The Daily Digest: March 19, 2025
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| While insiders typically work for established media companies like ESPN, Jake Fischer operates out of his Brooklyn apartment and publishes scoops behind a paywall on Substack. It’s not even his own Substack. By Jordan Teicher. |
Report for America’s parent organization will “sunset” its in-house editorial projects to focus on funding local journalismThe New York Times picks up the shuttered FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracking database What we’re reading
The Verge / David PierceThe future of search isn’t Google — and it’s $10 a month →“You can flip a toggle in the search results to ‘Small Web’ and see only results from a hand-curated set of personal blogs, well-liked publishers, and the like. Another toggle searches exclusively in forums, another specifically on programming-centric websites. Kagi calls these ‘Lenses,’ and you can create your own — I set one up that searches for news only on sites I like and subscribe to, which essentially created my own personal Google News.”
Bloomberg / Gregory KorteTrump order gutting agencies cuts tools to fight censorship worldwide →“President Donald Trump’s weekend shutdown of the US Agency for Global Media has among its casualties a small — but influential — fund that helps internet users worldwide combat censorship from oppressive regimes. The Open Technology Fund, which gets $40 million a year from Congress, has contributed to technologies like the encrypted messaging app Signal, the anonymous browser Tor and an open-source tool built by Psiphon Inc. that helped more than a million Cubans circumvent a social media blackout in 2021…’The immediate consequence is that if this holds, over 45 million people will lose access to trusted and secure VPNs,’ said OTF President Laura Cunningham.”
404 Media / Emanuel MaibergMeta promises to fight misinformation in Australia with same strategy it killed in the U.S. →“The 2025 Australian federal election will take place in May, and Meta has vowed to combat all forms of misinformation, including deepfakes, on its platforms ahead of voting in an attempt to prevent election interference. Ironically, Meta announced that it plans to do this with the help of the exact methods CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced just a few months ago were not worth the company’s time in the U.S., namely the use of third-party fact checkers.”
Bloomberg / Dave Lee and Carolyn SilvermanCommunity Notes can’t save social media from itself →“A Bloomberg Opinion analysis of 1.1 million Community Notes — written in English, from the start of 2023 to February 2025 — shows that the system has fallen well short of counteracting the incentives, both political and financial, for lying, and allowing people to lie, on X. Furthermore, many of the most cited sources of information that make Community Notes function are under relentless and prolonged attack — by Musk, the Trump administration, and a political environment that has undermined the credibility of truly trustworthy sources of information.”
TechCrunch / Mike ButcherAgentic AI startup AMT aims to be “Google Adwords for influencers” →“AMT works by getting its AI agent, dubbed Lyra, to talk to influencers using natural language, helping with tasks like booking campaigns, tracking results, making payments, and answering queries. The company claims Lyra can also autonomously find influencers that match a campaign’s goals.”
Bloomberg / Hannah MillerNew York Times Cooking app finds right ingredients to vanquish rivals →“The website and app attracted more than 456 million visits last year, according to data from the Times. Views on the NYT Cooking YouTube account soared 72% in 2024 from the previous year, with more than 4.3 million hours watched. Some 24,000 recipes are now available on the app…Perhaps most significantly, NYT Cooking has also supplanted Epicurious, one of the first cooking sites on the internet when it launched in 1995. The platform combined the resources of two stalwarts of cooking literature — Condé Nast’s Bon Appétit and Gourmet magazines.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Liam ScottThe last days at Voice of America →“I was never told to report on anything in a way that was pro-Trump, and I’m not aware of any cases where that happened. Instead, a pattern emerged in which newsroom managers and senior management were stifling press freedom stories as part of what appeared to be a broader effort by senior VOA officials to stay under the radar and avoid being targeted. Anticipatory obedience seemed to be the name of the game—and unsurprisingly, it failed.”
Chicago Sun-Times / David RoederChicago Sun-Times to lose 20% of staff after buyout offer →“Thirty employees of the Chicago Sun-Times — around 1 in 5 on its payroll — have agreed to resign under buyout terms the paper’s nonprofit ownership offered in hopes of stanching persistent financial deficits. The departures consist mostly of writers and editors — many with decades of experience. The cuts are the most drastic the oft-imperiled Sun-Times has faced in several years.”
Reuters / Kanishka SinghRadio Free Europe sues Trump administration over grant termination →“‘The complaint (on Tuesday) makes the case that denying RFE/RL the funds that Congress appropriated for it violates federal laws – including the U.S. Constitution, which vests Congress with exclusive power over federal spending,’ the news outlet said in a statement. ‘This is not the time to cede terrain to the propaganda and censorship of America’s adversaries,’ RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said. The case was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
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