A new kind of Pulitzer announcement

The Weekly Wrap: May 10, 2024

A new kind of Pulitzer announcement

The 2024 Pulitzer Prizes announced Monday “highlighted three major ongoing shifts in American journalism,” Josh wrote this week:

— The best works of journalism are increasingly produced by just a few high-end institutions.
— The decline in local and regional newspapers has pushed online-native outlets to the forefront.
— The work historically performed by newspapers is increasingly done by other forms of media.

Later in the week, Andrew’s post on the use of in Pulitzer-winning projects further illustrated some of those shifts:

Local reporting prize winner “Missing in Chicago,” from City Bureau and Invisible Institute, trained a custom machine learning tool to comb through thousands of police misconduct files. The New York Times visual investigations desk trained a model to identify 2,000-pound bomb craters in areas marked as safe for civilians in Gaza. That story was one of several that won as part of the paper’s international reporting prize package.

Tons of other good stuff on the site this week — check it out below.

— Laura Hazard Owen

From the week

For the first time, two Pulitzer winners disclosed using AI in their reporting Awarded investigative stories are increasingly relying on machine learning, whether covering Chicago police negligence or Israeli weapons in Gaza By Andrew Deck.

“We’re there to cover what’s happening”: How student journalists are covering campus protests “We don’t come in when there’s something crazy happening and then leave when it’s over. This is just what we do all the time. And I really hope that makes people trust us more as a newspaper.” By Sophie Culpepper.

Screenshots are one big winner of Meta’s news ban in Canada “We observe a dramatic increase in posts containing screenshots of Canadian news stories in the post-ban period.” By Laura Hazard Owen.

This year’s Pulitzer Prizes were a coming-out party for online media — and a marker of local newspapers’ decline For the first time ever, more online news sites produced Pulitzer finalists than newspapers did. By Joshua Benton.

Most Americans say local news is important. But they’re consuming less of it. Just 15% of Americans paid or gave money to a local news source in the past year, according to new research from the Pew-Knight Initiative. By Sophie Culpepper.

Newsonomics: Eight essentials as California’s “save local news” bill picks up speed What’s important to watch, in this gnarly legislation filled with acronyms, are two simple things: Money In and Money Out. By Ken Doctor.

Media coverage of campus protests tends to focus on the spectacle rather than the substance “There are commercial reasons why some newsrooms focus on the spectacle and confrontation — the old journalism adage of ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ still prevails in many newsroom decisions…But it is a decision that delegitimizes protest aims.” By Danielle K. Brown.

Economic sanctions, donor whims, and legalese: Exiled media outlets face challenges in reporting on their home countries Highlights from elsewherePoynter / Rick EdmondsGannett fired an editor for talking to Poynter →“Sarah Leach, an experienced editor overseeing 26 Gannett community papers in four states, was fired via video conference first thing the morning of Monday, April 29. She was accused, she said, of ‘sharing proprietary information with (a reporter for) a competing media company’…Leach published her own statement Thursday afternoon.”The New York Times / Vivian Yee, Emma Bubola, and Liam StackIsrael’s shutdown of Al Jazeera highlights long-running tensions →“Al Jazeera, the influential Arab news network, says it will continue reporting and broadcasting from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But its departure from Israel marks a new low in its long-strained history with a country that much of Al Jazeera’s audience in the Arab world and beyond sees as an aggressor and an occupier.”Reuters / Nate RaymondTexas’ lawsuit claiming the United States helped censor conservative news can proceed →“A federal judge has rejected the Biden administration’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit by Republican-led Texas and two conservative media companies accusing the U.S. Department of State of funding technologies used to counter disinformation online that they say censors right-leaning news outlets.”

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