This message was sent to ##Email## January 29, 2020      NEWS MEDIA ALLIANCE NEWS A Few Ephiphanies of My Own By David Chavern, President & CEO, News Media Alliance — Ken Doctor did a recent piece on "epiphanies" that caused me to think of a few of my own. First, Ken is very right that the ultimate answer lies in the consistent production of great news content. If you want people to pay more for your product, then you need to deliver a great product. But as we all know, quality local journalism can only continue if there is a business model to support it. READ MORE News Media Alliance Launches News Impact Project on Important Role of Local News in Communities The News Media Alliance today launched its News Impact Project, including a News Impact Index of local news stories that have made a positive impact on their local communities. For the last several weeks, the Alliance has been actively gathering examples of impactful news stories its news organization members have recently published. From these stories, the Alliance created the News Impact Index. The Index offers real world examples of stories that have had a positive impact, and that members of the community would not have known about if it had not been for the work of their local news publishers. READ MORE Register Now for adXchange — February 24-25 in Fort Lauderdale, FL Participating advertisers/agencies: Adwanted, ConvergeDirect, Mediabids, Mediaspace, NOVUS, NSA Media, Quad, RateSeeker, Retail Print Media and Valassis — Make plans to join the News Media Alliance for adXchange in Fort Lauderdale, FL on February 24-25. adXchange provides a cost-and-time-saving opportunity for news media organizations to have one-on-one meetings with advertisers/agencies to discuss upcoming ads and initiatives. You must register to attend. Alliance members will receive complimentary registration. Click here to register now (login required). Reminder: The deadline to book a room in our block at the discounted rate is Fri., Feb. 7. READ MORE Getting Ready for Mega-Conference 2020 — Session Preview: How Women Leaders are Transforming Newspapers At Mega-Conference on Tues., Feb. 18 at 8:00 a.m. in Fort Worth, TX, Mi-Ai Parrish, the Sue Clark-Johnson Professor in Media Innovation and Leadership at Arizona State University, will moderate a panel discussion that looks at the concept of a “female style” of leadership and what perspectives women bring to the newspaper industry. Panelists include PJ Browning, president, Newspaper Division, Evening Post Publishing, and publisher, The Post and Courier and Julia Wallace, Frank Russell Chair in the Business of Journalism, Arizona State University. Register now to attend Mega-Conference. READ MORE Webinar Recording Now Available: Tracking Your Impact If you were unable to make it to our webinar last week on tracking the impact of your journalism, you can now view the recording of the webinar, download the slides and find links to the resources and stories discussed during the presentation. On the webinar, Detroit Free Press's Anjanette Delgado, Senior News Director for Digital, explains how she tracks the impact of their journalism and the tools she uses in the process. She is joined by Free Press Investigations Editor Mark J. Rochester and reporters Phoebe Wall Howard, Joe Guillen and Kat Stafford, who have worked on some of the Free Press's most impactful stories of the past year. READ MORE     .  SPONSOR SPOTLIGHT     Bangor Daily News Reporting Helps Residents Avoid Erroneous Eviction "A new subscriber called to tell us that she subscribed because of this story," Joellen Easton, audience director for the Bangor Daily News, told us when she submitted this story to the News Impact Project. That's the kind of reaction from readers we all hope our journalism will produce. ... But journalism that makes an impact isn't easy, and though the immediate impact is something reporter Callie Ferguson and Easton are proud of, they know how much work goes into every story that makes a difference. READ MORE 7 Tips for Tracking Your Impact As part of the News Impact Project, we're happy to share a few select blogs from our friends at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center's Media Impact Project and guest blogger Anjanette Delgado, senior news director for digital at the Detroit Free Press. Whether you're making your case to subscribers or donors or just wanting to know what's working, now is a good time to start tracking the impact of your journalism. Knowing your page views and monthly uniques is important, but so is being able to show that your investigative work inspired a change in the law or got the shady pol ousted. I’m seeing more and more newsrooms getting into subscription sales and making the case that #journalismmatters and requires investment. READ MORE Getting a Grant: How, Where and Why to Apply for Journalism Funding Over the past decade, donors and foundations have awarded an estimated $300 million to hundreds of U.S. journalists and media organizations. Those donations have tripled over the years: There's a growing recognition of the need to support local and regional news in particular, as more newsrooms shrink or disappear. But few journalists feel equipped or comfortable dealing with funders and grant applications. Recognizing that deficit, along with the increasing urgency for financial support, The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) has developed guidelines for seeking funds and a "living" directory of journalism grants, which the News Media Alliance is pleased to make available on its website. READ MORE    BUSINESS MODELS This Project Matches Investigative Editors to the Local Newsrooms That Desperately Need Them Poynter Investigative Editing Corps is a project that pairs seasoned investigative editors with local newsrooms. The editors get stipends for their work through foundation funding that supports the project. The newsrooms pay nothing. IEC officially launched to attract investigative editors who’d left the business (either willingly or not) to help the local newsrooms that need them.  