News engagement, drone delivery and ideas for 2023: Twipe’s Weekly News Digest

Welcome to Twipe’s Weekly News Digest. This week, we take a look at stories from across the world of publishing and news tech, touching on topics like the stabilisation of news engagement in 2022, a Finnish publisher experimenting with drones for delivery, our top picks from Nieman Lab‘s 2023 predictions and more. Read our top 5 stories of the week below.

1. News engagement stabilised in 2022

According to the latest study from Axios, news engagement continued to slow in 2022 relative to 2021, but the slow down reached a level of stabilisation in the second half of 2022. To most, this is no surprise. Despite a form of return to a normal world and less news around COVID-19 and the final year of Trump, some major stories unfolded across the world in the second half of 2022 including the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the war in Ukraine and more.

Get the full story from Sara Fischer on Axios here.

2. Nieman Lab’s Predictions for 2023: Our top picks

In our weekly Future of News blog article (subscribe to the newsletter here), we made our way through the 150+ predictions for 2023 presented by Nieman Lab to select our top picks. Several themes dominated this year’s predictions, most notably (and unsurprisingly) generative AI, along with positive perspectives around product development and audience engagement.

Find our full article here.

3. Finland to deliver newspapers by drone

Can you still reach subscribers in remote areas with print? One local Finnish logistics company is hoping so. Beginning in March 2023, Lentola Logistics, with the support of the Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland, is trialing the use of drones to deliver daily newspapers. The site for the experiment is the Finnish island villages of Saarikylät to the southeast of the city of Tampere in the Pirkanmaa region. With the ability to travel 80 km/h and carry more than 3.5 kilos, the drone experiments will be an exciting one to follow.

Learn more about the experiment here.

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4. Guardian offices closed until 23 January due to ongoing fallout from suspected ransomware attack

On 20th December, The Guardian‘s global IT systems were the subject of a suspected ransomware attack. Whilst the attack represents a significant attempt to destabilise one of the English-speaking world’s largest publishers, The Guardian has been able to continue publication in both print and digital. Since the attack, employees have been told to work remotely whilst the publisher attempts to reconfigure and fix impacted systems, thought to include internal wifi amongst others.

Read more about the attack on Press Gazette here.

5. Massive Apple headset leak reveals new details and confirms earlier rumours

Source: Mixed

Rumours are mounting ahead of Apple‘s next launch event. One recent leak suggests that the launch of Apple‘s very own XR headset is imminent. The leak contains many details about the rumoured headset. Details which our team found particularly interesting are the addition of a quick dial to change realities, a slot for corrective lenses to be inserted and the ability to display existing iOS apps in 2D.

Find out more about the leak on Mixed here.

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