Monday, December 2, 2024 |
| “It’s a much better experience if you’re not turning your phone. And people don’t turn their phones.” By Hanaa' Tameez. |
What We’re ReadingThe Atlantic / Lora Kelley
Taylor Swift is a perfect example of how book publishing is changing →“The day after Swift announced her book, David Shelley, the CEO of Hachette, one of the ‘Big Five’ book publishers, said something at the Frankfurt Book Fair that got far less attention…Best sellers, established tentpoles of the industry, were now ‘icing on the cake,’ he explained. The book industry still welcomes the hype and sales that a star can bring, but more and more, publishers also rely on what they already have: generations’ worth of older titles — what they call the backlist.”Semafor / Ben Smith
The Verge is launching a paywall tomorrow →“Beginning this week, the Verge will charge $7/month or $50/year for comprehensive access to the site as well as the already-paywalled newsletters Command Line and Notepad. Some content and the publication’s homepage, which was redesigned in 2022 to resemble a social feed, will remain free. The Verge is Vox Media’s third major subscription push behind New York and Vox, which launched a membership program earlier this year.”Status / Oliver Darcy
Trump’s appointees are extreme. The media doesn’t know how to talk about them. →“These appointees are rarely, if ever, referred to as conspiracy theorists or extremists, even though that is precisely what they are…Some journalists might argue that it is not the duty of a news organization to make such statements. But there are plenty of times when news outlets use blunt language to defend Constitutional principles. News organizations regularly argue before courts the importance of the First Amendment and issue scathing statements when such rights are violated, whether abroad or at home. So why not be as clear in stories?”Columbia Journalism Review / Klaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar
How ChatGPT search (mis)represents publisher content →“Typically, pasting an exact quote into a traditional search engine like Google or Bing returns either a visual indication that the search engine has located the source — bolded text that matches your search — or a message that informs you there are no results…Eager to please, [ChatGPT] would sooner conjure a response out of thin air than admit it could not access an answer. In total, ChatGPT returned partially or entirely incorrect responses on a hundred and fifty-three occasions, though it only acknowledged an inability to accurately respond to a query seven times.”Drop Site News / Ryan Grim
A giant of journalism gets half its budget from the U.S. government →“While [the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project] has consistently disclosed that it accepts some money from governments, including the United States, the full extent of the financing has not previously been revealed…The work of OCCRP, often in collaboration with other newsrooms around the world, has been deeply impressive journalistically and at times they have done reporting at odds with U.S. national interests…But the extent to which it has been backed by the U.S. government has caused consternation among would-be or former partners.”Wired / Lily Hay Newman
Malicious ads in search results are driving new generations of scams →“The volume of these things is immense…search engines like Google will say they check the content of ads to ensure they’re safe, but the thing is that attackers are using ad delivery networks and can redirect the URL after the ad is paid for.”Toronto.com / Josh Rubin
Canada’s major news organizations are suing OpenAI →“It’s the first time all of a country’s major news publishers [including the Toronto Star, Metroland Media, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC] have come together in litigation against OpenAI…’Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It’s illegal,’ said a joint statement from the media organizations.” 404 Media / Jason Koebler
Happy affiliate marketing day to all who celebrate →“This type of affiliate content also creates a symbiotic relationship between many publications that do sincere, hard-hitting reporting on Amazon and its myriad labor and environmental abuses and Amazon, the company perpetrating those abuses. Amazon is not the only website offering affiliate deals, but it is the biggest. Websites that do great reporting on consumerism and right to repair also often end up making a few bucks by pushing new gadgets.”San Francisco Chronicle / Bob Egelko
California governor Gavin Newsom has pardoned Ear Hustle host Earlonne Woods →“Woods, now 53, ‘has provided evidence that he is living an upright life’ and deserves to be recognized for ‘the work he has done to transform himself,’ Newsom said in announcing the pardon.” In the time since former governor Jerry Brown commuted his sentence in 2018, Ear Hustle has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and
expanded to a second space in a women’s prison. The New York Times / Sarah Bahr
Behind the scenes with the New York Times’ Thanksgiving Day parade reporter →“It’s the best time — everyone is high as a kite on happiness…My idea, my concept that I go in with, is that the people are the parade” – Sarah Maslin Nir, a metro reporter who has volunteered to cover the parade for the last 12 years.
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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