Plus: Surprising attitudes about gender and credibility on the beat, how Trump drives outsized mainstream media attention to alternative media, and “sifting” as the key mode of next-gen news consumers.
Nonprofit news has seen an uptick in mergers, acquisitions, and other consolidations. CalMatters CEO Neil Chase still says “I don’t think we’ve seen enough yet.”
“For a long time, ‘objectivity’ packaged together many important ideas about truth and trust. American journalism has disowned that brand without offering a replacement.”
Within days of visiting the pages — and without commenting on, liking, or following any of the material — Facebook’s algorithm recommended reams of other AI-generated content.
By Renee DiResta, Abhiram Reddy, and Josh A. Goldstein
“Our research addresses deepfake detection algorithms’ fairness, rather than just attempting to balance the data. It offers a new approach to algorithm design that considers demographic fairness as a core aspect.”
“While there is even more need for this intervention than when we began the project, the initiative needs more resources than the current team can provide.”
Stephen Buckley, a Duke University journalism professor, “will work outside the newsroom’s organizational structure” and report directly to Grant Moise, The News’ publisher and chief executive officer of its parent company. “The News is no longer content to play defense with the issue of reader trust and assurance,” Moise said.
“Meta is in the process of deprecating CrowdTangle, a public insights tool that enables real-time election-monitoring by researchers, journalists and civil society, including through live visual dashboards, without an adequate replacement.”
“The Athletic, which was acquired by The New York Times in 2022, will raise ad prices again this year as a result of the increase in newsletter subscribers. A NYT spokesperson later said that the Times is considering another price increase this year. This will be the second time prices will rise since The Athletic first started selling ads in 2022. She declined to share by how much or when the company was planning to set new prices.”
“For today’s anti-war protesters, they have all the infrastructure they need to broadcast a narrative about their beliefs directly to a global village…While the Occupy movement and advances in technology inspired new journalists to publish lots of raw and unfiltered content in 2011, generation Z was born in it and are more digitally savvy than any group before.”
“These two trends — the Israeli media’s unbending self-censorship in its coverage of the devastation in Gaza, and its framing of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the U.S. as antisemitic — are closely linked. Simply put, those who are not aware of what Israel is doing in Gaza cannot understand the reaction of those who are.”
“AI content makers like Polymath are sought after by national and regional politicians in India amid what is being touted as the biggest election in the world. Four AI content agencies told Rest of World they are seeing more demand than they can manage, with political parties in the country projected to spend over $50 million on AI-generated campaign material this year.”
“Shanahan’s new podcast, out Wednesday, will see the vice presidential hopeful interviewing innovators and economic policy experts about various issues impacting the American experience.”
“Translation: more investigative pieces, less filler content, more ‘constructive journalism’ that serves audience needs instead of winning Twitter/X.” (Also: “The traffic era of publishing has ended…I found it telling [Tucker] didn’t cite traffic numbers but highlighted that the Journal had decreased churn by 6% in the past year.”)
“The Intercept has been taken over by suits who have abandoned its founding mission of fearless and adversarial journalism, and I can’t continue in an environment where fear of funders is more important than journalism itself.”
“The publications — The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, The Sun Sentinel of Florida, The San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post, The Orange County Register and The St. Paul Pioneer Press — filed the complaint in federal court in the U.S. Southern District of New York…The publications accuse OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of copyrighted articles without permission to train and feed their generative A.I. products, including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.”
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