Wednesday, March 20, 2024 |
| Raw Story, AlterNet, and The Intercept are among the first smaller publications to go up against the AI goliath for copyright violations. By Andrew Deck. |
What We’re ReadingTheWrap / Sharon Knolle
Los Angeles Times to expand El Segundo campus after historic layoffs →“‘Construction of the final piece of the Los Angeles Times El Segundo campus has begun,’ staffers were notified via an internal email on Tuesday. ‘Once completed, the new building, in between the offices and parking structure, will house the mailroom, dedicated space to preserve The Times archives and a gallery designed to host exhibits and events for the public.’ Quipped a staffer who forwarded the memo to TheWrap: ‘I could have sworn we were broke.'”The Boston Globe / Aidan Ryan
How blogger Aidan Kearney – a.k.a. “Turtleboy” – turned the Karen Read case into a true crime spectacle →“‘I’m an entertainer, but I’m also a journalist, and I’m also an activist,’ Kearney said. ‘People like this new, whatever thing I’ve created, where you wear all three of these hats.’ But
prosecutors allege that Kearney and his fans are disrupting a live investigation where neither the victim, nor the defendant, have yet had a shot at justice. The chaos he and his followers have caused have sparked debate over how the public’s obsession with true crime in an era of rampant online misinformation can complicate the criminal justice system. ‘If you had to design a case that would demonstrate the problem with social media and true crime, you couldn’t have invented a case that’s better than this one,’ said David Schmid, an associate professor at the University of Buffalo in New York who researches true crime in American pop culture.”TechCrunch / Natasha Lomas and Romain Dillet
Google hit with $270M fine in France as authority finds news publishers’ data was used for Gemini →“According to the competition watchdog, Google disregarded some of its previous commitments with news publishers. But the decision is especially notable because it drops something else that’s bang up-to-date — by latching onto Google’s use of news publishers’ content to train its generative AI model
Bard/Gemini.”The Verge / Emma Roth
Meta just showed off Threads’ fediverse integration for the very first time →“The integration will let users share their posts across different platforms through Threads, letting them reach multiple audiences at once. Meta is just one of the many platforms
aiming to join the fediverse, a group of decentralized social networks aiming to become interoperable with one another.”Digiday / Kayleigh Barber
How Fortune is expanding its European footprint →“The company is rolling out new content specifically covering the region; increasing its print distribution to cities including London, Paris, Zurich and Milan with unique covers for Europe; and is adding more lists and event franchises.”WIRED / David Gilbert
X blocked journalists and researchers who identified a neo-Nazi cartoonist →“A lengthy X thread posted by the antifascist research group Anonymous Comrades Collective last week claimed that Stonetoss is a man named
Hans Kristian Graebener from Spring, Texas.
Stonetoss cartoons, which feature simple and colorful imagery coupled with racist, homophobic, and antisemitic language, have become hugely popular among right-wing communities since they were first published at least seven years ago.”The Atlantic / Anne Applebaum
There was no Russian election →“Some Western media nevertheless covered this orchestrated drama as if it really were an election. Reporters interviewed voters, cited ‘exit polls,’ even commented on the ‘results,’ as if these things mean anything in a country whose leadership lies openly about everything: economic statistics, war casualties, Russian history. Reuters ran a
headline declaring Putin had won ‘in a landslide.'”Semafor / David Weigel
The viral “bloodbath” clip and the rise of the liberal video influencer →“Millions of people pay attention to the Florida-based Filipkowski, the Minnesota-based Rupar, and the anonymous
Acyn, a video editor in Los Angeles who works under Filipkowski at the activist liberal news site
MeidasTouch. They have a combined 2.3 million followers on X, formerly Twitter, though only Filipkowski pays for a blue check. And their editorial judgments have immense influence on campaign coverage and the political discourse.”The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson
Gannett and McClatchy cut back relationship with A.P. →“The A.P. once relied primarily on licensing fees from newspapers but now has a variety of other revenue streams, including a news website, an e-commerce site, and software and production services. According to
an article on its website, fees from U.S. newspapers account for roughly 10 percent of The A.P.’s income.”Platformer / Casey Newton
Reddit goes public →“For Reddit…going public feels less like a new beginning for the company than a lifetime achievement award.”Columbia Journalism Review / Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen
Unpacking Gan Jing World →“A ‘wholesome’ video platform linked to a Chinese spiritual movement and right-wing newspapers looks a lot like YouTube.”Boston.com / Molly Farrar
Six Gannett papers in Massachusetts are closing their newsrooms and going remote-only →“Gannett still pays for physical newsrooms for their biggest daily papers in Massachusetts, the Cape Cod Times and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. They said in a statement that two other daily papers still have access to an office: The Gardner News and The New Bedford Standard-Times…That leaves the Milford Daily News, MetroWest Daily News, The Brockton Enterprise, The Fall River Herald News, and the Taunton Daily Gazette working without newsrooms, along with the The Patriot Ledger.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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