The Weekly Wrap: July 12, 2024
These two stories are a dip in a cool pool on a hot day
Nieman Lab doesn’t just cover journalism; we also cover POETRY and FILM! Or this week we covered them, anyway.
First up, Neel wrote about a “poetjournalism” initiative from MacArthur genius award-winner Aaron Dworkin, who hopes a cash prize and a wire service for “newspoems” will help the form take off. This story also includes not one but two!! original poems by Neel, so please check it out, and also please send us your newspoems. (Something about “third newsrooms,” perhaps?)
Then Andrew asked acclaimed director Errol Morris for his thoughts on the use of generative AI in documentaries. The free-ranging conversation includes some real mic-drop lines by Morris, the kind of thing I just want to excerpt endlessly; a few:
“People are so afraid of being tricked or manipulated that they feel if they impose a set of rules, somehow they don’t have to be afraid anymore. I would like to assure them that they still need to be afraid.”
“Although I sometimes joke about taking the piss out of epistemology, I don’t think anything really does take the piss out of epistemology.”
“I would say that all information is disinformation, but go on.”
“Our task is to get back to the real world, to the extent that it is recoverable.”
“Truth, I like to remind people — whether we’re talking about filmmaking, or film journalism, or journalism, whatever — it’s a quest.”
I loved both these pieces and the respite they provided from our current heat wave of a news cycle. I hope you’ll like them too.
— Laura Hazard Owen
From the week
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| The Athletic intends to use its live coverage as a “shop window,” giving new readers a taste of what they might get if they subscribed. By Neel Dhanesha. |
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| Can AI models save reporters time in figuring out an unfamiliar field’s jargon? By Sachita Nishal. |
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| The cable news network plans to launch a new subscription product — details TBD — by the end of 2024. Will Mark Thompson repeat his New York Times success, or is CNN too different a brand to get people spending? By Joshua Benton. |
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| “Our task is to get back to the real world, to the extent that it is recoverable.” By Andrew Deck. |
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| “Thank goodness that the mandate will never be to look what’s getting the most Twitter likes.” By Hanaa' Tameez. |
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| Institute for Poetjournalism founder Aaron Dworkin hopes a cash prize and a wire service for “newspoems” will help the form take off. By Neel Dhanesha. |
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| In countries that have demanded Facebook pay local news publishers, the tech giant has responded with threats — and sometimes action. Will a Canada-style ban become the international norm? By Axel Bruns. |
NPR’s Collaborative Journalism Network to expand with an Appalachia newsroom, short-form video pilot, and moreThe New York Times is “constantly thinking about the hierarchy of the stories that we’re promoting,” Joe Kahn says Highlights from elsewhere
The Verge / Nilay PatelQ&A with The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson on surviving the AI era →“AI is coming, it is coming quickly. We want to be part of whatever transition happens. Transition might be bad, the transition might be good, but we believe the odds of it being good for journalism and the kind of work we do with The Atlantic are higher if we participate in it. So we took that approach.”
Financial Times / Laura Pitel, Ivan Levingston, Arash Massoudi, Kaye Wiggins, and Olaf StorbeckAxel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner and private equity group KKR in talks to break Axel Springer in two →“Under the separation being discussed, Axel Springer’s chief executive Döpfner and Friede Springer, the widow of the company’s founder, would assume greater control of the group’s media properties, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. These include U.S. news sites Politico and Business Insider, and German publications Bild and Die Welt.”
MeduzaRussian authorities throttling YouTube, source tells Meduza →And “the pro-Kremlin news site Gazeta.ru has
reported that the Russian authorities are ‘planning to permanently block’ YouTube in September, citing a source close to the Putin administration and a source in a company that collects data for law enforcement agencies.”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Jessie Opoien and Molly BeckMilwaukee radio station says it agreed to edit interview with Joe Biden →“The two edits, according to the station, were: 1. At time 5:20, the removal of ‘…and in addition to that, I have more Blacks in my administration than any other president, all other presidents combined, and in major positions, cabinet positions.’ 2. At time 14:15, in reference to Donald Trump’s call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, the removal of ‘I don’t know if they even call for their hanging or not, but he — but they said […] convicted of murder.'”
What I'm Reading / Phil LewisCNN quietly disbanded its race and equality team →“The team was announced as a ‘significant, sustained commitment to ensure race coverage is a permanent part of our journalism’ in a memo to staff in the wake of the anti-racism protests sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd.” Members of the team have been reassigned. A CNN spokesperson said: “It’s not a unit in the way it was before, but [Race and Equality] is very much still their focus.”
Poynter / Rick EdmondsThe National Trust for Local News makes a sharp turn after just two years →“The philanthropy-supported nonprofit sector ‘doesn’t need more coaches,’ [Trust co-founder and CEO Elizabeth] Hansen Shapiro said in an interview. ‘There are plenty of those.’ Moving beyond encouragement and skill-building into breakthrough improvements with measurable goals is much more urgent. ‘We have (shifted) to 25% making direct investments and 75% execution,’ she said. Originally, the split between the two was the reverse.”
Axios / Sara FischerChalkbeat expands to public health, hires media veterans to run new parent organization →“[Elizabeth] Green believes one tactic that’s been overlooked is the focus on topic-specific coverage rather than broader community news that newspapers used to own, like crime, weather and local sports.”
The Washington Post / Paul FarhiUSA Today transformed the media world. What’s its legacy now? →“USA Today left critics aghast when it debuted 42 years ago. Rival editors sneered at its bite-sized news stories and its relentlessly cheerful tone. (Headline on a plane crash story in the first edition: ‘Miracle: 327 survive, 58 die.’) The reporting was often so brief and superficial that even insiders joked that their work would win awards for ‘best investigative paragraph.’ It was quickly dubbed ‘McPaper,’ the news equivalent of junk food.”
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