Weekly Roundup

By Lindsey Loving May 20, 2016

Member Announcements:

Starting today, DMN’s digital readers will see limit on free articles (Dallas Morning News)
The Dallas Morning News will begin charging readers for online content, but only after reading more than ten online articles in a 30-day period. Only the most active readers and subscribers will be likely to notice a change. This is the News’ second attempt at a paid site for news content.

More than 64 million users visited The Post in April, nearly 30% more than the same time last year (The Washington Post)
In April The Washington Post had more than 835 million page views, an increase of almost 70% compared to last April. Year-over-year growth mobile users continue to grow and was about 48 million last month.

NYT VR app wins “Most Innovative” at Google Play Awards (New York Times)
The Google Play Awards recognized apps and games from a variety of categories, focusing on metrics including innovation, app quality and material design.

The Wall Street Journal Partners With Google for Daydream (Dow Jones)
This fall viewers will be able to access virtual reality content from WSJ on Google Daydream. Collaborating with Google allows The Journal to create immersive news experiences for viewers for virtual reality. Other partners include The New York Times.

Staff Announcements:

Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.: Darrell Lewis has been appointed publisher and advertising director of the Effingham Daily News.

The New York Times:
Elizabeth Spayd has been named the next public editor of The New York Times.
Allan Beaufour has been named senior vice president of engineering.

News Media Alliance Announcements:

Tony W. Hunter elected Chairman of the Newspaper Association of America
NAA has elected Tony Hunter, president of national revenue and strategic initiatives at Tribune Publishing Company, as its Chairman of the Board of Directors. Hunter, who previously served as Board Secretary, succeeds Donna Barrett in this position.

Department of Labor Issues Final Overtime Rule
On May 18, the Department of Labor (DOL) released its Final Rule to increase the salaries test used to determine whether an employee qualifies for overtime. In the Final Rule, the DOL set the salary threshold to $47,476, to be implemented December 1, 2016. Although nearly $3,000 less than the originally proposed threshold, it is still a 100% increase from the current threshold of $23,660.

Top 30 Under 30 with Shannon Green, USA TODAY & Anna Costello, AdPay Inc.
News Media Alliance announced the winners of its first “Top 30 Under 30” Awards program at mediaXchange 2016 in April, which honors young leaders working in every aspect of the news media who are contributing to the future success of the industry. Green, a senior multimedia producer at USA TODAY and Costello, the director of product management at AdPay Inc., are changing the industry with creative solutions for storytelling and advertising.

What We’re Reading:

Here is an easy free tool to convert all your articles to Google AMP (Nieman Lab)
New York-based digital agency Postlight released a free tool, Mercury, which promises “instant AMP results with zero development.”

Nuzzel launches “first network of newsletters” (Marketingland)
Social news service Nuzzel is launching its network of newsletters. The news service, reached via your Twitter log-in, shows you the news stories your friends are sharing, as well as the top stories in a variety of topics.

Snapchat publishers weigh in on the pros and cons of Discover (Digiday)
While Snapchat Discover has the potential to capture big audiences, some publishers have opted to use Snapchat’s free, personal accounts as an extension of their newsroom to reach new audiences. Publishers getting started on Snapchat should understand the differences between the two formats.