The Weekly Wrap: March 29, 2024
“I’m not afraid of AI as a journalist”
This week, our AI reporter (or, better, “our first-ever AI reporter”) Andrew Deck went back and forth with The Washington Post’s first editor for AI strategy and innovation. Phoebe Connelly is a great addition to our “first-ever” series, because this isn’t her first time tackling a novel newsroom role. Previous installments have looked at an accessibility engineer, mixtaper, artificial intelligence editor, and editor for Latino audiences. As Connelly says: “First-of-their-kind jobs are as much about culture change as they are about the task.”
This has been deputy editor Sarah Scire, filling in for Laura Hazard Owen. She will be back next week. See you then.
— Sarah Scire
From the week
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| Phoebe Connelly on prompt training, AI anxieties, and her first-of-its-kind role By Andrew Deck. |
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| “We want everyone to feel they’ve got skin in the game here.” By Sarah Scire. |
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| Three experts in fact-checking and misinformation explain how false narratives are created and spread to Spanish-speaking audiences. By Gretel Kahn. |
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| “Even if ironic satire isn’t great at persuading people to change their minds, research shows it does subtly shape how we think about and engage with our political world.” By Dannagal G. Young. |
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| “People experience war on a personal level, and our ability to communicate extraordinary stress on an individual human level is the goal of good war reporting.” By Hanaa' Tameez. |
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| Reporter Patrick Lohmann has lived in New Mexico for most of his life, but covering the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire required building trust in a divided community. Here’s how he did it. By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico and ProPublica. |
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| Ask FT is in a very limited beta, but it promises to bring the wisdom of its archives to bear on your information needs. By Joshua Benton. |
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| Plus: What investment ownership has done to local news, the credibility of photos on social media vs. news sites, and Republicans in Congress share far more low-quality news than ordinary people do. By Mark Coddington and Seth Lewis. |
The Atlantic tops 1 million subscriptionsOver 100 watchdog groups sign letter demanding Meta keep CrowdTangle running Highlights from elsewhere
Columbia Journalism Review / Josh HershCan sports journalism survive in the era of the athlete? →“‘We’re in a time of information abundance,’ says Brian Moritz, a sports media researcher at St. Bonaventure University. ‘But actual journalists—the people who hold systems and power structures accountable—they’re being totally phased out.'”
The Wall Street Journal / Alexandra BruellHow The Atlantic went from broke to profitable in three years →“A core part of [Nick] Thompson’s strategy was to figure out how much readers would be willing to pay for a subscription. He ended up raising subscription prices by more than 50%, and made it harder for people to read stories without paying … Subscriptions now account for two-thirds of revenue, compared with a little less than half when Thompson took the helm.”
WIRED / Vittoria ElliottCrowdTangle co-founder Brandon Silverman says it’s time to force companies to share data →“I think there’s a bit too much of a public narrative that frustration with [New York Times columnist] Kevin Roose’ tweets is why Meta turned their back on CrowdTangle. I think the truth is that Facebook is moving out of news entirely.”
Vanity Fair / Charlotte KleinInside Politico’s ambitious, anxious drive to stay on top →“Out of concerns that Politico is losing its edge, the untested leadership team is pushing staffers harder. Some journalists see it as the sharpening and discipline Politico has been lacking; others, as micromanagement bogging down a newsroom built on speed” … “‘You can’t “win the day,”‘ one staffer says, referring to the philosophy that governed Politico’s early years, ‘if you haven’t won the newsroom.'”
The Verge / David PierceWhy AI search engines really can’t kill Google →“For all the people using Google to find important and hard-to-access scientific information, orders of magnitude more are using it to find their email inbox, get to Walmart’s website, or remember who was president before Hoover. And then there’s my favorite fact of all: that a vast number of people every year go to Google and type ‘google’ into the search box. We mostly talk about Google as a research tool, but in reality, it’s asked to do anything and everything you can think of, billions of times a day. The real question in front of all these would-be Google killers, then, is not how well they can find information. It’s how well they can do everything Google does.”
This American Life / Dana BalloutAt least 95 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza. This American Life profiled 5 of them. →“I saw this over and over again, journalists posting tributes, who were then killed themselves soon after. And a tribute goes up for them. And then the pattern continues.”
Big Technology / Alex KantrowitzA look inside Google’s generative AI tool for newsrooms →“A journalist first selects a ‘seed’ source like a city council, parks department, local school, etc. they plan to cover. With a link from that single source — whether that’s a press release, 500-page report, or even a tweet — Google’s generative AI software produces a first draft of the story, complete with a lede, nut graf, quotes, and the rest…The idea is that a journalist can add to that draft with reporting and fact-checking and eventually publish a full story.”
The Verge / Sarah JeongUnited States v. Apple is pure nerd rage →“The surprisingly readable 88-page complaint is a very relatable litany of all the annoying things Apple has done to you and me…You can almost forget this is a lawsuit and not just the compiled observations of a single very motivated poster in The Verge comments section — until you get to page 57.”
Ars Technica / Ashley BelangerUsers shocked to find Instagram limiting political content by default →“Instagram rolled out the change in February, announcing in a blog that the platform doesn’t ‘want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow.’ That post confirmed that Meta ‘won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads,’ so that those platforms can remain ‘a great experience for everyone.'”
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