Wednesday, May 22, 2024 |
| The ongoing general election is a pressure test for how to report on political voice clones and video spoofs By Andrew Deck. |
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| “We are bringing onto this platform — where people usually talk about their lost cat or that they’re looking for an apartment — serious news content sparking a new kind of conversation.” By Hanaa' Tameez. |
What We’re ReadingWashington 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.”Digiday / Sara Guaglione
How sending fewer emails and content previews improved The New Yorker’s newsletter engagement →“While its news and politics-related email volume has decreased by 65% since this change, [Jessanne Collins, The New Yorker’s director of newsletters] said that the publishers’ page views coming from the News & Politics newsletter have gone up by 35%.”CNN / Jon Passantino, Hadas Gold, and Oliver Darcy
Israel reverses on seizure of Associated Press camera feed after intense backlash →“In a sharp reversal, Israel said Tuesday it would return camera and broadcast equipment it had seized from the Associated Press in the southern Israeli city of Sderot on Tuesday after the action prompted swift backlash from U.S. officials and press groups.”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.”Axios / Sara Fischer
60 Minutes is America’s top-rated TV news program for the 50th consecutive year →“This past season, the program was television’s top nonsports prime-time program 15 times. It has been TV’s top overall prime-time program 14 times over the last three TV seasons.”The Verge / Chris Welch
After releasing the universally panned AI Pin, Humane is looking for a buyer →“That’s according to a report from Bloomberg, which says the company — led by former longtime Apple employees Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno — is ‘seeking a price of between $750 million and $1 billion.'”The Verge / Emma Roth
Microsoft Edge will translate and dub news videos as you’re watching them →“Microsoft announced that the new Al-powered feature will be able to translate spoken content through both dubbing and subtitles live as you’re watching it…Edge will also support real-time translation for videos on news sites such as Reuters, CNBC, and Bloomberg.”The Atlantic / Charlie Warzel
OpenAI’s manifest destiny: This is happening, whether you like it or not →“At the core of these deflections is an implication: The hypothetical superintelligence they are building is too big, too world-changing, too important for prosaic concerns such as copyright and attribution.”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.”AP News / Huizhong Wu
A Chinese citizen journalist imprisoned for 4 years for reporting on COVID is released →“Zhang was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’ a vaguely defined charge often used in political cases, and served her full term. Yet, on the day of her release, her
former lawyers could not reach her or her family. Shanghai police had paid visits to activists and her former lawyers in the days leading up to her release.”Twitter / Max Tani
The Washington Post has suffered a 50% drop-off in audience since 2020 →Washington Post CEO Will Lewis also says the paper lost $77 million over the past year: “To be direct, we are in a hole, and we have been for some time.”Axios / Sara Fischer
A group of U.S. senators want USPS to deliver newspapers on time →“[The Deliver for Democracy Act] requires that the USPS must either achieve at least a 95% on-time delivery rate for periodicals or improve its on-time delivery rate by at least 2 percentage points in order to be able to unlock its 2% surcharge authority for papers.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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