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Scenes from the trial of Ozy’s Carlos Watson
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Scenes from the trial of Ozy’s Carlos Watson
Ozy’s Instagram account is calling for supporters to pack the courtroom as “Justice Watchers.”
By Joshua Benton
Does curiosity make you read more hard news? How about anxiety?
A new study finds that certain personality traits might make you exaggerate — or underestimate — how much political news you consume.
By Joshua Benton
What’s in a byline? For Hoodline’s AI-generated local news, everything — and nothing
None of the AI writers seems to have a specific beat, except possibly for what can be best described as “police exploits,” which they all cover with gusto.
By Neel Dhanesha
“The way we raise the money at The Guardian is different than any place I’ve ever been”
“This is truly a jointly owned responsibility among the business side and editorial.”
By Richard Tofel
What’s with the rise of “fact-based journalism”?
“To describe one form of journalism as ‘fact-based’ is to tacitly acknowledge that there is also such a thing as ‘non-fact-based journalism.’ And there isn’t.”
By Philip M. Napoli and Asa Royal
Britney Spears and the generational shift in celebrity coverage
“There was just this nastiness that emerged in the way celebrities were covered in the 2000s.”
By Aimee Levitt
How to b-e-e of use: Signal Cleveland hosts second annual community spelling contest
“Listening is great, and talking to community members is great, but we also have to figure out how to be of use.”
By Sophie Culpepper
Scenes from the trial of Ozy’s Carlos Watson
Ozy’s Instagram account is calling for supporters to pack the courtroom as “Justice Watchers.”
By Joshua Benton
Does curiosity make you read more hard news? How about anxiety?
A new study finds that certain personality traits might make you exaggerate — or underestimate — how much political news you consume.
What’s in a byline? For Hoodline’s AI-generated local news, everything — and nothing
None of the AI writers seems to have a specific beat, except possibly for what can be best described as “police exploits,” which they all cover with gusto.
What We’re Reading
The Atlantic / Charlie Warzel
This is what it looks like when AI eats the world
“After conversations with several executives at different companies who have negotiated with OpenAI, I was left with the sense that the tech company is less interested in publisher data to train its models and far more interested in real-time access to news sites for OpenAI’s forthcoming search tools.”
NPR / David Folkenflik
The Washington Post’s publisher tried to kill a story about allegations against him. It wasn’t the first time.
“In several conversations, [Washington Post publisher and CEO Will] Lewis repeatedly — and heatedly — offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations … That first interview appears to have gone to Puck’s Dylan Byers.”
The Boston Globe / Aidan Ryan
Doris Burke has come a long way from her days at Providence. Now, she’s on the cusp of history
“Burke, 58, will make history this week as the first woman to call a championship telecast in a major American men’s sports league.”
FIPP / Pierre de Villiers
How Harvard Business Review is leaning into generative AI
HBR believes AI will help the media industry enter an age of hyper-personalization. The 102-year-old publication is also working on a chatbot to help readers “get ahead in their careers.” (Publications including San Francisco Chronicle have also debuted chatbots.)
AP News / Mike Catalini
New Jersey adopts public records overhaul but critics say it tightens access to documents
“The new law also ends a requirement for towns to pay attorneys’ fees in court cases they lose over records requests. The last provision could make it prohibitively expensive for members of the public and news reporters to challenge local and state governments in court, according to the bill’s opponents, including civil rights groups, the state’s press association and dozens of others who testified at committee hearings this year.”
Chronicle / Stephanie M. Lee
Has the famed misinformation researcher Joan Donovan been spreading misinformation?
“A series of events in a suspicious order, a handful of well-connected people: This was what Donovan’s allegation boiled down to.”
Financial Times / Daniel Thomas
Mill Media to target London as Evening Standard closes daily editions
“The group, using funds raised last year from investors including CNN boss Mark Thompson and economist Diane Coyle, is aiming to double the size of its operations by the end of the year.”
Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
Facebook deleting local news posts and labelling them as spam
“Bearing in mind we’re publishing 6,500 stories a year, most of them go to Facebook, so we’re probably doing ten to 15, maybe sometimes 15 to 20 stories a day to Facebook, and it happened to be a general election post that was taken down.”
WIRED / Samanth Subramanian
How to lead an army of digital sleuths in the age of AI
Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat founder: “When a lot of people think about AI, they think, ‘Oh, it’s going to fool people into believing stuff that’s not true.’ But what it’s really doing is giving people permission to not believe stuff that is true. Because they can say, ‘Oh, that’s an AI-generated image. AI can generate anything now: video, audio, the entire war zone re-created.’ They will use it as an excuse. It’s just easy for them to say.”
The New York Times / Ben Mullin and Katie Robertson
Clash over phone hacking article preceded exit of Washington Post editor
“Sally Buzbee, the editor, informed Mr. Lewis that the newsroom planned to cover a judge’s scheduled ruling in a long-running British legal case brought by Prince Harry and others against some of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids, the people said. As part of the ruling, the judge was expected to say whether the plaintiffs could add Mr. Lewis’s name to a list of executives who they argued were involved in a plan to conceal evidence of hacking at the newspapers. Mr. Lewis told Ms. Buzbee the case involving him did not merit coverage, the people said.”
Nieman Lab is a project to try to help figure out where the news is headed in the Internet age. Sign up for The Digest, our daily email with all the freshest future-of-journalism news.