CHICAGO — It's going to be in the 70s today, which is pretty much all we care about. But these stories managed to catch our attention on a very distracting Monday.
Good Times: The Financial Times is the first major publication to try charging digital advertisers based on how long readers view its website instead of simple traffic volume, Bloomberg Business reports. “What matters is the amount of time that an ad is in front of someone’s face,” says Tony Haile, CEO of analytics firm Chartbeat, which is working with the British paper to test the model. Our Donwtown reporter David Matthews notes that the shift comes as FT grows its audience, with the paper’s digital subscriptions rising 21 percent last year.
Monumental Road Trip: The road trip is the quintessential American vacation. Accepting a challenge from Discovery News, data geek Randy Olson created an algorithm we won’t pretend to understand and calculated the ultimate trek across the U.S. Olson’s route hits every state in the Lower 48, leap-frogging from one national monument/park/historic site to the next. Abe Lincoln’s home in Springfield is Illinois’ contribution to the trip, which Patty Wetli would rank above the Fox Theater in Detroit but below the Grand Canyon. The entire route covers 13,699 miles and can be completed in 224 hours. That’s 9 days, if you don’t need to sleep or eat, or two to three months if you do.
View From the Window Seat: While landing at one of Chicago's airports, you may have looked down and wondered what all those runway markings are for. Senior editor Andrew Herrmann recommends a Gizmodo story headlined "A Beginner's Guide to The Secret Language of Airport Runways" which uses a shot of a Midway Airport strip as an example.
Runways are numbered 1 to 36 based on a 360-degree map of the airfield. The thick set of ten lines painted on the runway is where the jet takes off; the smaller set of six lines is what the pilot tries to shoot for when landing. The white rectangular strips are “aiming points” -- they’re where the pilots are supposed to be looking at when coming in. And the red signs help the captains know which runway they are entering and assist the air traffic controllers to keep track of everybody.
In other airport mysteries, still no word on where they sent your luggage.
Millennials Actually Care About the News: Old-school media types love to act like young people are dumb narcissists who don't care about the world around them. We may like selfies, but this AP story (h/t Red Eye) proves that we actually like news as well - which is why media outlets need to rethink the way they reach young audiences instead of dismissing them. You're all signed up for our newsletters, right? BTW: newsletters are back.
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