The Canadian Online Publishing Award finalists have been announced, recognizing excellence in online content. CTV Calgary and RDS.ca are in the running for Best News Coverage in the Media category, while Maclean’s and The Narwhal are competing for Best News Website. This year’s 10th Anniversary COPA Party on Nov. 14 will be a red carpet affair at the historic Eglinton Grand in Toronto, preceded by The State of Digital seminar exploring the ad sales side of online publishing in the shadow of digital titans Google and Facebook.
CBC News is doubling down on boosting its youth-focused content with the launch of two new digital-first news platforms for kids and young adults – CBC Kids News and CBC News Snapchat Discover. Targeted to kids aged 9 – 13, CBC Kids News covers local, national and international stories deemed relevant to Canadian kids by what CBC describes as a “seasoned team of journalists who will consult with an editorial board of young Canadians from across the country.” The platform will include stories from Canadian contributors aged 9-16, including 14-year-old Toronto-based actress Saara Chaudry who has been chosen as host and lead contributor from more than 700 applicants. Chaudry, who won an ACTRA Award for Best Voice Performance for her role in animated film The Breadwinner, landed the her new role based on her keen interest in world issues. CBC News is also publishing a youth-focused, highly visual, daily edition on the Snapchat Discover platform, making the public broadcaster the first Canadian publisher of daily news on the app. Read more here.
The BBC will host the first non-U.S. news show on Facebook Watch. Cut Through the Noise will air weekly and report on issues from Washington, DC and elsewhere. Facebook Watch launched its news programming with On Location from ABC News, CNN’s Anderson Cooper Full Circle, along with Univision’s Real America with Jorge Ramos. According to a study by The Diffusion Group, approximately half of Facebook uses have never heard of Facebook Watch, which reportedly has 50 million viewers a month.
Facebook is expanding its fact-checking to include photo and video posts ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. The digital giant says it’s developed machine learning tools that help identify false content, which will be provided to third-party fact-checking partners in 17 countries. In a blog post, product manager Antonia Woodford explains that as ratings from fact-checkers are accumulated, the platform will be able to improve the accuracy of the machine learning model. They’ll also leverage tech like optical character recognition (OCR) to extract text from photos and compare that text to headlines from fact-checkers’ articles, as well as detect if a photo or video has been manipulated.
The Globe and Mail has launched Report on Business Cannabis Professional, a premium subscription online news service for global cannabis insiders and investors. Available weekday mornings, the newsletter will include original reporting on the cannabis industry including policy decisions, people moves, corporate finance, and business strategy and operations. In addition, subscribers will be the first to receive alerts with breaking cannabis industry news from The Globe’s newsroom and bureaus.
The Insight Centre for Data Analytics in Ireland has researched what influences the kind of apps people use, finding that the country a person lives in is the single most determining factor. Researchers studied the data of 25,323 Android users who used 54,776 mobile applications in 44 countries. English-speaking countries, including Canada, the U.S., UK, Australia, and New Zealand, along with Japan and South Korea had the highest app usage, while Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan and India had lower general usage, but higher use of apps geared towards sports and racing games. Socio-economic factors were the second biggest influencer with occupation, education, and how much a person has in savings, the next determinant in what apps a person will use, trumping both age and gender.
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