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The Weekly Wrap: January 31, 2025
Hundreds of local newsletters, one AI editor, zero disclosure
This week, Nieman Lab hit publish on the story behind Good Daily, a network of AI-generated newsletters operating in 355 cities and towns across the United States. In his riveting piece, Andrew Deck reveals the newsletters are run by a single software engineer based in New York City using automated AI agents that aggregate legitimately local news outlets.
A number of readers have let Andrew know they’d spotted a Good Day newsletter in their hometown — but hadn’t realized it was part of a sprawling national network presenting itself as local in hundreds of places in “small town America.”
Whoa! I was wondering what that “Daily Bellingham” newsletter was in my spam folder and why it was needed when we have great local outlets like @cascadiadaily.com + @salishcurrent.bsky.social! Heads up, folks!
— Zoë Plakias (@zoeconomy.bsky.social) January 27, 2025 at 4:17 PM
In his piece, Andrew connects the dots and interviews the serial startup founder behind the AI-generated newsletters, who sees his automated newsletters as boosting the work of struggling local outlets.
wild one! love that they got ahold of the guy and he was like “yea Ill totally talk about this”
— James (@JamesHercher) January 30, 2025
More from the Nieman Lab team below. See you next week.
— Sarah Scire
From the week
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What will a conservative National Labor Relations Board mean for news unions?“If you want something out of your crappy news company, you’re going to have to go fight for it yourself out on the picket line.” By Hanaa' Tameez. |
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News for young people by young people: How this new Spanish outlet aims to reach an elusive audience“People are tired of the political news cycle in Spain. It’s non-stop. It’s four big things a day. It’s crazy. And that’s something that doesn’t benefit news consumption. People are overwhelmed.” By Marina Adami. |
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How young Kenyans turned to news influencers when protesters stormed the country’s parliamentA recent study shows the country’s news ecosystem is shifting towards alternative sources. This trend might shape journalism in the years to come. By Maurice Oniang'o. |
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Are you being tailed? Tips for reporters concerned about physical surveillance“As a profession, you’d hope reporters would be good at reading people, situations, scenarios. So how many do you think spotted the spotters? None.” By Laura Dixon. |
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Why a centuries-old local newspaper in New Hampshire launched a journalism fundThe Keene Sentinel weighed the pros and cons of becoming a nonprofit. It chose a hybrid option instead. By Sophie Culpepper. |
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Weak assumptions, bad habits: Sarah Alvarez on pushing journalism beyond “sloppy work”“One bad assumption that has not changed since I got into this industry is still that more information is better all the time.” By Richard Tofel. |
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Inside a network of AI-generated newsletters targeting “small town America”Good Daily, which operates in 47 states and 355 towns and cities across the U.S., is run by one person. By Andrew Deck. |
Highlights from elsewhere
Adweek / Mark Stenberg
The Dispatch is staffing up and pitching “sane conservatism” →
“The 27-person outlet generated between $5 million and $10 million in revenue last year, nearly 80% of which came from its roughly 45,000 paying subscribers.”
New York Times / Benjamin Mullin and David McCabe
FCC chair Brendan Carr has ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS stations →
“Carr, who was appointed by President Trump, said the investigation would focus on the stations’ practice of airing sponsorships.” Nieman Lab previously wrote about Brendan Carr and the sections of Project 2025 he authored.
Nieman Storyboard / Mark Armstrong
How to lobby for time and space to tell a story →
“Reporters have to make the case that audiences already get so much information in discrete bites, they’re confused, and they’re crying out for reporting that helps them synthesize all of it. And the reporter needs to demonstrate that their project will fill that need — and that they have a plan to deliver.”
TechCrunch / Aisha Malik
Threads adds a media tab, following X and Bluesky →
“It could also help Meta’s Threads better compete with dedicated video-first apps, like the ever-popular TikTok, whose U.S. ban is temporarily on pause … Meta has been working to attract more users to Threads by regularly adding new features, including a post scheduler, the ability to follow profiles from other fediverse servers, custom feeds, AI-powered summaries for trending topics, and more.”
Digiday / Sara Guaglione
How well is the Financial Times’s AI-powered paywall working? →
“The Financial Times’s months-old AI-powered paywall has helped improve key subscription business metrics, such as average revenue per user and lifetime value … But it hasn’t led to more readers converting into subscribers. In fact, the conversion rate dropped 10% since the paywall has rolled out in the past year.”
Nieman Reports / Megan Cattel
Nieman Reports wants to see your reporter’s notebook →
Our sister site is celebrating the classic slim, top-wired notepad.
MediaPost / Ray Schultz
Carpenter Media Group continues to buy up small local newspapers across the U.S. →
“The acquisition, terms of which were not disclosed, includes The Salem News, Phelps County Focus, Pulaski County Weekly along with their websites and social media, Action Graphics Sign Company, magazines and special publications and the company’s commercial printing operation.”
The Wall Street Journal / Suzanne Vranica and Patience Haggin
Meta’s free-speech shift made it clear to advertisers: “Brand safety” is out of vogue →
“For the better part of a decade, the dialogue between Meta and Madison Avenue has moved in one direction: The company pledged to do more and more to combat hate speech and misinformation on Facebook and Instagram, responding to grievances from brands as well as broader social and political pressures. Now, a new cultural moment has arrived, punctuated by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and Meta’s executives are carrying an unmistakably different message: Some things we used to remove will now be allowed.”
American Press Institute / Kevin Loker
Lessons from four months of local news collaborations with influencers →
“If I knew then that influencer reach is as random and erratic as legacy news org social reach … I’d form this as more of an experiment and diversify both influencer and topic area differently.”
the Guardian / Callum Jones
Trump Media has announced plans to expand into crypto, because of course it has →
“Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Trump’s Truth Social platform, jumped 15% during pre-market trading after it announced the launch of Truth.Fi, a financial technology brand Truth.Fi, in a brief statement.”
Substack / Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman says he left The New York Times over “a push toward blandness” →
“Maybe there was a time when readers would sit still for sober, dull opinion pieces — history’s most boring headline, ‘Worthwhile Canadian Initiative,’ was the title of a Times op-ed — because they were seen as representing the views of The Establishment. And I have the feeling that Times management still thinks it’s living in that world. But in today’s wide-open information (and misinformation) environment, boring writing just vanishes without a trace.”
International News Media Association / Paula Felps
A Bangladeshi newspaper wanted to boost subscribers to its streaming service. So it turned a (fictional) gangster into an influencer. →
“To attract interest and create a buzz that would pay off with more subscriptions, the marketing team enlisted the help of Allen Swapan, a fictional character and protagonist of the original series, Myself Allen Swapan…By making the gangster the face of its campaign, Chorki picked up a nationwide buzz and “Myself Allen Swapan” landed on the must-see content list.”
A Media Operator / Jacob Cohen Donnelly
Are multi-publisher subscription bundles a good idea? →
“As I wrote in 2020, The New York Times is a competitor to all local newspapers. For the cost, you get much more value with a subscription to NYT than you would with a local newspaper, except for that one variable: local. The deal would be that Dallas residents get all the local news they need from [the Dallas Morning News], but if they want national/international news, they head over to the Times.”