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My 11-year-old recently complained that my husband kept finishing the day’s New York Times games before she could get to them. When I mentioned this to my colleague Sarah, she reminded me that my Times subscription lets me gift accounts to other people. I did this, restoring peace in our household at least in this one area.
My kid thinks of Times games as a daily media habit, alongside hefty doses of YouTube shorts, Sabrina Carpenter music videos, graphic novels on Libby, and countless episodes of Young Sheldon on Netflix. She uses the standalone NYT Games app to play, bypassing the Times’ main app. She doesn’t really encounter any hard news in this process, though Connections teaches her weird slang and the Mini Crossword occasionally throws in a news reference. But publishers talk about building habits and it’s striking to me how successful that’s been in our household. It’s no wonder publishers like The Atlantic are launching new games, as Sarah wrote this week.
We’re curious to hear about the news site games you (and your kids) play. Which do you like, which don’t you like, and were any so addictive that you started paying? You can let us know by replying to this email.
— Laura Hazard Owen
Minnesota’s Sahan Journal dives into AI with strategic goals and open eyesThe nonprofit newsroom is using grants to cautiously experiment with the ways ChatGPT can help it work smarter and expand revenue streams. By Lev Gringauz, MinnPost. |
Wordle who? The Atlantic launches a suite of new daily puzzles and gamesFresh off a subscriber bump from Signalgate, The Atlantic is debuting new “challenges” and “curiosities” for readers to play. By Sarah Scire. |
For the first time, social media overtakes TV as Americans’ top news sourcePlus: The pivot to video is really happening, digital subscriptions may have peaked, and other findings from RISJ’s 2025 Digital News Report. By Nieman Lab Staff. |
“The BBC said that parts of its content had been reproduced verbatim by Perplexity, and that links to the BBC website have appeared in search results, including content that has only recently been made available online.”
New York / Charlotte KleinAre you a $300,000 writer? Inside The Atlantic’s “A-team” →“The Google Calendar invite goes out to 18 staffers, more than half of whom joined the magazine in the past six months and almost all of whom have been poached from The Washington Post, including Ashley Parker, Isaac Stanley Becker, Nick Miroff, Shane Harris, Missy Ryan, Jenna Johnson, and Michael Scherer. More veteran Atlantic heavyweights like Mark Leibovich, Tim Alberta, McKay Coppins, and Elaina Plott also are invited, as are the top brass, including editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg and his deputy, Adrienne LaFrance.”
(Separately: Abundance coauthor Derek Thompson is leaving The Atlantic to start a Substack.)
• • •“Broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality...” →—BBC statement on why it will not air a documentary about doctors working in Gaza (BBC News / Steven McIntosh)• • •Washington City Paper / Vince MorrisThe Washington Post to merge D.C. metro coverage into Sports and Style sections →“Post average circulation has dropped below 100,000 for the first time in more than 55 years.”
• • •“Officer, officer, Iâm a member of the media, officer.” →—Salvadoran journalist Mario Guevara, just before he was arrested covering an Atlanta "No Kings" protest Saturday; he now faces deportation. (CNN / Marlon Sorto, Brian Stelter, and Caroll Alvarado)• • •Columbia Journalism Review / Dave LevinthalThe Huckabee newsletter problem →“The Huckabee Post straddles a line, as do many elements of the Trump administration, between government service and media entrepreneurship.”
• • •$450 million →The total annual subscription revenue of all publishers on Substack, according to sources. Around 10% of that goes to Substack itself. (Newcomer / Eric Newcomer)
• • •The New Yorker / Joshua RothmanWhatâs happening to reading? →“Some theorists have even proposed that weâre returning to a kind of oral culture â what the historian Walter Ong described as a ‘secondary orality,’ in which gab and give-and-take are enhanced by the presence of text. The ascendance of podcasts, newsletters, and memes has lent credence to this view. The Joe Rogan Experience could be understood as a couple of guys around a campfire, passing on knowledge through conversation, like the ancient Greeks.”
The New York Times / Joon LeeHow the NBA and MLB shattered Americaâs sports culture →“As access shatters, rituals vanish, as do the moments that make sports communal â a bar full of strangers cheering for the same team, the generational ties passed down through the seasons. Those experiences fade under a system that dictates that the more you can pay, the more you can see â until the game disappears behind another paywall.”
Politico / Ben JohansenThe U.S. Agency for Global Media scrambles to bring back Voice of Americaâs Persian service amid Iran-Israel conflict →USAGM “told employees placed on administrative leave to immediately return to their roles providing counter-programming to Iranian state media as the conflict between the two nations escalated Friday, according to an email seen by Politico and three people familiar with the situation.”
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