Kurt Gessler – Medium

Kurt Gessler

Generative AI and newsrooms: Tips and best practices for how publishers can use this transformative…

I originally published this article on blogs.taboola.com, which I’m a senior product manager working with editorial tools and generative…

8 min readAug 22, 2023

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Kurt Gessler

What happened when we disabled Google AMP at Tribune Publishing?

Ahead of its June 2021 algorithm update, Google made a significant announcement as part of its shift to emphasize overall page experience…

5 min readAug 26, 2022

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What happened when we disabled Google AMP at Tribune Publishing?

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Kurt Gessler

Facebook’s Breaking News Indicator valuable despite rumors of hidden risks, post cannibalization

Three years into Facebook’s attempt to take a bite from Twitter, there exists little good data on Facebook’s Breaking News Indicator.

13 min readJun 30, 2021

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Facebook’s Breaking News Indicator valuable despite rumors of hidden risks, post cannibalization

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Kurt Gessler

Twitter length study: Do longer tweets drive more engagement and referral traffic?

Since Twitter’s expansion to 280 characters about two years ago, it’s been loosely acknowledged that tweets in the expanded range have…

6 min readJan 8, 2020

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Twitter length study: Do longer tweets drive more engagement and referral traffic?

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Kurt Gessler

Are you posting the same story to Facebook multiple times? You’re probably wasting your time

It’s often called “recirculation” in Facebook parlance, or “strategically reposting” older stories. You know, putting stuff on Facebook…

10 min readNov 14, 2018

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Are you posting the same story to Facebook multiple times? You’re probably wasting your time

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Kurt Gessler

Have Twitter users stopped clicking on links?

Responses that start with “saved you a click” or “I didn’t click the link, but …” are ubiquitous on social media, especially Twitter.

4 min readSep 4, 2018

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Have Twitter users stopped clicking on links?

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Kurt Gessler

Journalists buying followers on social media isn’t trivial. It’s unethical and it matters.

The most surprising wrinkle in the New York Times’ piece The Follower Factory wasn’t the existence of this dark industry. And it wasn’t…

5 min readFeb 1, 2018

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Journalists buying followers on social media isn’t trivial. It’s unethical and it matters.

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Kurt Gessler

Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of our posts. And it’s getting worse

Starting in January of this year, we at the Chicago Tribune started to anecdotally see a fairly significant change in our post reach.

7 min readApr 18, 2017

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Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of our posts. And it’s getting worse

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Kurt Gessler

13 more before-after examples of engaging headlines

As the response was fairly positive to my original Medium post on headline engagement and best practices, I wanted to share a few more…

4 min readApr 16, 2017

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13 more before-after examples of engaging headlines

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Kurt Gessler

18 tips for writing engaging headlines + 27 makeovers that saved stories from extinction

Let’s start with the obvious: Most news sites are in headline crisis.

13 min readNov 28, 2016

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18 tips for writing engaging headlines + 27 makeovers that saved stories from extinction

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Kurt Gessler

Kurt Gessler

Director of Editorial Ops at @ChicagoTribune et al. I also teach stuff at @UNLincoln @Unl_CoJMC. Practicing journalism et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur

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