The Weekly Wrap: October 04, 2024 From the week
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| Does any of this work actually matter? By Jacob L. Nelson, Andrea Wenzel and Letrell Crittenden. |
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| The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act is being deliberated in both houses of Congress. By Matthew Jordan. |
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| It has a much better chance of success than CNN+ ever did. But it still has to convince people its work is distinctive enough to break out the credit card. By Joshua Benton. |
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| It’s the first major redesign since the app launched in 2008. By Neel Dhanesha. |
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| Partisanship, conspiratorial thinking, and IRL connections make for a potent mix — on both the left and the right. By Joshua Benton. |
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| The Kansas City Beacon seemed to be a nonprofit news success story. So what’s going wrong in Wichita? By Sophie Culpepper. |
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| In the age of “meeting the reader where they are,” mission-driven news orgs say they’re looking beyond the pageview — plus other lessons from ONA 2024. By Nieman Lab Staff. |
Highlights from elsewhere
CNN / Brian StelterThe New York Times won’t endorse in local races. A group of prominent journalists aims to fill the gap. →“The group is tentatively called the New York Editorial Board, according to Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith, who helped assemble it in recent weeks. The self-styled board [is] ‘a group of journalists grilling politicians,’ Smith said.” See also:
Should news outlets still endorse political candidates? and
This political era has nearly killed off newspaper endorsements for president.The Hollywood Reporter / Katie KilkennyThe New Yorker union members unanimously authorize strike ahead of festival →“The New Yorker union, which represents fact-checkers, copy editors, story editors and photo editors, among other roles, has been negotiating its latest pact with Condé Nast for more than six months. (The magazine’s staff writers are not included in the union.)”
The Verge / Emma RothGoogle’s AI search summaries officially have ads →“Let’s say you’re searching for ways to get a grass stain out of your pants. If you ask Google, its AI-generated response will offer some tips, along with suggestions for products to purchase that could help you remove the stain. The products will appear beneath a ‘sponsored’ header, and Google spokesperson Craig Ewer told The Verge they’ll only show up if a question has a ‘commercial angle.'”
Columbia Journalism Review / Lauren WatsonThe before and after: Meta’s Canadian news ban, as told through my small town →“The researchers also found that only 22 percent of Canadians are aware that Meta has bailed on journalism. That has turned Canadian newsgathering on social media into a game of telephone—out-of-context photos and summaries absent links to the articles from which they’ve been sourced—that few even know is being played.”
Reuters / Lucy PapachristouForced closure of weekly spells the end for Russia’s independent print media →“A few days after the ‘foreign agent’ designation, Sobesednik announced it was suspending publication. ‘It would be impossible to read,’ said Roldugin, who has led the paper since 2021. ‘The paper would have to be sold sealed and labelled ’18+’, like pornography. Because we did journalism instead of propaganda.'”
The Atlantic / Gal BeckermanThe journalist who cried treason →“I wondered, though, in my discussions with Unger, whether reporters like him bore some of the responsibility—whether the kind of skepticism and mistrust that marked his generation of journalists had helped create our post-truth reality. There were moments when he slipped from crusading truth teller to something closer to a conspiracy theorist willing to believe the most outlandish speculations.”
Wired / Will KnightHacking generative AI for fun and profit →“Notable pitches from the journalism hackathon included using multimodal language models to track political posts on TikTok, to auto-generate freedom of information requests and appeals, or to summarize video clips of local court hearings to help with local news coverage.”
Futurism / Maggie Harrison DupréFacebook is being flooded with gross AI-generated images of Hurricane Helene devastation →“Instead of spreading vital information to those affected by the natural disaster, or at the very least sharing real photos of the destruction, the account is seemingly trying to use AI to cash in on all the attention the hurricane has been getting.”
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