READ MORE Warren Buffett Will Sell His Newspaper Empire CNBC Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is leaving the newspaper business and selling its operations to publisher Lee Enterprises for $140 million in cash. The deal includes Berkshire Hathaway Media Group and The Buffalo News, a paper covering western New York and owned as a separate entity by Berkshire. Lee said the purchase of Berkshire’s newspaper assets will “add significant size and scale” to its operations, lift its portfolio of daily newspapers to 81 from 50 and nearly double its audience.  READ MORE Salt Lake Tribune's Editor Expects 'a Lot of Newspapers' to Explore Nonprofit Status Local News Initiative The Salt Lake Tribune announced in November that it had received Internal Revenue Service approval to become the nation's first legacy newspaper to go fully nonprofit. The Medill Local News Initiative interviewed the Tribune's Editor, Jennifer Napier-Pearce, about what this transformation will mean. Here is an edited transcript.  READ MORE    ADVERTISING Google Chrome Killed the Cookie. What Now? Ad Age The clock is ticking to reinvent digital advertising now that Google vowed to remove third-party cookies from its Chrome browser within two years. While the move will force digital players into new ways of doing business, a cookie-less world is being seen by some as a way to start from scratch. It "removes a crutch this industry built," says Andrew Casale, president and CEO of Index Exchange, a programmatic commpany that works with publishers.  READ MORE Publishers Press Ad Tech Firms to Protect Them From Programmatic Clawbacks Digiday Publishers are preparing for doomsday scenarios in the volatile advertising technology market, worried bigger ad tech company flameouts could leave publishers unpaid for ads. In 2019, publishers were asked to surrender tens of thousands of dollars in revenue after the supply-side platform providers that sold the publishers' inventory to Sizmek and Netmining failed to receive payment from them (as they had financial problems).  READ MORE Desktop Search Ads Gain Marketing Dollars, Giving Microsoft A Boost MediaPost Apple, Amazon and Microsoft will report earnings this week. Since these companies last reported earnings at the end of the third calendar year quarter, each company's stocks, advertising and product sales have risen substantially. Merkle's Q4 2019 Digital Marketing Report shows an overall increase in spending.  READ MORE Keyword Brand-Safety Tools Continue to Rankle Publishers Digiday Bloated keyword block lists are still a big problem for publishers and advertisers, causing headaches like article pages that can't be monetized, wasted ad impressions, slow page loading and campaigns that struggle to deliver on advertisers' goals. Incorrect blocking of safe premium-news content is costing publishers an estimated $3.2 billion a year in the U.S., U.K., Japan and Australia combined, according to a recently released report.  READ MORE    DIGITAL The future is here: Innovations your brand can use today Media Post The advertising industry is really good at trends. Every January, marketers turn our attention to the future, searching for new tech that will keep us ahead of our rapidly changing industry. But is the allure of what's to come taking our attention away from what's ready now? While we're celebrating technology that's not yet ready for prime time, we just might be overlooking technologies that could start driving results for you tomorrow.  READ MORE Flipboard Launches Local News Initiative Axios Flipboard announced a new local initiative to gather regional sources and national stories of local interest to users in 23 North American metropolitan areas, including Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, Toronto and Dallas. Like other tech platforms, Flipboard is investing in local coverage because of audience demand.  READ MORE What Makes a Good Publisher Podcast? Journalism.co.uk Podcasting is a crowded market — there are now more than 800,000 active podcasts with more than 54 million podcast episodes available worldwide, according to Edison Research and Triton Digital. Although news podcasts account for smaller market space, they outperform all other podcast categories in terms of listenership. But what makes a good publisher podcast and how can they be used to support your overall brand strategy?  READ MORE   Connect with the Alliance Recent Issues | Subscribe | Unsubscribe  | Advertise | Web Version  Colby Horton, Vice President of Publishing, 469-420-2601 | Download media kit Dennis Hall, Executive Editor, 469-420-2656 | Contribute news News Media Alliance 4401 N. Fairfax Dr., Ste. 300 | Arlington, VA 22203 | 571-366-1000 | Contact Us  Learn how to add us to your safe sender list so our emails get to your inbox. 7701 Las Colinas Ridge, Ste. 800, Irving, TX 75063