The Daily Digest: March 06, 2025
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| A good news organization sits atop valuable archives. Why not use them to give readers answers to their questions? By Joshua Benton. |
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| We find six areas where news media unions are focusing their generative AI attention and concern — and two where they’re not. By Mike Ananny and Jake Karr. |
What we’re reading
Silver Bulletin / Nate SilverNate Silver on the demise of FiveThirtyEight →“‘Data journalism’ may have been a dumb name for what we were doing — that one’s on me — and Fivey Fox aside, the Five ThirtyEight brand was never warm and cuddly. But it always found a huge audience, and coverage of polls and political data is now much smarter. Compare the extremely analytical polling deep dives that Nate Cohn is doing at the New York Times, for instance, to the vibes-based coverage of the Boys on the Bus era.”
The BulwarkWashington Post media reporter Will Sommer moves to The Bulwark →“I’m thrilled to be joining The Bulwark at this critical time in journalism and politics. The online world that I’ve been following my whole career is no longer a side show of conspiracists, castoffs and rabble-rousers. It is now the main driver of our daily conversations. In many respects, it is the backbone of our current government.”
The Hollywood Reporter / Benjamin SvetkeyOld movies barely exist on streaming services; the oldest movie on Netflix was made in 1973 →“Did the company’s algorithm truly determine that nothing made prior to 1973 was worthy of streaming in January of 2025? Not The Godfather? Not The Graduate?…the streaming revolution has been something of a disaster for classic movies. It has, in fact, been slowly and methodically wiping the collective culture’s memory of anything made before…well, 1973 seems about right.”
The Information / Stephanie Palazzolo and Cory WeinbergThink $200 a month is a lot for OpenAI access? How about $20,000 a month? →“OpenAI executives have told some investors it planned to sell low-end agents at a cost of $2,000 per month to ‘high-income knowledge workers’; mid-tier agents for software development costing possibly $10,000 a month; and high-end agents, acting as PhD-level research agents, which could cost $20,000 per month, according to a person who’s spoken with executives.”
The Guardian / Michael SavageThe Spectator’s owner is said to be planning to fund a new generation of conservative British journalists →“[Sir Paul] Marshall has become a crucial figure in the British media after amassing an influential empire in recent years, culminating in his purchase of The Spectator in September. He had already set up the opinion website UnHerd and invested in the GB News television channel, home to shows presented by Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage and the Reform UK MP Lee Anderson.”
Press Gazette / Charlotte TobittFinancial Times CEO John Ridding to step down after 19 years →“‘FT subscriptions and readership are at all-time highs, as are group revenues’…More than two-thirds of its revenues now come from digital subscriptions (both consumer and B2B) while other revenue streams include advertising, events at FT Live, research, circulation and consultancy FT Strategies.”
Journalism.co.uk / Gordon SmithHow the FT uses polls to engage readers and grow subscriptions →“Polls encourage audience engagement and habit-forming behavior. They also help a publisher build up a profile of an audience’s interests and expertise, while predictive polls can tap into the ‘wisdom of crowds’ on specialist topics and help guide editorial decision-making. After experimenting with polls on an informal basis since 2019, last year the FT expanded its relationship with Opinary, a Berlin-based poll provider across our platforms.”
Press Gazette / Dominic PonsfordThe man who helped cost Rupert Murdoch £500 million →“[Graham] Johnson came forward to police in 2013 and admitted to hacking phones when he was investigations editor of The Sunday Mirror. Since his conviction in December 2014 he has written multiple articles about tabloid criminality of the 1990s and 2000s, contributed to documentaries about the subject and published more than half a dozen books on the subject via his company Yellow Press.”
Awful Announcing / Matt YoderGannett is hiring multiple “AI-assisted” sports journalists →“The Al Sports Editor job posting for Gannett’s USA Today Network carries a $80,000 to $140,300 salary range for an editor who will ‘lead a cutting-age digital news team that blends human reporting with Al technical expertise to storify data, automate content and create new reader experiences.’ The editor will ‘lead a team of AI sports reporters’ and ‘gather information to enrich Al-generated and automated content,’ according to the job posting.”
The Wall Street Journal / Jeffrey A. TrachtenbergSerious nonfiction books now often don’t get a paperback edition →“The shift reflects changing reader habits, the popularity of audiobooks and ebooks, and the power a few major retailers hold over the publishing industry. ‘When I began in the business you could expect retailers to look at hardcover sales and order twice that in paperback,’ said Gail Ross, a literary agent at William Morris Endeavor. ‘Now it’s just the opposite — half as much, at best.'”
Deadline / Ted JohnsonTom Llamas will be the new anchor of NBC Nightly News — while keeping his current streaming gig →“Llamas, who has been with the network since 2021, will continue to anchor Top Story, a signature nighttime show on NBC News Now that runs from 7-8 p.m. ET, immediately after Nightly News…while evening news audiences certainly aren’t what they once were, the newscasts still pull larger viewership than cable news’ most popular shows.”
The Guardian / Michael SavageFailings in pulled Gaza documentary a “dagger to the heart” of the BBC’s credibility, says chair →“Samir Shah said he believed ‘people weren’t doing their job’ in relation to the oversight of Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. The program was pulled from iPlayer and an internal investigation launched after it emerged that the 13-year-old who narrated the film, Abdullah al-Yazouri, was the son of the deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas government.”
The Wall Street Journal / Suzanne VranicaDemocratic senators want DOJ to probe whether Elon Musk is using his new government powers to bully advertisers back to X →“The Journal reported last month that an attorney at X encouraged the advertising conglomerate Interpublic to increase its spending on X or face consequences. Interpublic executives interpreted the communication as a threat that its pending $13 billion merger with rival Omnicom Group could be negatively affected by the Trump administration, given Musk’s government role, the Journal reported.”
The Verge / David PierceGoogle is adding a new “AI Mode” to search →“The idea behind Al Mode is that a lot of people searching Google would actually prefer to have their results be primarily Al-generated. If you switch to Al Mode…and enter a query, you’ll get back a generated answer, based on everything in Google’s search index, with a few supporting links interspersed throughout. The user experience feels a little like Gemini or any other chatbot, but you’re interacting with a Search-specific model, which means it’s more able to tap real-time data and interact directly with the web.”
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