is attracting quality writing talent and its authors are producing interesting, thought-provoking content. When The New York Times covered Medium in March of this year, it cited that the site receives about 13 million unique visitors per month.
- The Washington Post: Ever since Amazon’s Jeff Bezos bought the Post in 2013 there have been questions about which direction he’d take the paper. So far it seems not much has changed. The National Journal’s Matthew Cooper wrote about Bezos’ potential plans shortly following the acquisition, floating ideas like pre-loading the Post on Amazon’s Kindle e-readers or creating more “viral”-style articles designed for sharing on social media. According to the Alliance for Audited Media, the Post’s digital circulation is lagging quite a bit behind some of its national competitors like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, so this is the obvious area where Bezos could make an impact. At this point, it is hard to speculate about any specific changes in the pipeline at the Post, but we will be watching closely to find out.
- Upworthy: Upworthy might be best known for its “clickbait” headlines, but it has—for better or worse—created a successful model for sharing news content online. According to its data, Upworthy sees more than 50 million unique visitors a month, and its average piece of content drives more than 75,000 likes per post. Those are big numbers, and it tells me that news models based on social media and sharing can have a bright future. However, Upworthy’s headlines have drawn scorn and satire from many users. Facebook users have complained that the outlet’s posts are nothing more than spam and its headline format has become such a meme that it spawned the parody UpworthyGenerator.com.
The site recently began accepting sponsored content from companies, such as its recent deal with Unilever to sponsor certain sections of the site. Upworthy may be straddling the line between viral content and spam, but it has certainly proven that media outlets can drive views and engagement via social media. More broadly, there is a lot to be learned from Upworthy’s sharing model and how it can apply to more in-depth, quality journalism.
- Lifehacker: Lifehacker has been around for years, sharing helpful tips on everything from effective work habits to the best tricks to clean your shower. Recently, though, I’ve seen more and more users turning to Lifehacker for tech stories, tips, tricks and product news. Lifehacker has long been a mainstay website for the geeks among us, but lately it’s a great place to educate potential customers—either businesses or consumers—about your product or service. It has recently profiled a number of web apps focused on productivity at the workplace, for example. With about 10.5 million monthly readers and more than 1.2 million followers on Twitter, its articles reach a huge number of eyes.
New blogs and digital news outlets appear every day, and these are just a few of the outlets that we have our eyes on for 2014. I expect these outlets to make a splash this year and our team at Communiqué is looking forward to staying on top of these trends. If you have a favorite native digital news outlet, we would love to hear it in the comments!