Did you feel that earthquake?

The Weekly Wrap: April 05, 2024

Did you feel that earthquake?

I felt it here in Cambridge, MA. Sorry but it’s all I’ll be able to talk about for the rest of the day: “Did you feel the earthquake?” If you’d rather think about something else for some reason, maybe try this story from Sarah Scire about the Guardian’s effort to guide people through their uneasy relationship with their phones. “You don’t want to gaslight readers by omission, by not having spaces where you can acknowledge the effect that the news cycle is having on us psychologically and instead just pretending like everything’s great,” Max Benwell, editor and deputy head of audience at Guardian U.S., told Sarah. Anyway, did you feel that earthquake? And are you going to the eclipse? (We will have eclipse coverage, by the way. Stay tuned.)

— Laura Hazard Owen

From the week

A newsletter about our uneasy relationship to phones becomes The Guardian’s fastest-growing email ever “Reclaim Your Brain” acknowledges “the effect that the news cycle is having on us psychologically.” By Sarah Scire.

A new kind of activist journalism: Hunterbrook investigates corporations (and hopes to make bank trading off its reporting) “We know this may not be seen as traditional journalism, which is generally known for being dispassionate, reliant on inside sources, and indifferent to profitability.” By Joshua Benton.

The Listening Post Collective offers a free road map (and microgrants) for meeting community information needs “I think sometimes we get stuck in an echo chamber of being around each other a little too much. And I think that can hinder some of this work.” By Sophie Culpepper.

Yo! How a content-free social network briefly fascinated the world (and the news media) Ten years ago today, a new app arrived to strip the “media” out of social media, reducing messaging to two little letters. It burned bright, but not for long. By Joshua Benton.

A new game parodies The New York Times’ Gaza coverageMore people than ever are listening to podcasts Highlights from elsewhereIntelligencer / Abby SchreiberWhat it’s like to be a member of the royal press pack →“The royal press pack is quite a sensitive group of people, and it’s a lot less brutal than the politics beat is.”Nieman Reports / John Daniszewski“Unparalleled and unprecedented”: Journalists in Gaza have faced the deadliest six months ever recorded →“While there was never a time of perfect security, the historic calculus between journalists and combatants has changed in dangerous ways.”Axios / Ryan HeathMeta to broaden labeling of AI content →“Meta admits its current labeling policies are ‘too narrow’ and that a stronger system is needed to deal with today’s wider range of AI-generated content and other manipulated content, such as a January video which appeared to show President Biden inappropriately touching his granddaughter.”ARLnow.comVirginia to become first state to allow online-only local news sites to publish legal notices →“The enactment of HB 264 and SB 157 marks a major milestone in the continued digital transition of the news industry — a painful, decades long process that has resulted in mass layoffs of local journalists and the closure of five local newspapers every two weeks, on average.”Wall Street Journal / Patience HagginBrands paid for ads on Forbes.com. Some ran on a copycat site instead. →“The alternate site, which Forbes shut down Tuesday following inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, featured stories from Forbes.com that were stretched into formats that can fit many more ads…One 700-word article was turned into a 34-slide slideshow, exposing the person who read it on a computer to about 150 ads instead of around seven for someone who read the original piece.”Home With The Armadillo / Andrea GrimesSubstack is setting writers up for a Twitter-style implosion →“Follower number go up. Subscriber number go down. Good for Substack. Bad for writers.”

Nieman Lab | View email in browser | Unsubscribe

You are receiving this daily newsletter because you signed up for for it at www.niemanlab.org.

Nieman Journalism Lab · Harvard University · 1 Francis Ave. · Cambridge, MA 02138 · USA