This morning Upworthy.com, which crested at 30 million unique visitors in May thanks to a runaway viral hit, announced that they've started piloting sponsored posts to generate revenue, and shared with Fast Company a bit of their secret sauce. Founded 14 months ago by Moveon.org's Eli Pariser and Peter Koechley of The Onion, with Chris Hughes of Facebook (who's since left to take over The New Republic), Upworthy set out with the quixotic goal of making green-vegetable topics like gay rights, climate change, and cancer awareness as addictive as Doritos Tacos Locos and as shareable as LOLcats. And they've been really good at it, they revealed today. A social analytics company called SimpleReach reported that Upworthy's posts, helped along by 2 million Facebook Likers and 1 million email signups, were driving a startling 20% of all the social sharing they were tracking of published content on the web. And a separate company called Scanvine rated them #1 of the top 25 most shared sites. Take these mystery metrics with a heavy grain of salt, or say they just got lucky, but take note that a site made up of 80-90% reshared videos, most made by amateurs and activists and posted to YouTube, is pulling in some serious traffic. Here, according to Pariser and Koechley, are the top three rules they've arrived at through their testing that are different from what traditional media does. Spend half your time on the headline "People put way too much emphasis on the specifics of the... Continue reading at 'Fast Company'
[ Fast Company | 2013-07-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
Author Lauren James has established The Climate Fiction Writers League, a group of over 50 international published authors writing about climate change. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-12-07 22:31:59 UTC ]
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THE DEVELOPERS OF Beirut’s Eden Bay needed to clean up the raw sewage on the beach of their luxury development, so they rerouted it into a storm pipe. “And then the rains came,” writes Lina Mounzer in her darkly comedic account from the new anthology Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-25 12:30:52 UTC ]
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The new photo book Overview Timelapse shows the startling ways humanity is changing the planet, from lithium mines to the ravages of climate change. Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2020-10-14 12:00:00 UTC ]
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On Friday evening, CNN put a breaking-news chyron on screen: “WH: THERE WILL NOT BE A TRANSFER OF POWER.” It reflected White House assurances that President Trump—who was, at that moment, waiting to be taken to hospital after testing positive for COVID-19—did not plan on ceding his duties to... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-10-06 12:30:29 UTC ]
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Yesterday, NPR, along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, published a bleak poll on the economic health of the nation since the pandemic began. Nearly half of respondents said their household has experienced “serious financial problems” linked... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-09-10 12:00:40 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury has won a seven-way auction to secure Rumaan Alam's "unnerving" novel, Leave the World Behind, deciding to "crash" the book into its autumn schedule. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-08-12 06:57:56 UTC ]
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Puffin has acquired The Bear in the Stars by debut author and print-maker Alexis Snell. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-04 13:19:07 UTC ]
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The Pulitzer Prize finalist addresses the existential crisis of climate change with a story that’s alternately witty and devastating Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-05-12 16:34:09 UTC ]
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Both Google and Facebook have acted surprisingly quickly to remove disinformation related to the COVID-19 virus over the past few weeks, considering their somewhat mixed track record when it comes to removing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and trolls related to political campaigns. But experts... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-04-09 11:45:11 UTC ]
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The Wainwright Prize for UK nature writing has launched a new award recognising narrative books that reflect conservation or climate change and how it impacts on nature and the outdoors. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-24 08:29:09 UTC ]
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“Our House Is on Fire” shares a very personal story of the suffering that preceded Thunberg’s activism on climate change. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-03-16 16:00:00 UTC ]
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The authors of the new book ‘The Future We Choose,’ which outlines possible outcomes of the climate crisis, explain how you can make the choices today that will create the best possible world in 2050. A new book called The Future We Choose lays out two scenarios for the future: what 2050 looks... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2020-02-24 06:01:25 UTC ]
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As floods swamp Britain in yet another reminder of the weather extremes engendered by climate change, this week’s announcement from German media giant Bertelsmann, parent of Penguin Random House, that it has set a 2030 target to become “climate neutral” comes as a welcome marker for the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-21 00:16:16 UTC ]
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News Corp’s paper says its journalists report the facts but critics say it publishes misleading claimsIn an editorial on Saturday, the Weekend Australian defended the News Corp paper’s climate coverage in response to criticism that it had underplayed the bushfire crisis and chosen to highlight... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-01-14 16:30:39 UTC ]
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Emily Townsend’s reply-all email to executive chairman calls the company’s coverage ‘irresponsible’ and ‘dangerous’A senior News Corp employee has accused the company of “misinformation” and diverting attention from climate change during the bushfire crisis in an explosive all-staff email... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-01-10 02:32:52 UTC ]
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Hutchinson has signed the new novel from award-winning author Carys Bray about the impact of climate change on mental health. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-11-28 15:45:29 UTC ]
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William Collins has triumphed in a three-way auction to publish Financial Times journalist Simon Mundy’s "urgent and practical" book on how climate change will transform global industry, economy and international development. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-23 16:03:08 UTC ]
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Harmony picks up a nonfiction book on nonmonogamy by a Bustle editor for six figs, Knopf buys a novel by Jim Carrey, and Doubleday takes a title from Bill Gates on climate change in this week's notable book deals. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-10-04 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Jonathan Safran Foer warns that people must start believing in the danger of climate change. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2019-10-04 02:50:48 UTC ]
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The titles agents are taking to this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair have a strong environmental theme—be it scientific polemics, nature writing or warnings on the dangers of technology—as ‘up-lit’ looks set to continue raising readers’ spirits. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-09-30 07:28:56 UTC ]
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