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This is the first in a series of original case studies that the News Product Alliance is commissioning. This case study explores how the Spanish media group Vocento has strategized and executed the launch of Relevo, a social news startup, in the overcrowded Spanish sports media market. Filled with interviews and access to internal materials, the piece demonstrates how Vocento applied product processes in order to differentiate its offer, resulting in a brand that amassed 260,000 followers across 4 platforms in less than 3 months.

This is the first in a series of original case studies that the News Product Alliance is commissioning. This case study explores how the Spanish media group Vocento has strategized and executed the launch of Relevo, a social news startup, in the overcrowded Spanish sports media market. Filled with interviews and access to internal materials, the piece demonstrates how Vocento applied product processes in order to differentiate its offer, resulting in a brand that amassed 260,000 followers across 4 platforms in less than 3 months.

A timeline about the relation of Facebook to video in the last 5 years, specific of the constant movements of on-again-off-again pivots, demanding change from news organizations.

Instagram's public identity crisis is a real-time case study. Taylor Lorenz summed it all up for the Washington Post. Lorenz interviewed experts who analyzed the whole mess through more of a product lens, discussing audience trust, product iteration, and marketplace positioning.

In 2020, more than two thirds of Google searches ended without a click, largely because the tech giant is constantly reworking its SERPs (search engine result pages) to put answers directly in front of searchers without making them leave Google. Many social media networks also prioritize keeping the user on their platform, their algorithms favoring this type of "no-click" content. While no-click content may seem in opposition to an organization's business goals, it does offer value to the user by requiring less of their time — and user-centered editorial experiences are what product thinking is all about. This blog post gives tips to making no-click content and explains its worth.

Travis Lyles, the deputy director for social and off-platform curation at The Washington Post, discusses how his team's Instagram strategy, which has picked up 1.2M new followers for the paper's account in the past 12 months.

Kelly McBride, described in her Poynter bio as "one of the country’s leading voices on media ethics and democracy," describes how she worked with Jennifer Kho, the Chicago Sun-Times' new executive editor, to decide whether to publish graphic images from the Highland Park 4th of July parade shooting.

Land of the Giants is a podcast from Recode, The Verge, and the Vox Media Podcast Network that looks at how tech titans like Amazon, Google, and Netflix became the behemoths they are today and how they've transformed our lives — for better or worse. The latest season is about Meta, and the episode "Facebook Gets a Facelift" in particular has a more product-y focus, being dedicated to implementation of Facebook's News Feed and the tension between business objectives and user preferences.

Medium once was the hope for independent publishing on the web. However, after many pivots, it has found itself lost in the middle of many failed strategies, inclusing monetization and original content. Simon Owens explores what went wrong, and the problems with Medium's pivots.

The Los Angeles Times has formed a six-person team to create content on Instagram and TikTok. The 404 team, as it is called, aims to reach a a young, diverse audience that may not already be part of the publisher’s audience. The team includes content creators, artists, filmmakers, writers and even a puppeteer.

The rise of the creator economy has vastly changed the landscape of branding and — some say — de-emphasized the importance of branding when it comes to consumers. This piece explores where consumer interests are trending and how the next generation of brands might differ from the last.

With trust in media at historic lows, it's more important than ever to produce journalism with audience trust at the forefront. This guide offers practical solutions for journalists to rebuild audience trust with technology and news products.

Creator-centric platforms including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and others have deep problems with converting users into paying subscribers. This article illustrates some of the key reasons why conversions to subscriptions are low, and how to improve them -- with applications to other types of media companies.

Key to every business' success and impact is the ability to nurture authentic relationships with customers, users, and stakeholders. This article presents principles for building a strong community for any brand.

This article first appeared on James' website in 2014 and it remains one of his most popular. The revenue sources are still relevant, and so are the business principles behind them. A great overview of community, memberships, sponsorships, consulting, events, repackage and sell data, ads, video, etc.

This article describes how the "bright, shiny things" mislead journalists on how to be innovative. The innovation in journalism is about audience-centric motivation and enriching experiences by creating news habits.

In this edition of his newsletter, Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader question about how startups can drive growth with content. He asked Twitter to name the companies that are best at content-driven growth and then interviewed the founders and/or heads-of-content at the top four (Slidebean, Ahrefs, Intercom, and HubSpot). Though these are tech startups rather than media companies, there are still valuable takeaways that can be applied to a more traditional media company as well. More editions of Lenny's Newsletter can be found here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/archive

The author offers a critique of the design decisions of Medium, specific the ones related to how articles are displayed, and the options offered to writers when publishing their pieces.