Media Insider: Apple News Favors National Outlets, Quibi and the BBC Create a News Show for Millennials, The Athletic Launches its First Daily Podcast

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s round-up of media stories from the week.

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW | NICHOLAS DIAKOPOULOS
Apple News is excluding local newsrooms from its coveted traffic bump

This week, CJR released the results of a content audit of the stories on Apple News. The audit aimed to determine if the app’s two types of curation — human editors for the Top Stories and algorithm ranking for the Trending Stories — have an effect on the types of news sources being surfaced. After reviewing more than 4,000 articles, it was found that both sections selected articles from only a handful of sources — typically large, national outlets like CNN, The Washington Post, and Fox News. Of the articles in the Trending Stories section, not a single locally or regionally specific source was cited. According to the article, “both sections roughly follow the Pareto principle, where the top 20 percent of sources account for about 80 percent of articles.”

In other news curation updates, an internal Facebook memo this week revealed guidelines for the human editors of the upcoming News Tab.

TECHCRUNCH | JONATHAN SHIEBER
Quibi is partnering with the BBC on international news show for millennials

A new daily international news show for millennials from Quibi, a short-form video platform, and the BBC will aim to update viewers with news from around the world in five minutes. The show will be featured as part of Quibi’s “Daily Essentials” programming and will be filmed at the BBC’s central London headquarters five days a week. Jim Egan, BBC Global News chief executive, said, “Technology is changing constantly, as is the world at large and we’re delighted to be working with an innovative new player like Quibi to bring young audiences a daily made-for-mobile global news update of the highest quality from our unparalleled network of international correspondents and experts.”

Also happening across the pond, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently announced the hiring of an impact editor.

NIEMAN JOURNALISM LAB | PHILIP NAPOLI AND JESSICA MAHONE
Local newspapers are suffering, but they’re still (by far) the most significant journalism producers in their communities

A new study from the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy looked at 100 U.S. communities to determine which types of outlets are the most significant producers of journalism. Despite being hit particularly hard by economic challenges, the results found that local newspapers accounted for nearly 50% of the original news stories in these areas and 60% of the local news stories. These are higher than the local reporting numbers of television, radio, and online-only outlets combined. “In sum, while legacy newspapers have declined, they certainly have yet to be displaced as vital producers of local journalism,” the article says.

Unfortunately, Washington commuters lost a local outlet this week when Express, the free newspaper from The Washington Post, published its final issue.

BLOOMBERG | IRA BOUDWAY
The Athletic Ventures Outside the Paywall and Into Advertising

This week, the Athletic, a sports-news upstart, announced its first major foray into ad-supported content. The company’s first daily podcast, “The Lead,” will launch later this month and will be the first to be published entirely outside the site’s paywall. Trying to mimic the success of “The Daily,” the popular New York Times podcast, “The Lead” will focus on one major story each day. The show will be distributed on major podcast platforms beginning Monday, Sept. 16, and will feature as many as three ads in each 20-minute episode. The absence of ads has been a selling point for the Athletic and co-founder and CEO Alex Mather says, “We may experiment with advertising on free products, but our subscription product is absolutely sacrosanct.”

Speaking of advertising, attorneys general for 50 U.S. states and territories launched an antitrust investigation of Google and its domination of the online advertising industry.

DAILY BEAST | GIDEON RESNICK
ThinkProgress to Be Archived After Union Threatens ‘Legal Options’ Against CAP

Days after the Center for American Progress (CAP) shut down ThinkProgress, a progressive news site, the union representing ThinkProgress workers said it was exploring “legal options” against CAP. According to the article, “Ex-staffers noted that under the new system, the union workers who had populated thinkprogress.org with content would be replaced with non union workers; and that part of their actual union contract established editorial independence.” Shortly after the statement from the union, CAP decided to ditch plans to keep the site running, announcing it would instead archive it. ThinkProgress, once one of the top progressive news entities, reported a budget deficit of $2,500,000 and lost 11 staffers in the shut-down.

Related: Staff at The Real News Network, a nonprofit news organization, announced the signing of its first union contract this week.

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Rocky Parker works in Audience Relations at PR Newswire. Check out her previous posts for Beyond Bylines and connect on LinkedIn. When she’s not working, Rocky typically can be found cooking, binge watching a new show, or playing with her puppy, Hudson.