Wednesday, October 9, 2024 |
| The Times’ algorithmic recommendations team on responding to reader feedback, newsroom concerns, and technical hurdles. By Zhen Yang. |
The typical American TikTok user doesn’t follow a single journalist or traditional media outlet What We’re ReadingThe Verge / Lauren Feiner
How the DOJ wants to break up Google’s search monopoly →“To fix this, the government says it’s considering remedies that would ‘create more competition and lower the barriers to entry, which currently require rivals to enter multiple markets at scale.’ That could include addressing Google’s use of AI to protect its monopoly power in this market, it says.”Mediaite / Oliver Darcy
Errol Morris wants to know why NBC is burying his new Trump documentary until after the election →“Word came down that the powers at be inside 30 Rock had opted to effectively sit on the film, setting the documentary’s network premiere until after the election in December, a bizarre decision that frustrated the filmmakers and has raised questions among staffers internally.”ProPublica / Miranda Green
A Metric Media newspaper in Ohio is helping to kill a big solar power project →“Each cog in the anti-solar machine — the opposition group, the texts, the newspaper, the energy publication — was linked to the others through finances and overlapping agendas, an investigation by Floodlight, ProPublica and The Tow Center for Digital Journalism found.” (
Previously.)Press Gazette / Bron Maher
“No one wants to read AI-generated news,” says OpenAI exec making deals with media companies to make AI-generated news →“OpenAI’s head of media partnerships has said the company does not currently intend to share ad revenue from its SearchGPT product with publishers whose content it surfaces…But he added that the matter was ‘an evolving space for us right now’ and that it was in OpenAI’s interests to provide enough value to stop publishers opting out of appearing in SearchGPT results.”The Verge / Richard Lawler
Breaking up Google — now officially a monopolist — is on the table, say DOJ lawyers →“Plaintiffs are considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features — including emerging search access points and features, such as artificial intelligence — over rivals or new entrants.”The Guardian / Mark Sweney
The likely new owner of The Telegraph is sparking concerns in the newsroom →“…over the threat to editorial impartiality and influence, as the New York Sun owner, Dovid Efune, is poised to enter exclusive talks to buy the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. British-born Efune regularly posts hardline views about the situation in the Middle East, sparking alarm among staff as it looks increasingly likely that he will become their new proprietor, having tabled a £550m bid.”The Verge / Jay Peters
YouTube swears it’s not hiding the skip button on ads →“YouTube is ‘reducing elements on the ads player’ so that ‘viewers can engage more deeply with the ad through a cleaner experience’…The distinction here seems to be that the skip button isn’t being removed, but it may not be presented in the same manner that it used to.”The New York Times / Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin
Not everyone loved that Tony Dokoupil interview, but Shari Redstone did →“Shari Redstone, the media mogul whose Paramount empire controls CBS News, criticized the network’s leadership on Wednesday for its decision to reprimand a star morning show anchor over his handling of an on-air interview with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.”Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
Facebook traffic is down, so Reach journalists are being asked to write eight stories a day →“We need to make more of shifts where people are not going out as drivers of volume. In practice, if you’re on a general shift and you’re not on a job, it should be at least eight stories a shift.”Politico / Adam Aton, Scott Waldman, and Andres Picon
FEMA warns conspiracies and rumors are hurting relief efforts →“It is absolutely the worst I have ever seen,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters. 404 Media / Emanuel Maiberg
The editors protecting Wikipedia from AI hoaxes →“In many cases, WikiProject AI Cleanup finds AI-generated content on Wikipedia with the same methods others have used to find AI-generated content in scientific journals and Google Books, namely by searching for phrases commonly used by ChatGPT.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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