We’re reading…. (weekly)

• Facebook is eating the world – Columbia Journalism Review

  “One is to push even more of your journalism straight to an app like Facebook and its Instant Articles where ad blocking is not impossible but harder than at the browser level. As one publisher put it to me, “We look at the amount we might make from mobile and we suspect that even if we gave everything straight to Facebook, we would still be better off.” The risks, though, in being reliant on the revenue and traffic from one distributor, are very high.

  The second option is to build other businesses and revenues away from distributed platforms. Accept that seeking a vast audience through other platforms is not only not helping you but actively damaging your journalism, so move to a measurement of audience engagement rather than scale.”

  tags: facebook journalism emilybell

• Introducing a WordPress Plugin for Instant Articles | Facebook Media

  “When Instant Articles opens up in April, publishers that use standard WordPress templates can activate the plugin out-of-the-box to create Instant Articles. Publishers that want a more customized production experience can extend the plugin to support additional elements. We encourage all interested publishers on WordPress to review the plugin’s documentation and FAQs.

  The plugin is open source, and we encourage the community to participate in its development to help publishers of all types take full advantage of the fast, native experience of Instant Articles.”

  tags: journalism bots wordpress plugin instant facebook

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