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A thousand days in, there may be an end in sight for the newsroom strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette“I’m feeling…tired. Mad. Broke.” By Sarah Scire. |
“AI is a tool (sorry!) that people who are bad at their jobs will use badly and that people who are good at their jobs will maybe, possibly find some uses for. People who are terrible at their jobs (many executives), will tell their employees that they ‘need’ to use AI, that their jobs depend on it, that they must become more productive, and that becoming an AI-first company is the strategy that will save them from the old failed strategy, which itself was the new strategy after other failed business models.”
TechCrunch / Sarah PerezNotebookLM adds featured notebooks from The Economist, The Atlantic, and others →The initial lineup for featured notebooks on the AI-powered research and note-taking assistant from Google includes a notebook with “expert analysis and predictions for the year 2025 as shared in The World Ahead annual report by The Economist” and “an advice notebook based on bestselling author Arthur C. Brooksâ ‘How to Build A Life’ columns in The Atlantic.”
IJNet / José J. NievesWhen your audience sustains you: Membership and donations for exiled media →“Among exiled Latin American media outlets, Confidencial (Nicaragua) and El Pitazo (Venezuela) have both tested [membership] approaches, with differing outcomes. Confidencial continues to run its Members and Friends program, while El Pitazo shut down its membership initiative after two years due to poor returns on investment.”
The New York Times / Quinn MorelandTwo “printheads” have built magazine nirvana in Manhattanâs Financial District →“White bookshelves lining the walls contain treasures that would delight all who share Mr. Chaiken and Ms. Igol’s love of printed matter. Kurt Cobain in a baby-doll dress on the cover of The Face. The singers Boy George and Marilyn goofing around in black-and-white on the front of an Annie Flanders-era Details from June 1985. A doe-eyed model in a white lace dress and bubble gum pink head scarf gazes out from a January 1964 issue of Vogue.”
Press Gazette / Rob WaughJournalist finds 4,000 fake AI news websites created to game Google algorithms →“The creators of the fake news sites, which spew Al-written articles plagiarized from other sites or which are simply made up, are largely search engine optimization (SEO) experts. They aim to either earn money by ‘backlinking’ (artificially boosting the rankings of other sites) or by appearing in Google Discover to harvest ad revenue.”
Press Gazette / Matt SmithSubstacker Judd Legum on doing journalism that “went out of fashion” →“Popular Information, which provides a mix of investigative reporting and political analysis, began as a solo venture in 2018 and now has a reporting staff of three and at least 20,000 paying subscribers. With an annual cost of £37 (more for monthly subscribers), a conservative revenue estimate could be that the newsletter is bringing in £740,000 per year.”
Deadline / Dade HayesWith Linda Yaccarino out at Twitter, will Elon Musk go back to telling advertisers “go fâ yourself”? →“Going forward, with xAI capable of raising significant funds and Musk committed to the Al race, speculation has been growing about X becoming more of a seedbed of Al research than the video ad vehicle Yaccarino envisioned. ‘Linda’s playbook was perfect for social media in its traditional form, but even without the constant drama with Musk, it’s not clear that the strategy has a long future,’ one former senior-level colleague told Deadline.”
The Hollywood Reporter / Alex WeprinABC News is launching a new daily show on Disney+ called “What You Need to Know” →“The network news division says that the new show, What You Need to Know, will be anchored by chief international correspondent James Longman and senior political correspondent Rachel Scott, with new episodes going live on Disney+ at 6 a.m. eastern. Each episode will be available for 24 hours, before the next days’ episode replaces it.”
Medium / Tony Stubblebine“Fell in a hole, got out”: How Medium returned to profitability after a near-death experience →“In 2022, Medium was losing $2.6M each month. We were also losing subscribers so you couldn’t even look at that spend as an investment in growth. Internally, we were kind of ashamed of the stories we were paying and promoting as winners on the platform. Our subscribers were less kind â calling out that we were swamped with get-rich-quick trash (and worse).”
The Guardian / Michael SavageBBC breached accuracy guidelines over Gaza documentary, review finds →“…by failing to disclose its child narrator was the son of a Hamas official, an internal review has found. However, the inquiry into the making of ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’ found no other breaches of guidelines in its production, including impartiality. It found that no outside interests ‘inappropriately impacted on the programme.'”
The Verge / Adam AleksicWordpilled slangmaxxing: How incel language infected the mainstream internet â and brought its toxicity with it →“While extreme, the basic structure of the incel filter bubble mirrors all other filter bubbles online. Those who are further in the in-Âgroup are more likely to dominate discourse, creating and spreading words for those on the periphery. As users familiarize themselves with the group vocabulary, they identify more with that group, and more readily adopt language to fit shared social needs.”
Politico / Lindsey HoldenA federal judge has ruled that Los Angeles police can’t shoot rubber bullets at journalists covering protests →“U.S. District Judge Hernán D. Vera granted the Los Angeles Press Club’s request for a 14-day restraining order against the city’s police department after the group said it documented dozens of incidents in which officers forced reporters away from public spaces where protests were taking place, hit them with rubber bullets and nonlethal weapons, and exposed them to tear gas.”
• • •“Almost by definition, people in that space have been bad actors, because they are posing as publishers and pretending to be something they arenât.” →—Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors, on the self-publishing "author services industry." One company, led by Michael Cris Traya Sordilla (pictured), currently faces federal fraud charges for allegedly pilfering $44 million from authors. (Bloomberg / Brent Crane)• • •The Guardian / Michael SavageThousands of BBC jobs are at risk as the broadcaster considers a major outsourcing drive →“The plans being considered include the offshoring of jobs currently carried out in the U.K., with the BBC understood to be talking to U.S. tech giants as potential partners. It is said to include the outsourcing of recommendation algorithms, which direct users to content.”
Bloomberg / Edward Ludlow and Kurt WagnerElon Muskâs xAI â home to the former Twitter â is seeking funding at a $200 billion valuation →Musk claims his new AI model is “smarter than almost all graduate students, in all disciplines, simultaneously.”
• • •19.88% →The share of Google search queries that triggered an AI Overview in May â the first (slight) decrease in the feature’s history. (Digiday / Sara Guaglione)
• • •Digiday / Jessica DaviesCondé Nast and Hearst strike AI licensing deals for Rufus, Amazon’s shopping bot →“The news comes just six weeks after The New York Times revealed its own Al licensing tieup with Amazon, which allows Amazon to use articles from The Times and content from NYT Cooking and sports website The Athletic for its Al products.”
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