The Daily Digest: March 20, 2025
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| At a time of increasing polarization and rigid ideologies, the L.A. Times has decided it wants to make its opinion pieces less persuasive to readers by increasing the cost of changing your mind. By Joshua Benton. |
After years of exploring a sale, The Skimm is acquired by Ziff Davis What we’re reading
The Atlantic / Alex ReisnerThe unbelievable scale of AI’s pirated-books problem →“Court documents released last night show that the senior manager felt it was ‘really important for [Meta] to get books ASAP,’ as ‘books are actually more important than web data.’ Meta employees turned their attention to Library Genesis, or LibGen, one of the largest of the pirated libraries that circulate online. It currently contains more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. Eventually, the team at Meta got permission from ‘MZ’—an apparent reference to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—to download and use the data set.”
Intelligencer / Charlotte KleinThe new Substack universe →“When Substack took off in 2020 amid the
newsletter boom — which
came and went, then came back
again, perhaps this time for good — it positioned itself as an email service. But in the years since, Substack has transformed into something else: a platform for live videos and podcasts, a burgeoning social-media network, and a starter pack for fledgling newsrooms. Every day for the past six weeks, Acosta has been filming himself talking about the horrors of Trump’s second term and posting the video on Substack. To his surprise, there’s an audience for it. Each episode gets between 150,000 and 200,000 views and he has amassed about 280,000 subscribers, more than 10,000 of which are paid.”
TechCrunch / Sarah PerezBluesky makes it easier for publishers to track referrals →“Liu notes in a post on Bluesky that the change came about because newsrooms were seeing engagement from likes and reposts in the app but had a harder time determining how that was translating into ‘actual website traffic.'”
Press Gazette / Charlotte TobittPublishers seeing “concerning trends” from advertisers in current political cycle →“The Associated Press is among publishers seeing ‘some concerning trends’ around advertisers being wary of working with news providers in the current political news cycle.”
The Guardian / Michael SavageExiled Russian journalists left “high and dry” after U.S. cuts radio funding →“Many of RFE/RL’s Russian journalists operate from Prague, Riga and Vilnius, with their work visas often tied to their employment. Terminating the broadcaster’s funding would trigger visa expirations, leaving them without legal status within months.”
Poynter / Nicholas ReynoldsI learned my hometown paper died from Facebook. That’s the future we’re facing →“The irony that I had learned of my newspaper’s death from some random woman on Facebook, rather than the paper itself, was not lost on me.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Meghnad BoseHow news publications are changing to protect immigrant sources →“The team at Enlace Latino NC, a Spanish-language digital news nonprofit in North Carolina, was recently disappointed by a potential podcast subject who canceled three times for one episode about the end of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans. ‘We offered to change her name, modify her voice, and ensure that only audio would be used, with no visual elements that could identify her,’ said Paola Jaramillo, the publication’s cofounder. ‘However, fear has prevailed, making the interview impossible to carry out.'” (More on El Tímpano’s policy changes
here.)
Financial Times / Anna Nicolaou, Stephen Morris, and Rafe UddinHow Jeff Bezos made peace with Donald Trump →“One longtime adviser cautions: ‘He cares most about Blue Origin. His chance of being the player he wants to become in space could be destroyed’ if the world’s richest man and most powerful politician united against him. ‘The growth trajectory for the entire enterprise depends on the federal contract . . . otherwise Blue is dead in the water.'”
The Bulwark / Will SommerA crack in Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire →“In profiles and media-biz interviews, the 46-year-old [co-CEO Jeremy] Boreing was positioned as a twenty-first century Rupert Murdoch, claiming the Daily Wire raked in $200 million in revenue last year. Boreing superfans could even buy his eponymous, anti-woke razor and chocolate brands. But as of Tuesday, all that is on ice. In its press release, the Daily Wire said that Boreing was trading his co-CEO position for an ‘advisory role’ handling the company’s creative projects, and that he’ll appear on a monthly podcast. ‘We can’t wait to see what he does next,’ Shapiro said, in a not particularly warm statement. That’s an abrupt drop in ambition for a man who once promoted his business plans by posing on a throne wearing a crown.”
The Boston Globe / Aidan RyanIn Trump 2.0, many people are shaking up their media habits – or all but tuning out →“Some people — such as public sector attorney Lauren Hill, 44, of Providence — who still want to be informed but not overwhelmed, have also made comedy a large proportion of their news consumption. ‘Typically, they end the piece with: ‘And what can you do?’’ said Hill, who likes watching John Oliver and Adam Conover and supported Harris. ‘I think that’s been some of my frustration . . . here’s all this terrible news, and you can’t do anything about it.'”
TechCrunch / Sarah PerezSubstack rival Ghost is now connected to the fediverse →“To help Ghost publishers participate in the fediverse and build their readership, Ghost also launched a social web reader. Here, users can browse a ‘feed’ of the short-form content shared across the fediverse, including posts from services like Mastodon and Threads.”
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