Thursday, January 18, 2024 |
| Roughly one-third of all digital reader revenue at The Guardian now comes from the United States. By Sarah Scire. |
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| The pandemic brought a massive effort to limit the spread of bad health information. Did it do more harm than good? By Sara Talpos. |
What We’re ReadingThe New York Times / Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson
The billionaires are struggling to make money in news, too →“Bezos has said that he purchased The Post because it was an important institution but wanted the company to be profitable. ‘I said to myself, ‘If this were a financially upside-down salty snack food company, the answer would be no.””TheWrap / Natalie Korach
“This is the Big One”: L.A. Times Guild calls emergency meeting as layoffs loom →“If we agreed to their request, they could choose almost any member they want; in exchange, management would add another layer of buyouts and told us they would lay off 50 fewer Guild members from an unspecified total,” the union wrote to members. (The news comes after The Times
eliminated 74 positions in the newsroom — about 13% of the total — in June 2023.)404 Media / Joseph Cox
Google News is boosting garbage AI-generated articles →“One example was a news site called Worldtimetodays.com, which is littered with full page and other ads. On Wednesday it published an article about Star Wars fandom. The article was very similar to one published a day earlier on the website Distractify, with even the same author photo. One major difference, though, was that Worldtimetodays.com wrote ‘Let’s be honest, war of stars fans,’ rather than Star Wars fans.”The American Prospect / Rick Perlstein
“What a journalism adequate to understanding American politics right now might look like” → “Yeah, I don’t know if I would use that word [fascist]. It’s not a word we use in The New York Times.”NOTUS
Allbritton news nonprofit “NOTUS” launches →“We’re a new kind of newsroom. We’re nonprofit. We’re nonpartisan. While others may tell you what’s happening in DC, we focus on different questions: Why is Washington the way it is? And what drives the people who make it so?” The project pairs experienced Washington reporters and editors with young reporters.Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Benjamin Toff, Ruth Palmer, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Five things news media can do to respond to consistent news avoidance →“The frequency with which our interviewees said they struggled to understand news when they came across it highlights the unmet need for ‘simple brevity’ for those who do not already consider themselves in the know.” (See also:
So who are the consistent news avoiders?)Substack / Richard J. Tofel
Beware the forces of one dollar, one vote →“I know that universities—and newsrooms—need lots of money to do their crucial work. I know why schools have named buildings, and chairs, and even entire institutions after benefactors. But the message they have been sending with that has clearly left too many donors drunk with their own influence, or at least the influence to which they believe they are entitled. We need to be careful, in building nonprofit journalism, not to make the same error.”Columbia Journalism Review / Mathew Ingram
A leak-hosting site looks to thaw the chill of censorship →“DDoSecrets—which in the past had a server seized in Germany and was once erroneously labeled a ‘criminal hacker group’ by the US Department of Homeland Security—sees the Greenhouse Project as part of its broader mission to ensure the free transmission of data in the public interest by making itself a ‘publisher of last resort.’ It chose the name because it hopes to create a ‘warming effect to reverse the chilling effects of censorship.'”Nieman Storyboard / Trevor Pyle
How a business reporter approached a story about OnlyFans influencers →“I’m a huge proponent of applying all the classic old-school techniques of journalism — immersive, investigative, data-driven reporting and narrative storytelling — to this new age of social media and the internet. Just because these stories are playing out online doesn’t make them any less important or illuminating.”Variety / Todd Spangler
Pitchfork is being folded into GQ →The move that will result in layoffs at Pitchfork, including the exit of editor-in-chief Puja Patel.
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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