(Left) Veronika Jermanova, Communications Intern at EMMA/the Future Media Lab..

In the most recent edition of our bi-weekly news roundup, Veronika Jermanova shares the news that caught her eye in the past two weeks. The news round-up is a way for the Future Media Lab. team and members of the Future Media Lab. network to share articles about innovations and developments in the media sector, including references to relevant media policy debates.

Here are Veronika’s choices for this week:

1) Recent studies show that magazines consistently deliver high ROI (returns on investment) for advertisers, yet they remain an under-utilized medium. While good news for publishers, on the other hand we should not overlook one important fact: advertising investment in magazines is still low. Nevertheless, we can still say that magazines are a very effective advertising medium. As we wrote earlier this month the most effective advertisement campaign combines traditional and new media. And while the role of social media continues to grow, the most trusted source of news still remains newspapers and magazines.

2) More than six months after terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo’s office we can evaluate how the position of journalists has changed. It might be obvious that due to the events in January 2015, journalists feel more threatened, and not justin crisis zones. The attacks were a “watershed” moment for journalists, highlighting the risks journalists face regardless of geographic borders and how fragile freedom of expression can be. The attacks also evoked questions about government surveillance and censorship, and reactions to the attacks can be seen in France’s new surveillance law.

3) Risk and security challenges are not just a problem for professional journalists, but for citizen journalists as well. Mainstream media outlets are increasingly relying on content that is produced or shared by citizens, which begs the question: Who should be responsible for their safety? Experts from various fields agree that the responsibility should be taken by news outlets and media organizations. Some already started to take some pre-emptive measures, for instance the BBC’s editorial guidelines expressly deter citizens from endangering themselves in order to get a picture or video.

4) Branded content is becoming a mainstay for publishers. Particularly for publishers who attract specific, niche audiences – such as Politico – branded content offers an opportunity for advertisers to change perspectives or promote certain items. But there are pitfalls to branded content, as many readers are sceptical of content produced by advertisers, particularly if it isn’t well-labelled

5) According to a new study, in order to retain the attention of millennials journalists have to adapt their content and forget their previous obsession with objectivity. Today, young people are used to getting news from their social platforms, the most common being Facebook. Thus they tend to read stories that are more relevant to them or shared by friends, and they look for passion and personal engagement. A good example of this is the recent podcast in the US, “Serial” in which a journalist told a 15 year old story (!) about a murder case. because the podcast was a huge success, mostly due to how she presented the story, and was able to integrate the audience into it.

6) Trying to compete with its rival Facebook on advertising opportunities, Twitter has launched a specialised section to enable advertisers to manage ad campaigns for events in a more automated way. This new feature was announced on Thursday, 20 July. Staying with Twitter - you should not miss a new social medium: Periscope (owned by Twitter). It is a unique live video streaming social platform that offers users the possibility to video-record and broadcast content to masses. It will be interesting to follow the development of this new platform and also how advertisers will try to integrate Periscope into their social media campaigns.

7) All of us have probably experienced the disappointment felt when we find a website whose content is not readable on a mobile device. In today’s environment, having a mobile-friendly site is paramount: here you can see some examples of the best mobile solutions. Or just get some inspiration by going through websites with social media integration.

Read something that you think needs to be shared? Please send me an e-mail: [email protected]