Thursday, March 14, 2024 |
| CrowdTangle will close August 14. Meta has argued the tool was used to generate inaccurate and incomplete reports about Facebook. By Sarah Scire. |
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| An executive from a company associated with Metric Media was hired to teach journalism, but the story doesn’t end there. By Steven Monacelli. |
What We’re ReadingWAMU / Elliot Williams
“It’s a part of our lives”: What DCist meant to its readers and former staffers →“DCist was comfortable being serious or taking local leaders to task when it came to what was going on in our communities,” said former WAMU/DCist editor, reporter, and host Rachel Kurzius. “But it was also unapologetic about having a good time.” (Kurzius “covered everything from a
pack of escaped zebras in Maryland, to disgraced councilmember
Jack Evans, to
allegations of sexual harassment within WAMU’s own newsroom.”)WIRED / Chris Stokel-Walker
Regulators need AI expertise. They can’t afford it. →“The salaries are far lower than the eye-watering sums being offered within the industry. Levels.fyi, which compiles verified tech industry compensation data, reports that the median total compensation for workers at OpenAI is $560,000, including stock grants, as is common in the tech industry. The lowest compensation it has verified at the ChatGPT maker, for a recruiter, is $190,000.”Reuters / David Gauthier-Villars, Laila Bassam and Tom Perry
Israeli tank strike killed “clearly identifiable” Reuters reporter, per a U.N. report →“An Israeli tank killed Reuters reporter Issam Abdallah in Lebanon last year by firing two 120 mm rounds at a group of ‘clearly identifiable journalists’ in violation of international law, a U.N. investigation into the Oct. 13 incident has found. The investigation by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), summarized in a report seen by Reuters, said its personnel did not record any exchange of fire across the border between Israel and Lebanon for more than 40 minutes before the Israeli Merkava tank opened fire.”Hell Gate / Nick Pinto
Pro-Palestine activists block New York Times delivery trucks: “We’re trying to take the Times out of circulation for a day” →“Just before midnight on Wednesday, a caravan of cars, vans, and pickup trucks rolled out of a strip mall parking lot in northern Queens and made the short journey to the massive New York Times Distribution Center that looms over the Whitestone Expressway. The vehicles were filled with protesters angry at the New York Times’s coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza. Their goal this evening was to block delivery trucks from entering or leaving the paper’s printing plant in College Point, Queens.”CNN / Saira Mueller
“It has to be a little bit challenging”: Inside the world of Wordle at The New York Times →“I find it really heartwarming that people are able to use this as a kickstarter for their relationships and their day. There’s a comfort to being like ‘we did this together.’”The New York Times / Mike Isaac
Reddit’s long, rocky road to an initial public offering →“This month, Reddit is poised to reach the stock market in one of the first tech initial public offerings of the year. Its move stands out. Unlike a recent crop of start-ups that are focused entirely on artificial intelligence, the 19-year-old company is a throwback to an earlier era of social media. It is also trying to go public at a time when investors have been skeptical of tech offerings. But what stands out the most is that Reddit is able to go public at all.”TechCrunch / Kyle Wiggers
Are OpenAI’s deals with publishers edging out the competition? →“OpenAI’s shelling out between $4 million and $20 million a year for news. That might be pennies to OpenAI, whose war chest sits at over $11 billion and whose annualized revenue recently topped $2 billion (per Financial Times). But as Hunter Walk, a partner at Homebrew and the co-founder of Screendoor, recently mused, it’s substantial enough to potentially edge out AI rivals also pursuing licensing agreements.”Press Gazette / Bron Maher
How and why news publishers should engage with Gen Z now →“Far too often in the industry we massively oversimplify what storytelling formats young people want. They do not just want short-form videos. That is part of what they want, but it’s much more complex than that.”The Verge / Chris Welch
YouTube is revamping its TV app to make videos feel way more interactive →“By shifting interactive features to the right side, YouTube is also making a renewed effort to bring shopping to the TV screen. You’ll see a ‘products in this video’ section appear whenever creators include what’s being featured in their content. But YouTube hasn’t quite reached the stage of letting you complete an entire transaction from your TV; instead, the app will display a QR code that you can scan to finish buying an item on your phone.”Adweek / Trishla Ostwal
Google’s Gen AI search threatens publishers with $2 billion annual ad revenue loss →“Google launched its artificial intelligence-powered search engine, Search Generative Experience, in beta last May, sending publishers scrambling to prepare for a significant disruption in organic search traffic, with potential declines ranging from 20% to 60%, according to media executives and search engine optimization experts.”Substack / Richard J. Tofel
Why philanthropy IS a business model (while “nonprofit” is not) →“The most important factor with respect to sustainability is that both major givers and smaller donors tend to be loyal in their support, at least so long as an organization (including a newsroom) stays on mission. Unlike institutional foundations, individual donors (large or small) don’t experience leadership turnover, and don’t tend to feel compelled to change strategies every few years.”BBC / David Silverberg
“Journalists are feeding the AI hype machine” →“Emily Bell is director of the Colombia Journalism Tow Center for Digital Journalism in New York. She says that reporting on AI today is more difficult than covering the rise of the internet in the early 2000s, or the growth of smart phones from 2007, because today’s news cycle moves far more quickly. ‘What’s different today is that there are announcements about AI products, and then there is the noise of social media around it,’ she says. ‘Executives like Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk are putting their opinions forward on a frequent basis, and there’s also the immediate critique of releases from experts that feeds into the news cycle, so everything is sped up.'”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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