Technology’s relentless advance never ceases to amaze

 The discovery of the printing technique happened more than 2200 years ago – in China – when woodblock printing was used to leave impressions on cloth. The moveable type of printing (using metal type) is said to have originated again in China, almost 1000 years ago. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenburg introduced the first moveable type printing system in Europe and the printing press arrived – a landmark discovery.

From the rotary press to the letterpress and offset press on to offset and gravure, printing brought with it access to knowledge and changed the nature of reading. But even twenty years ago, not many could have bargained for the kind of digital surge we see today and the resultant change in the reading habit.

Teemu Henriksson writes about how news publishers are increasingly realising the power of personalisation. In the latest version of its iPhone app, The New York Times has added a prominent new section, For You, which features articles based on the user’s interests, he says.

The Times of London and the Sunday Times are using an algorithm to serve up content through personalised newsletters, which is helping them reduce subscriber churn. More and more publishers are experimenting with personalisation and they are quickly learning that there is no one size that fits all. What has to be pursued with zeal is content analysis and user profiling; that’s the only way content personalisation is possible.

Henriksson elaborates on the Content Personalisation Network Project that chooses to be as open as possible about the algorithm’s functionalities. The project is looking for media companies to join the initiative and benefit from the CPN software for free.

The Hindu Group in India has built into its databases a machine-learning algorithm that analyses reading patterns of millions of users to identify the stories that resonate with various cohorts and creates articles for subscribers to widen their reading, Henriksson points out. Seems like readers have never mattered so much before.

Google of course has been leading the path towards new initiatives focused on the reader. The Google News Initiative is one such. Close to 24 per cent of the company’s investments in this sphere in the Asia-Pacific Region is in India. Publishers are aware that most consumers now seek news on their mobile phones.

Google has been active in the area, launching Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP in India a few years ago. AMP helps to speed up the rate at which articles load on mobile devices. Then there are initiatives such as Innovation Challenge, Backlight (a journalistic tool) and Data Studio which are explained in Elizabeth Shilpa’s article in this issue.

 Sherry Ricchiardi, a journalist and media development specialist in her piece for Datajournalism.com title, ‘Capturing racial justice protests with data’ mentions data being among the key building blocks for stories that capture the audience’s attention. Ricchiardi refers to how videos, maps and graphics were used to verify police violence against protesters, expose patterns of racism in American communities, and reconstruct the scene where George Floyd cried “I can’t breathe” while a White police officer knelt on his neck. Some of the projects have become prototypes for multi-dimensional storytelling.