Perspectives from the 2016 Digital Publisher’s Tour
As the co-organizer of VDZ Akademie’s 2016 Digital Publisher’s Tour, together with Seattle-based innovation journalist, Ulrike Langer, we had the amazing opportunity to meet with a wide range of companies in the “digital publishing” space. What do all of these organizations—ranging from industry stalwarts like The New York Times and the Associated Press to upstarts like Chicago’s Rivet Radio and New York City-based The Daily Beast— have in common? A deep commitment to the craft of storytelling and a passion for embracing the change that new audiences and emerging platforms demand.
Marching to your own drum
Conversations with a variety of publishers, but in particular the Daily Beast, underlined for us how important is it for storytellers to have a distinct point of view and a clearly identifiable voice. At Atavist, we learned how a company can fund long-form narrative storytelling without relying on advertising. This allows writers to create content on their own terms without relying on page views.
One of the other themes that emerged for us – particularly after a conversation with the visionary Jim Kennedy, Senior Vice Vresident, Strategy and Enterprise Development at The Associated Press: the importance of recognizing the realities that the future holds and then adjusting what you are doing today. According to Kennedy, the AP has realized that now is the time to start angling towards the future rather than clinging to old ways of finding, writing and packaging and distributing the news.
To this end, AP is contributing news feeds to IBM’s Watson as a data source, which in turn is combined with other data to create new offerings across segments. The AP believes that digital voice interfaces are going to be a key to how information is accessed and consumed. Working with partners like Rivet Radio, AP is now converting news feeds from text to audio.
For many of the German-based tour participants, the Amazon Echo or “Alexa,” whom they met for the first time at the Knight Lab at Northwestern University, was a revelation. Echo is a voice-enabled wireless speaker that is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real time information. It was evident that this new technology creates powerful new opportunities, while at the same time, requires that content publishers develop new approaches for thinking about content.
When virtual worlds collide
Many of the tour participants also had the opportunity to go face-to-face with virtual reality content and headsets at Framestore’s VR Studio. One of the highlights was experiencing a VR movie created by the Framestore team for HBO’s Game of Thrones.
It was another clear demonstration of how virtual reality is pushing the boundaries of storytelling for content producers across the spectrum and how it provides an incredible opportunity to drive unprecedented engagement.
Music to our ears
Tour participants particularly appreciated being the first live-studio audience for Rivet News Radio’s daily news podcast. The visit cast a bright light on how an organization is advancing new business models for audio-based content including a platform that delivers a cost-effective and efficient way to produce, digitally distribute and monetize branded audio content. Rivet also offers a solution that provides businesses with informative, curated playlists of bite-sized news and information, tailored for a business environment and proven to keep callers on-hold longer.
As the week-long tour progressed, it became increasingly apparent that today, storytellers have many powerful tools at their disposal, whether their medium is the written word, audio or video.
Go deeper with some of the Digital Publisher’s Tour companies
The tour offered a unique and exclusive opportunity for first-hand experience and an insider’s view of technology and media companies at the forefront of innovation and trends.
What follows is a four-part series that aims to provide a glimpse of some of the many innovative and groundbreaking developments taking place at the companies tour participants visited.
First up is Powering passionate storytelling at The Atavist magazine which describes how a group of journalists in Brooklyn, NY is pioneering a new version of long-form storytelling without the constraints of having to be profitable. How are they doing this? Via a self-publishing platform for rich interactive long-form journalism which is available to content creators via a monthly subscription.
Boost! Collective is a strategic messaging and story-driven communications firm that helps clients discover, write and tell powerful stories that drive engagement.
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