Media Insider: NBC Extends Ad Deal With Apple, Atlas Obscura CEO Resigns, The Guardian Alters Climate Language
Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s round-up of media stories from the week.
AXIOS | SARA FISCHER
NBC extends deal to be exclusive seller of ads in Apple Stocks and Apple News
This week, NBCUniversal announced it has extended its multi-year partnership with Apple News and plans to expand the business to Apple Stocks. The contract allows NBCU to continue selling and serving ads against all the stories in the main feed of Apple News and Apple Stocks while other publishers can only sell ads against their own articles. NBCU declined to disclose how much the company profits from its partnership with Apple News, but Krishan Bhatia, NBCU’s EVP of Business Operations & Strategy, stated, “It’s a very meaningfully-sized business compared to what we do on Youtube, Twitter or Snapchat.”
More from NBC: NBC News Plans to Double Original Podcasts in Deal with Wondery
THE GUARDIAN | SOPHIE ZELDIN-O’NEILL
‘It’s a crisis, not a change’: the six Guardian language changes on climate matters
The Guardian announced changes to its style guide and introduced new terms that more accurately describe the environmental crises facing the world. For example, “climate change” is no longer considered to accurately reflect the seriousness of the overall situation, so The Guardian now uses “climate emergency” or “climate crisis.” However, using “climate change” is appropriate when describing it specifically in a scientific sense. Updating the style guide isn’t the only change The Guardian has implemented to increase awareness of environmental issues. Earlier this year, it decided to publish the global carbon dioxide level on its daily weather pages. Since The Guardian announced these changes, other media outlets have taken notice and started reconsidering the terms they use in their own coverage.
Access the Guardian’s updated style guide
THE DAILY BEAST | MAXWELL TANI
Atlas Obscura CEO Resigns, Crowdsources for His Own Replacement
Following the resignation of Atlas Obscura’s CEO, David Plotz, the media company reached out to its community of users to help pick a new CEO. Plotz tells The Daily Beast the move was in keeping with the brand’s decade-long focus on drawing from its community of users. More specifically, he states, “We hope that there will be someone in our community, someone who already understands us, who knows us, who will put themselves forward, or maybe they know somebody who seems like they have the perfect sensibility.” This executive change comes on the heels of Atlas Obscura’s $20 million investment in Airbnb last month.
Listen: Kayvon Beykpour, head of product at Twitter, discusses Twitter becoming more ephemeral
NIEMANLAB | JOSHUA BENTON
The News Revenue Hub is launching a pilot project to help news orgs increase their readers’ loyalty
The News Revenue Hub is launching a pilot program, in partnership with the Google News Initiative, called Google News Initiative-News Revenue Hub Audience Lab. The Audience Lab’s goal is to help news organizations achieve sustainability by developing a best practices-based methodology to finding loyal readers. The program will begin with an overall loyalty analysis for each of the seven news organizations selected and continue with an audience assessment that includes examining clients’ SEO strategies, newsletter products, and editorial workflows. The Audience Lab will provide each client with a scorecard that details easy fixes and long-term improvements and will assist with implementing and testing those improvements. In order to help other news publishers evolve business models and drive sustainable growth, The News Revenue Hub promises to share its findings publicly so all news organizations can benefit.
TECHCRUNCH | ANTHONY HA
The Information will launch Ticker, a tech news app that costs $29 per year
The Information is expanding its audience while maintaining a subscription model with the launch of a new app called Ticker. The assumption is that its current subscribers, who pay $399 annually, are using their subscription for a business need so it decided to design an app specifically for consumers who have an interest in following the latest tech news. Content on the app will consist of brief summaries of the most significant tech news written for the consumer audience. The app will be priced more affordably at $29 per year.
Related: 2019 State of Technology in Global Newsrooms Survey
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Erin Wade is a Senior Customer Content Specialist with PR Newswire. She is also an animal lover and aspiring world traveler. Tune into her insights as a social curator at @TotalCSR.
