Washington Post / Heather Kelly
Meta walked away from news. Now the company’s using it for AI content →“Meta’s new chatbot, Meta AI, is happy to scan news outlets and summarize their latest stories and headlines for anyone who asks. It’s even doing it in Canada, where the company banned links to news sources on Facebook and Instagram in August to get around a law that could require it to pay publishers.”
CNN / Jon Passantino, Hadas Gold, and Oliver Darcy
The Boston Globe / Aidan Ryan
“Really disturbing”: GBH lays off 31 employees →“Public media organization GBH laid off 31 employees on Wednesday and suspended production of three television programs, CEO Susan Goldberg told employees. The job losses affected 13 departments and represented 4 percent of the workforce, Goldberg said.”
NPR / Joanna Kakissis, Polina Lytvynova, and Claire Harbage
A newspaper near Ukraine’s border with Russia watches for freed POWs →“Before the war, [Peremoha editor Oleksandr Motsny] says, he and two reporters covered hyperlocal issues such as small businesses, farmers and milestone birthdays. Everything changed on Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peremoha was set to celebrate its 90th anniversary the next day.”
The Atlantic / Charlie Warzel
The Hollywood Reporter / Alex Weprin
BuzzFeed has a new activist investor…Vivek Ramaswamy? →“According to an SEC filing, Ramaswamy owns shares and call options worth just under $4 million, and equivalent to about 7.7% of BuzzFeed shares…An activist stake does not always lead to a hostile takeover attempt (as we saw with Elon Musk and Twitter), but it does usually result in the activist pushing for changes to the company, and occasionally cutting a deal, for board seats or other options.”
Nieman Reports / Paul Farhi
The long, slow death of the newspaper editorial →“The newspaper’s institutional voice could be predictable, staid, and self-serving. But it could also offer moral clarity and shape public opinion, as Pulitzer Prize-winning editorials on prison reform, income inequality, racial relations, and the environment have over the past several decades.”