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Americans trust PBS because it’s publicly funded, not in spite of it“President Trump says he is ‘restoring trust in government funded institutions.’ Our findings demonstrate that such trust already exists, in spades, towards PBS.” By Christopher Ali, Hilde Van den Bulck and Jonathan Kropko. |
These journalism pioneers are working to keep their countries’ languages alive in the age of AI news“These newsrooms desperately need the help these technologies provide, but they’re the ones being left out because they work in languages that are considered low-resource, so they are not a big priority for tech companies to support.” By Gretel Kahn. |
“Launched in 2023, LRAP is the first program of its kind in graduate journalism education. In its first two years, the program awarded more than $300,000 to over thirty alumni working full-time in nonprofit news organizations.”
Fly / Thomas Ptacek“My AI skeptic friends are all nuts” →“Some of the smartest people I know share a bone-deep belief that AI is a fad — the next iteration of NFT mania. I’ve been reluctant to push back on them, because, well, they’re smarter than me. But their arguments are unserious, and worth confronting. Extraordinarily talented people are doing work that LLMs already do better, out of spite.”
The Long Story / Simon OwensWhy the best journalists on YouTube are all former Vox employees →“That success isn’t a coincidence. Starting in 2014, [Joe] Posner and [Joss] Fong built out a scrappy team of journalists, many of whom had limited experience producing video, and together they began inventing their own form of visual storytelling, one that combined data viz, animation, sound design, expert interviews, and narration.
“For most of this time, the executives at their parent company left them alone, and this independence allowed them to ignore the macro trends in legacy media — including its disastrous pivot to Facebook video — and focus solely on creating longform YouTube videos.”
Press Gazette / Rhi StorerYouTube channels are ripping-and-reading paywalled news articles via AI →Within hours of a personal story being published, “a YouTube channel, ‘The World News,’ had taken McGibbon’s copy and turned it into a 14-minute video, with the entire content, approximately 2,000 words, read out by an AI narrator. Childhood photographs supplied by McGibbon to the Daily Mail for one-off use only were also added in as a video montage without permission.”
The Verge / Alex Heath“More than 50 people” are making over $1 million a year on Substack →CEO Chris Best “says Substack was ‘accidentally cash-flow positive’ in the first quarter of this year, but isn’t planning to be profitable soon. ‘We’re focused on growth,’ he says. ‘It turns out that when you do that, it makes the business grow really well, too.'”
TheWrap / Sean BurchVox Media’s union pledges to strike without new worker protections against AI →“The strike threat was made on Tuesday by the Writers Guild of America East, which said 95% of its bargaining members approved of the plan…Vox in January went through its third round of job cuts in two months, kickstarting what has been a brutal year for the media industry.”
NPR / David Folkenflik and Deirdre WalshTrump asks Congress to wipe out $1.1 billion in already-approved funding for public broadcasting →“A simple majority of lawmakers in each chamber must approve what’s technically known as a ‘rescission request’ within 45 days for it to become law…[The total] represents the full funding levels for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through the end of September 2027. Congress approved that funding in March as part of a stopgap spending bill the president signed.”
The Washington Post / Jeremy BarrTom Llamas is taking over for Lester Holt. Will viewers keep watching? →“While ABC World News Tonight is still the most-watched evening news show, the 6.5 million viewers that NBC Nightly News averaged in the first three months of this year is still a sizable audience in today’s heavily fragmented media environment.”
The Washington Post / Scott Nover and Sarah EllisonAfter contractor cuts, Voice of America staffers brace for further layoffs →“On June 3, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, sent Congress its proposed plan for a reduction in force, which would eliminate most of the 800 remaining staffers at the government-funded news organization. These employees work full time and are more difficult to fire than the contractors, whose last day was May 30.”
Associated Press / Kate PayneA federal judge has blocked Florida’s law banning kids from having social media accounts →Judge Mark “Walker wrote that the law is ‘likely unconstitutional’…[and] that the prohibition on social media platforms from allowing certain age groups to have accounts ‘directly burdens those youths’ rights to engage in and access speech.'”
Digiday / Sara GuaglioneThe New York Times’ AI deal with Amazon signals a new wave of publisher partnerships →“It’s a sign of the times: Even The New York Times, long known for its staunch defense against illegal content scraping and its high-profile legal battle with OpenAl, has signaled that it’s open to an Al licensing deal — if the terms are right.”
The Guardian / Tom LevittBBC staff in London say their families are being “terrorized” by the Iranian regime →“There have been more than 20 ‘threat-to-life’ incidents against people in the U.K. by Iran in recent years, according to the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism commander…In March last year, an Iranian journalist was stabbed outside his London home and forced to move abroad, saying he no longer felt safe in the U.K.”
The Guardian / Philip OltermannThis newspaper’s “exclusive” “interview” with Clint Eastwood was actually just a mashup of old quotes →“In an apparent journalistic coup, the Vienna-based daily Kurier published a Q&A with Eastwood last Friday and it was picked up around the world over the weekend due to the Oscar-winning actor’s outspoken criticism of Hollywood’s ‘era of remakes and franchises.’ On Monday, however, Eastwood released a statement saying he had never spoken to Kurier’s interviewer and that the exchange was ‘entirely phony.'”
The Information / Catherine PerloffHow a “deceptive” adtech company spooked Google into weakening its privacy policies →“One of a handful of small companies that run ads that pop up inside games like Zynga’s Words with Friends, AppLovin had gained market share partly by ignoring the privacy constraints that Google followed…Google has started to respond to AppLovin’s success. In December, for instance, the company reversed a 2019 policy that prevented advertisers from tracking users with IP addresses.”
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