The Boston Globe / Aidan Ryan
Aftermath / Luke Plunkett
Goodbye Kotaku Australia, you were a very good website →“Writers weren’t even allowed to access their CMS to say goodbye…Denied even that last dignified act — and disclosure time, because I’ve worked closely with many of these people and think they’re all amazing — I’ve turned Aftermath over for one blog to former editors and writers of Kotaku Australia, so that they can share their thoughts and say their goodbyes.”
The Washington Post / Paul Farhi
USA Today transformed the media world. What’s its legacy now? →“USA Today left critics aghast when it debuted 42 years ago. Rival editors sneered at its bite-sized news stories and its relentlessly cheerful tone. (Headline on a plane crash story in the first edition: ‘Miracle: 327 survive, 58 die.’) The reporting was often so brief and superficial that even insiders joked that their work would win awards for ‘best investigative paragraph.’ It was quickly dubbed ‘McPaper,’ the news equivalent of junk food.”
The New York Times / Mario Koran
An unlikely path from jail to journalism at The New York Times →“I never expected to become a real reporter. While the other students in my first journalism class could go out into the community to interview sources, my options were limited. As an inmate, the only people I could interview were other prisoners and the guards.”
The Washington Post / Erik Wemple
The Washington Post / Taylor Lorenz
Meta’s Threads is struggling to win over content creators →“‘Threads still seems like a platform in search of a mission,’ says Lia Haberman, an independent digital strategist and author of the ICYMI newsletter on marketing and the creator economy. ‘The focus isn’t news. It’s not about visual creativity or video, like Instagram or TikTok. So what is it?'”
Bloomberg / Daniel Zuidijk
Global Investigative Journalism Network / Andrea Arzaba and Ana Beatriz Assam
VentureBeat / Shubham Sharma
The New York Times / Brooks Barnes
A diminished Hollywood welcomes a new mogul, David Ellison →“Sure, Mr. Ellison, 41, now ranks as a bona fide Hollywood mogul. But what does that even mean in 2024? His ascendance bears no resemblance to the robber barons like [Sumner] Redstone who came before him, partly because there is precious little left to rob.”
The Washington Post / Jeremy Barr
Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
How will the U.K.’s new Labour government affect the BBC? →“Lisa Nandy, the U.K.’s new culture secretary, has a history of backing the BBC license fee and praising local journalism in her constituency. But Nandy has said the BBC’s structure needs reform and that it should be ‘owned and directed by license fee holders.'”
Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
The Washington Post / Janay Kingsberry
TechCrunch / Kyle Wiggers
Cloudflare launches a tool to let publishers better block AI bots →“Many sites, wary of Al vendors training models on their content without alerting or compensating them, have opted to block Al scrapers and crawlers. Around 26% of the top 1,000 sites on the web have blocked OpenAl’s bot, according to one study; another found that more than 600 news publishers had blocked the bot.”