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Circa

Key links:

Primary website:
cir.ca

Primary Twitter:
@circa

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Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

Circa is a mobile-only app for reading news that presents stories as collections of facts from various sources.

For its focus on presenting news the way readers want it on their phones—in short chunks, added to as a story changes—Circa has been hailed as an example of the “post-article” news world. Its minimalist design breaks stories up into pieces easily viewable on a phone screen. Users can follow stories of interest and receive updates as new facts, statistics, or images are added. Circa relies heavily on aggregation while using editors to string together the content.

The app was founded by Cheezburger Network’s Ben Huh and launched in October 2012. It released an updated focused on breaking news a year later.

By June 2013, the company employed 14 people producing 40 to 60 stories every day.

Peers, allies, & competitors:

Summly, Storify, Quartz, Flipboard, Upworthy

Recent Nieman Lab coverage:

May 11, 2023 / Laura Hazard Owen

Google is changing up search. What does that mean for news publishers? — At its annual I/O conference on Wednesday, Google announced a slew of “experiments” and changes that are coming to search. It’s early days. But if these changes are rolled out widely, they’ll be t...

May 10, 2023 / Sarah Scire

The Athletic’s live audio rooms bring sports talk radio into this century — A curious media hole forms in the wake of a big sports game. After the final whistle, people are craving content about what they just watched, but many reporters are busy interviewing coaches and players and writing thei...

May 9, 2023 / Hanaa' Tameez

In Spain, a new data-powered news outlet aims to increase accountability reporting — In March, Spain passed a gender quotas law aimed at raising the number of women in leadership roles across the country. Among other requirements, the law calls requires political parties to put forward equal numbers of m...

May 8, 2023 / Joshua Benton

Get amped up for this piece on the twisted journey of Google’s AMP, its ersatz savior of news on phones — If you’ve got the attention span for 6,340 words about an outré web component framework — and don’t lie, you do — I suggest you check out this piece by David Pierce just out at The Verge. Okay, let me se...

May 8, 2023 / Sophie Culpepper

Can AI help local newsrooms streamline their newsletters? ARLnow tests the waters — Scott Brodbeck, the founder of Virginia-based media company Local News Now, had wanted to launch an additional newsletter for a while. One of his sites, ARLnow, already has an automated daily afternoon newsletter that in...

All Lab posts on Circa »

Recently around the web, from Mediagazer:

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Primary author: Sarah Darville. Main text last updated: June 13, 2014.

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Quartz is an online business publication that provides reporting and analysis on the global economy. The site was launched in 2012 by Atlantic Media, owner of The Atlantic, The Wire and National Journal. The site is based in New York and has a newsroom staff of around 25 reporters, editors and developers. In building the…

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