Here’s our roundup of the top digital and social media stories you should know about (and from Andrew Beaujon, 10 media stories to start your day):
— Facebook’s “teen crisis” might be reversing. A Forrester Research survey shows almost half of 12- to 17-year-old respondents are using Facebook more than they were a year ago. “Of the other social networks, Instagram was closest to Facebook in terms of heavy usage,” Reed Albergotti reports at the Wall Street Journal. “Snapchat was third, followed by Twitter, Vine and WhatsApp.”
— National Geographic’s domestic print circulation has dropped from a peak of 12 million in the 1980s to just over 4 million now. Online, the magazine is picking up the pace to stay relevant: “I’d like to see more stories that feel a little more urgent,” new editor in chief Susan Goldberg tells Paul Farhi at the Washington Post.
— In USA Today, Roger Yu profiles Quartz, whose “emphasis on data and charts to augment stories, e-mailed newsletters and designing stories optimal for social media shares and mobile reading” have inspired other digital startups targeting “sophisticated, high-earning, jet-setting news lovers.”
— Gawker editorial director Joel Johnson told staffers in April that his traffic goal for the end of 2014 was 100 million unique visitors (up from 60 million). But that was likely too ambitious, he tells Capital New York’s Peter Sterne: “Something more like 80 is probably more realistic, [but] 80 just seemed a little, I don’t know, sad.”
— Apple will begin production on two larger iPhone models next month, Tim Culpan and Peter Burrows report at Bloomberg. Versions with 4.7- and 5.5-inch screens could both be available in September.
— TheMediaBriefing’s Jasper Jackson details how Quartz, Business Insider and Forbes are aiming for a “high-value global audience with an ad-based model aimed at the gaps left by others (such as the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times) going down the subscriptions route.”
