Tuesday, May 21, 2024 |
| With annual revenue of $45 million and a staff approaching 200 people, ProPublica has been one of the big journalism winners of the past decade. And it’s been unusually willing to spread that wealth around the country. By Joshua Benton. |
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| “I see, every week, some example of where the two don’t understand each other. Each of them needs to shift a little bit.” By Sophie Culpepper. |
What We’re ReadingAxios / Sara Fischer
Google threatens to pause Google News Initiative funding in U.S. →“With the link tax bill, Google only threatened to pull news investments in California. But the company is telling partners that the ad tax proposal will threaten consideration of new grants nationwide by the Google News Initiative, which funds hundreds of smaller news outlets, sources told Axios.”The Guardian / Archie Bland
The New Yorker’s Lucy Letby story shows U.K.’s media-suppressing law needs an update →“The result is that a framework intended to insulate juries from undue influence can instead create chaos: news providers standing well back or barging over the line depending on mercenary risk-benefit analyses, international publishers running pieces that would be slam-dunk breaches if they were British, and a tombola of prejudicial posts online from people who really ought to know better….The ironic result of all this is that irresponsible coverage is sometimes easier to bump into than the other kind.”CNN / Oliver Darcy
Vox launches subscription program as news publishers race to diversify revenue streams →“The subscription program — which will cost $5 a month, or $50 a year — will give members access to an array of exclusive content, including newsletters, a digital magazine, a monthly bonus episode of ‘The Highlight Podcast,’ live virtual tapings of audio programs, interactive video interviews; and more.”Associated Press
Israeli officials seize AP equipment and take down live shot of northern Gaza, citing new media law →“‘The Associated Press decries in the strongest terms the actions of the Israeli government to shut down our longstanding live feed showing a view into Gaza and seize AP equipment,’ said Lauren Easton, vice president of corporate communications at the AP. ‘The shutdown was not based on the content of the feed but rather an abusive use by the Israeli government of the country’s new foreign broadcaster law.'”Voice of America / Maya Jimenez
“We want to be part of the solution,” says Cityside’s Tasneem Raja →“For me, it starts with creating a healthy newsroom that is going to empower people to do their best work, hiring great talents, creating a space where they feel supported and they have opportunities to learn and grow.”The Washington Post / Kara Voght
Jim VandeHei has had a pretty good life. But what’s the takeaway? →“The book’s advice boils down to this: Screw fancy degrees and where you came from and your SAT score and whatever other credential you think you need to succeed. All you need to do is ‘find your passions,’ VandeHei writes. ‘Then outwork everyone in pursuit of shaping your destiny.'”The Verge / Lauren Feiner
Election officials are prepping for November by role-playing AI threats →“The goal, according to Angie Cloutier, security operations manager at the [Arizona] secretary of state’s office, ‘is to desensitize election officials to the newness and the weirdness’ of AI technology.”Press Gazette / Clara Aberneithie
Al Jazeera Gaza correspondent accuses international journalists of not doing enough →“International journalists have not fought for the right to enter the Gaza strip and to cover the war. They have abandoned the right; they have for many years lectured about the freedom of speech that they have let go when covering the war in the Gaza strip…They [international media] have used the excuse of ‘lack of information’ or ‘not enough Western journalists entering the Gaza strip’ for not covering the war like they should.”The New York Times / Jeremy White
See how easily AI chatbots can be taught to spew disinformation →“To understand how worrisome the threat is, we customized our own chatbots, feeding them millions of publicly available social media posts from Reddit and Parler. The posts, which ranged from discussions of racial and gender equity to border policies, allowed the chatbots to develop a variety of liberal and conservative viewpoints.”Associated Press
Trump’s Truth Social lost $327 million in Q1 →“Trump Media said it collected $770,500 in revenue in the first quarter, largely from its ‘nascent advertising initiative.’ That was down from $1.1 million a year earlier.”Press Gazette / Aisha Majid
Report: More than half the world is without freedom of expression as India falls into “crisis” →“Some 4.2 billion people — over half (53%) of the global population — live in 39 countries deemed to be facing a crisis of freedom of expression, meaning that they cannot freely express their views or access information without serious consequences, according to the annual Global Expression Report from human rights NGO Article 19.”The Guardian / Ann Neumann
As a war reporter, I trusted my fixer with my life. Two weeks later, he was kidnapped →“Zleke knew that he was being watched. One day in the early summer of 2022, two men knocked on his door. They knew his name and carried pistols, though they wore plain clothes. They took his phone and his ID and told him to come with them. He didn’t resist.”Press Gazette / Clara Aberneithie
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour: “We are not impartial…we should be truthful” →“‘I have a problem with the word impartial because I don’t really know what it means, is it neutral or objective?’ [BBC News CEO Deborah] Turness defined impartiality as: ‘Fairness and respect for audiences.’ But Amanpour explained: ‘What if World War Two was about to explode — would we say we’re impartial to the Nazis’ desire to overrun the world? No, we are not impartial, and we should not be, we should be objective and truthful.'”The Verge / Jacob Kastrenakes
Scarlett Johansson told OpenAI not to use her voice — and it did anyway →A new front in the AI companies vs. intellectual property battle.Pew Research Center / Athena Chapekis, Samuel Bestvater, Emma Remy, & Gonzalo Rivero
23% of news webpages contain at least one broken link, Pew report finds →A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible. For older content, this trend is even starker; 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later.
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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