Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
A year ago, we launched a new homepage that reconsidered user needs and evolving editorial use cases. Today, we are doing the same with our core product: the article page. The article page is at the heart of what we do at The Atlantic. It is the entry point for millions of users, where people…
Some U.S. publishers have blocked visitors from the E.U. to their sites rather than comply with the wide-ranging General Data Protection Regulation to protect people’s online privacy. The Washington Post went an extra step and put up a paywall for E.U. visitors, upselling them to a $90 a year “premium EU subscription” in exchange for…
Companies hiring for technical positions often slip language into their job postings that appeals to men. They say they’re looking for “ninjas,” who seek to “obliterate competition,” and are capable of “dominating.” By now, these wordings are a well understood form of bias that produces more male candidates than female. But one job in the…
Many web publishers have been jilted by Facebook. Now they are quickly falling hard for Apple News. They just hope that this new love leads to new revenue. After a shaky start which led many in the media world to doubt whether Apple was serious about the product (the Wall Street Journal reported in 2016…
Illustration: Jim Cooke This is the story of how corporate raiding, complacency, excess, and incompetence are gutting a media company that matters to tens of millions of people. It’s not a novel story, and perhaps not even scandalous by the standards of corporate opulence: A shark-obsessed boss, millions wasted on consultants, and an executive who…
Michael Bloomberg, former New York mayor and president and CEO of Bloomberg LP. (Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA) Bloomberg, my former employer, is reportedly moving to a paywall. If that turns out to be true, I can’t say I’ll be surprised. When I announced that I was leaving Bloomberg View for the Post Opinion section in February, many longtime…
Native advertising and “content discovery” platform Taboola has an ambitious plan to help people discover even more content, specifically “news.” The company, which is best known for enabling brands to scale native advertising across the open Web, has struck a deal to operate a news feed app on people’s phones. “It’s like Apple News,” boasts…
For people interested in a no-frills way to spin up a new personal newsletter, there are more alternatives to Mailchimp-TinyLetter than ever. Prominent newcomers like U.S. startup Substack or the Netherlands-based Revue have focused on simplifying writing tools and streamlining software for the entire newsletter management process, from writing to sending to maintaining the subscriber…
Tom Scocca is leaving us, after a combined six and a half years at Deadspin, Gawker, and the Special Projects Desk. Here’s how we’ll remember him. Sam Biddle One time I had an anxiety nightmare that consisted entirely of Tom Scocca walking up to me in a dark room (I was seated) and saying “you’re…
Spotify, the world’s largest paid music service, will begin offering news and political coverage to lure listeners away from radio and podcasts from rival Apple Inc. Eight companies, including BuzzFeed and Refinery29, have agreed to produce programming for the new initiative, called Spotlight. One of the first shows will be a four- to seven-minute daily…