Thursday, February 22, 2024 |
| But roughly half of U.S. counties have only one news outlet or less. By Sarah Stonbely. |
Google tests removing the News tab from search resultsMost big legacy news publishers across 10 countries are blocking OpenAI’s crawlers, report finds What We’re ReadingThe New York Times / Sapna Maheshwari and Mike Isaac
Instagram’s uneasy rise as a news site →“My friends who are millennial moms are busy — they have jobs, they have kids, they have to put food on the table,” said Emily Amick, a lawyer and Instagram influencer who considers herself an “at-large opinion editor” on the platform. “They don’t have tons of extra time to consume news, and they were already on Instagram. So this is the way for them to be able to consume news through a modality they’re already using.”The Washington Post / Jeremy Barr
How everything became a “psyop” for conservative media →“The cynical genius of calling something a ‘psyop’ is that such accusations ‘don’t really need to have any evidence, because there’s not going to be any evidence: It’s a secret operation,'” said Mike Rothschild, an expert in conspiracy theories who wrote a book on QAnon.The Verge / Tom Warren
Google pauses Gemini’s ability to generate AI images of people after diversity errors →“Google says it’s pausing the ability for its Gemini AI to generate images of people, after the tool was found to be
generating inaccurate historical images. Gemini has been creating diverse images of the US Founding Fathers and Nazi-era German soldiers, in what looked like an attempt to subvert the gender and racial stereotypes found in generative AI.”The Indianapolis Star / Holly Hays
Gannett and IndyStar announce $2 million investment to grow local reporting and sales staffs →“The plan includes investments that will support both the newsroom and LocaliQ, Gannett’s Indianapolis sales and advertising team…This is the only site in the USA TODAY Network, which includes more than 200 local publications across the country, where such an investment is being made.”Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
Germany’s Bild proves paywalls can work for tabloids as it hits 700,000 milestone →“Bildplus, which launched in June 2013, hit 700,000 digital subscribers in late 2023 and is now up to 707,208. This makes it the biggest subscriber base in the German-speaking news market and one of the most popular paywalled news websites in the world.”Reuters / Anna Tong, Echo Wang and Martin Coulter
Reddit in AI content licensing deal with Google, sources say →“Social media platform Reddit has struck a deal with Google to make its content available for training the search engine giant’s artificial intelligence models, three people familiar with the matter said. The contract with Alphabet-owned Google is worth about $60 million per year, according to one of the sources.”Wired / Lauren Goode
Crying in Apple Vision Pro is no laughing matter →“I never really expected to cry a hundred different ways, but I’d hoped to feel connected in just as many. This is what mixed-reality headset makers promise, along with the assurance that wearers will be ‘transported.’ Instead, I felt so heavily the weight of aloneness—and the headset—that it distracted from the stories that had been constructed in front of me.”Axios / Sara Fischer
BuzzFeed sells Complex for $108 million, announces job cuts →“BuzzFeed has sold Complex, the entertainment media brand it acquired for $300 million in 2021, to livestream shopping platform NTWRK for $108.6 million, the companies announced Wednesday. BuzzFeed also announced a plan to cut expenses, which includes 16% layoffs.”NBC News / Kat Tenbarge
Fake sexually explicit video of podcast host Bobbi Althoff trends on X despite violating platform’s rules →“X has in recent weeks become a breeding ground for nonconsensual deepfakes following the viral spread in January of digitally created, sexually explicit images of
Taylor Swift. Such content violates X’s
nonconsensual nudity policy, which specifically prohibits ‘images or videos that superimpose or otherwise digitally manipulate an individual’s face onto another person’s nude body.'”The Nation / Emmet Fraizer
The mainstream media is failing trans people. These journalists are fighting back. →“…despite the available resources, people can be hesitant to report on trans issues, says Adam Rhodes, a journalist and TJA board member—either out of a fear of getting it wrong, or, more charitably, because they can’t afford to invest in the nuanced coverage they want.”Scroll.in / Waqas Ejaz and Mitali Mukherjee
Lessons from Pakistan’s polls: Distortions of mainstream media and social media curbs can prove futile →“One glaring lesson from Pakistan’s election is the futility of restricting information flow in today’s high-choice information environment. An information clamp-down on mainstream media outlets has led to the emergence of new, digital-native platforms, including RaftarTV, NayaPakistan, and Siasat.pk, which, collectively on X, have over 3.7 million followers and 4.1 million subscribers on YouTube.”Substack / Richard J. Tofel
A requiem for the culture of The Wall Street Journal →“What I am saying is that treating people in newsrooms callously is always wrong, and that institutions where this happens repeatedly become coarsened and brittle. Editors and managers who behave badly, or even those who tolerate others doing so, are unlikely, at least in my experience, to possess the empathy that marks much of great journalism.”Ars Technica / Timothy B. Lee and James Grimmelmann
Why The New York Times might win its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI →“AI companies are on shakier legal ground than Google was in its book search case. And the courts don’t always side with technology companies in cases where companies make copies to build their systems. The story of MP3.com illustrates the kind of legal peril AI companies could face in the coming years.”Detroit Free Press / Dana Afana
The city of Detroit wants $17,000 to fill a FOIA request about controversial city murals →“The city said a minimum deposit of $8,543.16 would be required for the FOIA to be completed.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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