Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

Meet the first-ever mixtaper at The New York Times

“I think the streaming economy has brought on a lot of paralysis of choice. When you can listen to (almost) anything with one click, where do you even begin?” By Sarah Scire.

Let the community work it out: A throwback to early internet days could fix social media’s crisis of legitimacy

“We believe it is time to consider not just how online spaces can be governed efficiently and in service to corporate bottom lines, but how they can be governed fairly and legitimately.” By Ethan Zuckerman.
What We’re Reading
Baekdal / Thomas Baekdal
Should you raise your subscription price? →
“The choice to raise your prices depends on what kind of growth you are expecting … When you are a company like the New York Times, with about 10 million paid subscribers, an 18% increase will likely more than surpass any drop in conversions.”
Variety / Jennifer Maas
Blaze Media says it’s “first in the conservative media space” to focus entirely on subscription revenue →
Blaze Media said it would shift away from “reliance on external display advertising partnerships.” “Blaze Media editor-in-chief Matthew Peterson will continue to oversee the editorial direction of the now-subscriber-only site.”
Twitter / Jason Grotto
Bloomberg is adding 40 new data journalists and visualization reporters →
The roles are based in New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other locations.
Vox
Vox editor-in-chief Swati Sharma takes on expanded role as publisher →
“I want Vox to be an institution of lasting value – a place that outlasts its founders,” said outgoing publisher Melissa Bell.
The Verge / Jay Peters
Notice X posts no longer unfurl in Slack? The platform retired the integration over API changes →
“Slack’s integration with X relies on access to its API, and changes to that API this spring impacted the integration’s functionality and the services it supports … The Twitter app for Slack has not been functional since X implemented these changes, so we have removed the app from the small set of customer workspaces that still have it installed.”
The Messenger / Adam Kovac
Gannett denies using AI for questionable product reviews →
“The content included reviews of scuba masks that were near identical to reviews of drinking tumblers.”
Los Angeles Times / LZ Granderson
When journalists are killed in Gaza, more lives are at stake →
“There’s a folksy saying in journalism: If one person says it’s raining and another says it’s not, a reporter’s job is not to quote them both but to look out the window and see whether it’s raining. Sometimes ‘going to the window’ places journalists in harm’s way. How else would the world learn what’s going on?”
the Guardian / Ella Creamer
A new $10,000 writing award invites teens to write about a banned book that changed their life →
“Book bans in US public schools increased by 33% over the last school year according to a September report by Pen America. It found that the authors whose books were targeted were most frequently women, people of colour and LGBTQ+ individuals.”
Axios / Sara Fischer and Cuneyt Dil
Local news vouchers could be coming to Washington, D.C. →
“The legislation would allocate $11 million annually to local news subsidies for D.C.’s roughly 670,000 residents. Residents could use those vouchers to support any local news outlet of their choice, with the exception of local TV companies.”
MacRumors / Joe Rossignol
Apple increases the price of Apple News+ (and Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade) →
Apple News+ was $9.99 per month and will now be $12.99 per month.
Vanity Fair / Charlotte Klein
“You don’t want to hedge it?” Inside the New York Times Slack debate over its Gaza hospital bombing coverage →
“I think we can’t just hang the attribution of something so big on one source without having tried to verify it,” the International editor said. “And then slap it across the top of the [home page]. Putting the attribution at the end doesn’t give us cover, if we’ve been burned and we’re wrong.”