Monday, March 4, 2024 |
| After a $61 million acquisition by public media, Chicago-Sun Times readers get free content and the newsroom has grown. But no one’s taking a victory lap for local news yet. By Jane Elizabeth. |
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| “If we accept that news is a public good, not something we can treat as a product to be traded like soap, then we have to develop economic models that somehow get the public to pay for it.” By Peter Greste. |
Report for America is “phasing out” partnerships with hedge fund-owned publicationsWelcome Nieman Lab’s new staff writers, Andrew Deck and Neel Dhanesha What We’re ReadingAmerican Crisis / Margaret Sullivan
Why the leak investigation inside The New York Times’ newsroom is so disturbing →“I think the Times should be doing an investigation, but not about who on their staff has been leaking. It should be scrutinizing its own reporting practices, particularly with respect to the vetting of freelancers, and then reporting to its readers about the findings.”Financial Times / Nic Fildes
Australia threatens action against Meta after Facebook news payments axed →“The Australian government has threatened action against Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, after the US social media company said it would stop paying local media companies this year for using their content. The move, announced in a blog post on Friday, has reignited a furious public debate about how media companies should be compensated when sites such as Google News and Facebook use their material.”Press Gazette / Clara Aberneithie
Around 10% of Gaza’s journalists have been killed, by one estimate, amid concerns that Israel is deliberately targeting them →“According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 94 journalists and media workers have been confirmed dead since the conflict began, 89 of whom were Palestinian. The methodologies for tracking journalist deaths vary, with the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate reporting the death of 120 journalists as of 13 February, equating to 10% of its membership…Dawson said that about 2.5% of healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza, which, compared to 10% of journalists, was ‘quite exceptional.'”AP / David Bauder
They are TV’s ghosts — basic cable networks that somehow survive with little reason to watch them anymore →“Now MTV is a ghost. Its average prime-time audience of 256,000 people in 2023 was down from 807,000 in 2014, the Nielsen company said. One recent evening MTV aired reruns of ‘Ridiculousness’ from 5 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.” Other audience declines since 2014: USA Network down 69%, AMC down 73%, and Disney Channel down 93%.The Atlantic / Saahil Desai
Inside America’s last Morse Code station →“Nestled within the Point Reyes National Seashore, north of San Francisco, KPH Maritime Radio is the last operational Morse-code radio station in North America…The [volunteer] crew has gotten slightly larger over the years. Its members call themselves the ‘radio squirrels.’ Every Saturday, they beep out maritime news and weather reports, and receive any stray messages.”The Verge / Nilay Patel
Elon Musk’s legal case against OpenAI is hilariously bad →“It’s a fun complaint to read; it fundamentally accuses OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, of pretending to run a nonprofit designed to benefit humanity while actually running a regular ol’ tech company and trying to make a lot of money. That’s a pretty good criticism of the entire OpenAI situation, actually! Someone with some intellectual honesty and a competent lawyer should run at that sometime.”The Washington Post / Laura Wagner
The New York Times is accused of racial targeting in its leak hunt over Israel stories →“In a letter obtained by The Washington Post, NewsGuild of New York president Susan DeCarava said managers picked out particular employees — ‘targeted for their national origin, ethnicity and race’ — who had raised concerns about the paper’s reporting for ‘particularly hostile questioning.'”Gizmodo / Thomas Germain
Rogue editors started a competing Wikipedia that’s only about roads →It’s an issue of sourcing. “‘The New York Times isn’t going to write an article about maintenance on highways in the middle-of-nowhere Texas or Colorado,’ said Ben M., a roads editor known as BMACS001 on Wikipedia, who asked to withhold their full name. ‘Sometimes a primary source is all you have.'”Futurism / Maggie Harrison Dupré
Wikipedia no longer considers CNET a “generally reliable” source after AI scandal →“‘Let’s take a step back and consider what we’ve witnessed here,’ a Wikipedia editor who goes by the name ‘bloodofox’ chimed in. ‘CNET generated a bunch of content with AI, listed some of it as written by people (!), claimed it was all edited and vetted by people, and then, after getting caught, issued some “corrections” followed by attacks on the journalists that reported on it.'”The Washington Post / Will Oremus
Popular books are still being swarmed by AI-generated knockoffs on Amazon →“On Wednesday, a search for ‘Kara Swisher book’ on Amazon turned up Swisher’s actual memoir, ‘Burn Book,’ as the first result. But the next 16 results were all books about Swisher published by other authors within the past three months. Most shared some of the common characteristics of AI imitators: self-published, often short in length, bearing no sign of original reporting or insight in their description or the sample pages that Amazon made available.”Twitter / Desert Sun NewsGuild
The Desert Sun’s union has agreed to a new contract with Gannett after doing on strike Friday →“We’re thrilled to have a deal with immediate, life-changing raises for many of our members, annual raises for every member, and crucial workplace protections.”Reuters / Jon Stempel and Sheila Dang
