Washington Post’s ‘Election Essentials’ Unique to Apple News

On Monday, the Washington Post announced that it is writing exclusive, unique content for Apple News, starting with Election Essentials, which publishes on Mondays.

Washington Post's 'Election Essentials' Exclusive to Apple News

On Monday, the Washington Post announced that it is writing exclusive, unique content for Apple News, starting with Election Essentials, which publishes on Mondays. Election Essentials is a weekly news briefing for Apple News readers written by the Post’s emerging news products team, an innovative 20-member team that leverages various storytelling platforms and mobile-first news. Presented in a multimedia format with video, images, text, links and more, the election briefings provide updates on the presidential race, as well as what to watch for in the week ahead.

“Election Essentials is a multimedia presentation of news that adds context to the headlines people are reading in a brief, easily digestible format,” said David Merrell, Senior Mobile Product Manager at The Washington Post. “Displaying Post content in the native Apple News format is another example of how we’re creating experiences specifically designed for the device readers are on.”

Washington Post's 'Election Essentials' Exclusive to Apple News

[Note: Shailesh Prakash is CIO/CTO at The Washington Post.]

Kristen Hare of Poynter interviewed Merrell on the reason for creating content exclusively for Apple News. Merrell told Hare that the popular news app is installed on every iPhone, iPad and iPod touch device in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, giving the Washington Post exposure to new audiences. According to Statista, in 2015, there were 75.23 million iPhone users!

“Creating new content for those readers as a doorway into the rest of our coverage was a no-brainer,” Merrell told Hare. “We believe strongly in going where the readers are. The Post’s strategy for distributed content is simple: we partner with new platforms as early as possible to see if there is a strategic fit, experiment when it makes sense, and learn what is resonating with users. 

Insider Take:

There are so many tools and platforms available now for media organizations to share their news, including print publications, websites, mobile apps, social media, social media apps like Instant Articles, and more. Not every media outlet needs to be in every space, but companies like The Washington Post will know where their readers want to get their news, and they’ll go to them.

According to MacRumors last October, Tim Cook cited that 40 million people are using Apple News in Apple’s fourth quarter earnings call. He did not explain whether that includes only regular users, one-time users or a combination. Either way, a potential audience of 40 million is a good reason to customize news, and the timing couldn’t be better. With a controversial presidential election coming this fall, millions of Americans are following news about the candidates and important issues of the day. The Post is serving up that news in a format that’s easy to access and consume.

The Post has a great opportunity here to get in front of potential subscribers and to expand its reach, and brand, and as they often do, they seized that opportunity early on. We anticipate that other media organizations will follow suit on their platform of choice whether it is via publishing unique articles via Google AMP, posting exclusive content on Facebook’s Instant Articles platform or whatever the next, shiny, new toy is. We are the excited about the possibilities for other subscription companies and publishers.

 

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