Thursday, January 4, 2024 |
| Compared to their counterparts in communities without an election, monthly web traffic to local newspaper websites does not increase as mayoral elections approach. By Erik Peterson and Josh McCrain. |
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| Newsrooms can prepare for recurring climate events in the same way they prepare for elections or the Olympics. By Diego Arguedas Ortiz and Katherine Dunn. |
What We’re ReadingSemafor / Max Tani
The Messenger is on track to run out of cash at the end of January →“Two people with knowledge of the details of [a recent board] meeting told Semafor that The Messenger could shut down altogether, and that [founder Jimmy] Finkelstein had also expressed a willingness to sell the organization.” (See also:
“No need to shoot The Messenger: Its muddled ideas are doing the job”)Press Gazette / Jim Edwards
Why ad-funded journalism-for-all faces fight for survival in 2024 →“When Chrome’s cookies are fully removed, sources told Press Gazette, the open web will have mutated from a place where up to 90% of users were in some way targetable by advertisers, to a vast desert in which most users are essentially invisible to publishers and their clients.”The Information / Sahil Patel and Stephanie Palazzolo
OpenAI is offering publishers as little as $1 million a year to use their articles in training AI models →“OpenAI is holding talks with as many as a dozen publishers, executives say, hoping to strike deals similar to those it has already done with Axel Springer, publisher of Politico and Business Insider, and the Associated Press.”The Boston Globe / Aidan Ryan
Claudine Gay’s resignation was a mainstream victory for conservative media →“The outcome points up the complex calculus that an increasingly fragmented media landscape has created for institutions and leaders, who must figure out how to respond to critiques that may raise valid points even when they’re made to advance an agenda.”The Guardian / Kari Paul
“Where does the bot end and human begin?”: What the legendary @Horse_ebooks can teach us about AI →“It’s important to remember that we are still fundamentally just pulling from pre-established corpuses of work. It’s still just taking language that humans previously wrote and giving it back to humans. So in that sense, even with the enormous variety of sophistication, my understanding is that it’s still humans talking to humans, with a bot as the intermediary.”The Washington Post / Paul Farhi
Who is Francesca Street, and why is everyone reading her? →“Chartbeat, a company that measures digital readership, keeps track of how much time readers spend on a particular story, and it recently surveyed 39 million stories published by roughly 10,000 websites to rank the ‘most engaging’ reads of 2023. No reporter appeared on the list more than twice as a sole author — except for Street, whose name showed up five times…Street’s greatest hits are about true romance. More specifically, they’re about travelers who’ve fallen in love on the road, then lost and regained their paramour.”Axios / Sara Fischer
The Messenger seeks to raise $20M amid layoffs, financial struggles →“Company executives told Axios when it launched last May that it didn’t plan to raise any additional capital, and instead was hoping to fuel growth via profits.”Journalism.co.uk / Marcela Kunova
How Ruben Reuter challenges disability prejudice in the media industry →“Ruben Reuter is a 23-year-old correspondent for Channel 4 News with Down’s syndrome, best known for his coverage of challenges faced by people with disabilities. He joined the TV channel in Spring 2021, reporting on how people with disabilities coped during lockdown by working outside.”Associated Press
After 180 years, a small daily newspaper in the U.S. Virgin Islands says it is closing →“A small daily newspaper in the U.S. Virgin Islands whose owner credited past generations of literate slaves for its survival is closing after 180 years in print.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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