What I've been reading: Life without Tweetdeck, the Public Interest News Foundation's Local News Map reaction and the future of Google

I’m on a period of leave at the moment, one of the benefits of this is having some time to read around and there’s interesting links below that I’ve stumbled upon. If you’re in the digital media, digital journalism, social media, digital comms space then I hope these are a good reading list. I’ll try and post these as frequently as I get chance, and if you find them useful let me know. And if you spot something I should include, or you’ve written something that you think should be shared then drop it over. I’m on edward_walker86 AT hotmail.co.uk

TweetDeck is officially becoming a paid service - The Verge. Farewell to Tweetdeck. A mainstay of any journalist's toolkit, Tweetdeck (which began as a start-up and was then bought by Twitter) has become a paid-for part of X as it continues the Musk era. A really powerful search and monitoring tool, not just for journalists but all manor of industries that either had a digital presence or were producing digital content. Your choice is either to cough up the monthly fee, use the free X platform but save things like searches/lists as tabs to move quickly between them, and this TechCrunch piece sheds light on how difficult to replicate Tweetdeck it is. And how the closest similar tool, HootSuite, comes with a hefty monthly price tag that suddenly makes paying for XPro seem well worth it.

Reflections on the Local News Map, and next steps - Joe Mitchell, Public Interest News Foundation. There's been plenty of reaction to the map, with many pointing fingers at missing publications, odd definitions etc. The basis behind the map is sound, trying to get a feel for where there isn't the intensity of news coverage in the UK. I feel there's definitely a missing piece around trying to score the 'newsiness' of an area. Journalists have that in-built knowledge around which places they just know if they source a story about then it will perform better and get people talking - because those places have strong news and digital eco-systems. This probably warrants a longer post from me but it feels like for a local authority area it's not as simple as saying 'x publication covers y', are there active Facebook groups? Twitter accounts? What is the story count for major towns within those local authority areas? Are there Local Democracy Reporters? What's the population? You could then find places with a strong potential news eco-system which are not being covered as regularly (and this becomes a starting point for helping encourage more publication in these geographies), and likewise places which don't have the news eco-system as mature so the starting point there becomes in encouraging things like distribution channels which then encourages more news provision because there's a distribution network digitally. The first review step is a good one, opening up the map to allow people to submit missing publications. I'll be putting in a few I know of.

Fortune’s Chief Customer Officer: Targeting reach failed to deliver revenue for publishers - Pugpig - there's some really interesting insight pieces from Pugpig at the moment digging into the strategies behind publishers. There's some good stuff in here about workflows, ensuring any strategy around content is user-focused rather than content-focused and much more.

Facebook and Instagram start blocking news in Canada - The Verge - across the Atlantic and there's a war going on between Canadian media, the tech giants and the Canadian government. The thorny issue of the tech giants needing to pay, make a contribution, however you want to call it for the use of content on their platforms has reached boiling point in Canada. It's pretty scary that important news about locations, and wider, is not being served up on one of the most-used digital platforms in the country - see this Guardian piece about the impact the news sharing ban is having in the North West of the country which is experiencing intense wildfires. While people who are conscious consumers will then probably seek out a news platform directly - potentially seeing a boost in direct and engaged audiences for some publishers - many people are passive consumers of news. And it is those people who will be most affected - and lost to publishers - by this kind of action by Meta. And Google is due to follow suit. A worrying test case?

Seven sources of free images for journalists - Journalism.co.uk - so often you're writing a story about something which doesn't relate to a specific person or organisation, limiting the images you can use. Hence the stock picture. Taking that bit of time to find a picture that's different or more unique, or matches the content, will make it perform so much better regardless of platform. This is a genuinely handy list from Jacob Granger and features some well-known and not-so-well-known picture site options.

Google changed the world but search is on for the next big hit - Tom Whipple, The Times - I read this is print over the weekend, was the Weekend Essay in The Times. Reads as a 'what's next for Google?' and struck me just how geared to hyper-serving their users the platform is, and it's important to remember that is what is behind many of the decisions, products and changes that are made. But if we do see legislation or competition, then will there become a broader set of search-engines which are more topic/industry focused than one to rule them all?

Want more links to read? Here's the last round-up I did.