Parts of an antitrust suit claiming Google has an improper advertising monopoly will go forward →“The advertisers, [Judge Kevin Castel] wrote, ‘have not plausibly alleged antitrust standing in the markets for ad-buying tools used by large advertisers, but they plausibly allege antitrust standing as to injuries they purportedly suffered from anti-competitive practices in the ad-exchange market and the market for small advertisers’ buying tools.'”AP / Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker
Judge holds journalist Catherine Herridge in civil contempt for refusing to divulge source →“U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington imposed a fine of $800 per day until Herridge reveals her source, but the fine will not go into effect immediately to give her time to appeal.”The Guardian / Peter Pomerantsev
The man who tricked Nazi Germany: Lessons from the past on how to beat disinformation →“Ukraine is full of advertisers and hackers, activists and journalists all trying to reach Russian audiences. They buy ads on Russian pornography sites and bootleg movie portals or use cold calling software more familiar from marketing campaigns. Early on they found that ‘moral’ content didn’t take off. When they made mass telephone calls to Russians, they found that some 80% would hang up during the first 20 seconds if the calls were about war crimes, but only 30% hung up when the call focused on their personal interests, such as a special tax they had to pay to support Russia’s newly occupied lands.”The New York Times / Michael M. Grynbaum
How cable news handled Biden and Trump at the southern border →“Election Day is eight months away. But television viewers on Thursday afternoon were treated to their first glimpse of a political split screen that is likely to dominate cable news coverage for the rest of the campaign.”Bloomberg / Ashley Carman
A deal for Jason and Travis Kelce’s podcast “could go for eight figures” →“…the biggest names in the space have mostly remained unaffected by shrinking deals and show reductions. They’re still commanding nine-figure paychecks for their programs and even finding new partners willing to work with them.”The Verge / Emilia David
A Threads API is coming in June →It should ease integration with services like Hootsuite and Buffer.Press Gazette / Bron Maher
Semafor launches a “Global Election Hub,” sponsored by Microsoft →“The product’s announcement comes soon after Semafor rolled out a new ‘Insights’ story format, also supported by Microsoft, which uses generative AI to find additional angles on news stories the newsroom might otherwise have missed.”The Guardian / Henry Cooke
New Zealand’s only privately owned TV news operation is shutting down →“The latest shocking blow comes in the news that Warner Bros Discovery plans to shut down Newshub, a rebranded version of what most of us grew up knowing as ‘3 News’ — leaving our country with just one English-language TV news team, and none that aren’t owned by the state.”The Salt Lake Tribune / Lauren Gustus
The Salt Lake Tribune says “it’s increasingly difficult” to report on how Utah lawmakers are serving the people who elected them →“Gov. Spencer Cox has already signed legislation making elected officials and lawmakers’ work calendars a secret. Other bills, if signed, will pay for private companies to scrape lawmakers’ public information from the web and mean you won’t know how much water Utah wants to buy from other states and what it will cost taxpayers. I could go on.”The Washington Post / Erik Wemple
Settlement in Japanese court ends an embarrassing episode for The Atlantic →The case “helped to furnish a useful lesson in how U.S. media companies fare when they cannot fall back on the ironclad legal protections they enjoy in the United States. Along with a window into an embarrassing fact-checking breakdown at a top American media outlet.”Associated Press Sports Editors / Naila-Jean Meyers
APSE creates the Billie Jean King Award to honor coverage of women’s sports →“Billie Jean King has been a champion for gender equality in sports for more than 60 years, and creating a prestigious award in her name specifically for coverage of women’s sports — I’ve already started affectionately referring to it as The Billie — elevates the great work being done and incentivizes this coverage in a way that is commensurate with the popularity and growth of women’s sports.”Baltimore Brew / Fern Shen
Baltimore Sun, under new leadership, imports unscientific reader polls from Sinclair Broadcast Group →“I was able to vote 19 times by using different browsers, IP addresses and devices.” The Sun was
acquired by Sinclair executive chairman David D. Smith in January.Slate / Scott Nover
How Semafor media reporter Maxwell Tani became the go-to guy for news about media layoffs →“As messed up as it is, you could write every single day on this beat about how bad things are at different media companies and choose your company of the week. After doing that for years and years, I think that while it’s an important and necessary part of coverage, I want to challenge myself to try to diversify the types of stories that I’m doing.”The Washington Post / Tyler Pager
The conversations and media diet that shape Joe Biden’s thinking →“After conversations with his grandchildren, fellow churchgoers, and Delaware neighbors, the president brings their worries to the Oval Office…His news consumption comes from three main sources: cable television, print newspapers, and the Apple News app on his iPhone.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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