Dow Jones Launches Newsmart Business English Learning Tool
Dow Jones has launched Newsmart, a new digital learning tool for professionals that leverages gamification concepts help them improve their Business English skills.
Newsmart takes daily news articles and videos from The Wall Street Journal and combines them with a teaching engine that contains more than 2,500 learning exercises. Newsmart’s staff develops six articles per day and up to two videos per week on business, finance and technology news topics. Each article and lesson is assigned a difficulty level and learning objectives. Clicking on color-coded text reveals exercises in skills such as grammar, vocabulary and comprehension, to complete as you read. The engine tells you instantly if you provided the correct answer and if not, what the answer is.
The gamification comes in through a point system that rewards correct answers, as well as a leaderboard.
Newsmart is available for a 30-day free trial and then through a monthly subscription. The tool is offered online as well as in an app for the Android mobile platform. Newsmart Pro, for corporations, is available as an app for iPhones as well and features enhanced data analytics to monitor employee performance against recognized international English certifications.
McClatchy Teams up with Moonlighting App to Help Connect People to Jobs
The McClatchy Company is launching Moonlighting, an online job marketplace, on all of its online and mobile newspaper properties, representing more than 40 million digital users.
Moonlighting helps people post and search short-term job opportunities in their local area on demand. Users can also conduct secure payment transactions within the platform.
New York Times Testing Single-Day Digital Access for Newsstand Purchasers
The New York Times is conducting a trial whereby it is providing its newsstand customers with free one-day digital access to its website and mobile apps; services already enjoyed by paid NYT home delivery customers.
Newsstand customers can enter a code found inside the newspaper into their mobile phone’s texting function. They will then receive a digital link to access the publication. To access the issue for that day, customers must log-in (or register if they are a first-time user) to the site. Access is only good for the day the issue was distributed and the customer redeems the code, and expires at 11:59 pm EST.
Customers can purchase single copies of The Times at 48,000 retail locations, including Starbucks coffee shops and Hudson News shops (found in many airports). Through this trial, these customers will now benefit from real-time news updates, videos and other content only accessible in the digital publication.
Staff Updates:
Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.: Chris Voccio has been made publisher of the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal. Voccio will also continue in his current role as publisher of the Niagara Gazette. Voccio, who has 30 years’ experience in the newspaper industry, has also been publisher of the Norwich (Connecticut) Bulletin, the Danville (Illinois) Commercial-News and the Johnstown (Pennsylvania) Tribune-Democrat.
GateHouse Media: David Butler has been named The Providence Journal’s Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of News and Audience Development. He will start in his new role on Nov. 9.
Prior to the Journal, Butler was Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Digital First Media. Butler began his journalism career as a reporter at The Southern Illinoisan. In a career spanning more than 30 years, he served in editorial roles at several newspaper publications, before becoming Executive Vice President for News and editor of the Los Angeles Daily News. He was also editor and publisher of The Detroit News for two years.
Lindsey is Director, Communications at the News/Media Alliance. She has over 15 years of experience working in communications for nonprofits.
