Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

How El Tímpano is changing its reporting practices to protect immigrant sources

“We were trying to think, how do we balance these two things? How do we keep these people safe and tell their stories at the same time?” By Sophie Culpepper.

An independent journalist doubled paid subscriptions after scooping everyone on the federal funding freeze

Marisa Kabas has published The Handbasket since 2022. “The jump has been staggering.” By Sarah Scire.
What We’re Reading
The New York Times / Katie Robertson
Trump administration to remove 4 major news outlets from Pentagon office space →
“The New York Post would replace The New York Times as a print outlet; the conservative cable channel One America News would be swapped in for NBC News; Breitbart News would be a radio outlet instead of NPR; and the news outlet HuffPost, owned by BuzzFeed, would switch with Politico.”
The Guardian / Uday Narayanan
How a female-run radio station is giving rural India a voice →
“India’s first all-female community radio station and run entirely by Dalit women — historically the most oppressed and marginalized communities in India — Sangham Radio crafts programs that resonate deeply with their listeners. ‘We started this because no one was telling our stories,’ says Narsamma. ‘Why should outsiders shape our narrative? We have our own voice.'”
The New York Times / Tracey Tully
A storied newspaper prepares to print its own obituary →
“On Sunday, The Ledger’s nearly century-long run as New Jersey’s dominant newspaper will come to an end when it prints its final edition and shifts to an online-only format. Its editorial board will vanish, as will its clippable sports photos and pages of printed obituaries. Its sister publication, The Jersey Journal will cease to exist in print or online, leaving Hudson County, N.J. — a hotbed for political corruption — without a daily newspaper.”
Bloomberg / Thomas Seal
Meta blocked news in Canada, ads for scams are taking its place →
“Instagram and Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. has blocked links to news outlets for users in Canada since August 2023 in response to a law designed so social platforms compensate news publishers … But for months, users of all three social sites have been persistently shown ads for get-rich-quick schemes masquerading as stories from legitimate news sources such as the CBC.”
The Desk / Matthew Keys
NTSB forces reporters to get plane crash updates on X →
“The federal agency tasked with investigating transportation-related accidents and disasters said news organizations and reporters will have to follow the agency’s official account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where ‘all NTSB updates about news conferences or other investigative information’ will be posted moving forward. The NTSB did not say why it was choosing to post information about public safety matters exclusively on X, a private social media platform owned by technology mogul Elon Musk.”
Business Insider / Geoff Weiss
Robinhood’s media arm Sherwood lays off some staff →
Sherwood joins several other publishers that have cut staff this year, including NBC News, CNN, TechCrunch, and Vox. “‘Over the past 18 months, Sherwood has hired dozens of journalists, launched new products, and acquired the newsletter brand Chartr,’ a Robinhood spokesperson said. ‘As we built out our 2025 strategy, we made the decision to streamline team structure.’ The spokesperson declined to say how many employees were impacted but said it was a small percentage of Sherwood’s staff.”
Semafor / Ben Smith
Breaker aims to roil New York media, starting Downtown →
“Breaker will launch as a $12/month weekly newsletter and podcast to start, and will also put on the occasional play (why not). The outlet intends to be local to Downtown Manhattan, where both men live, the way the Southern District of New York is a local prosecutor’s office.”
Semafor / Max Tani
One of NBC’s top political reporters is leaving to lead a new local news startup in Maine →
“Alex Seitz-Wald, the network’s primary reporter on Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 and Joe Biden’s in 2020, told Semafor he is leaving to help the build the Midcoast Villager, a newly-launched roll-up of four legacy newspapers in Maine.”
Slate Magazine / Shasha Léonard
Google installed AI to my workspace. Getting rid of it was creepy. →
“Opting out should not be a premium feature. It’s a basic right.”
WIRED / Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, and Dell Cameron
U.S. government websites are disappearing in real time →
“WIRED built software to systematically check the status of 1,374 government domains. The tool runs periodic scans, tracking whether sites remain accessible, how their servers respond, and if the domain names still resolve. This allows us to monitor patterns in uptime and catch moments when sites suddenly vanish– sometimes reappearing minutes or hours later.”
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