The New York Times / Sheera Frenkel and Stuart A. Thompson
“Not for machines to harvest”: Data revolts are breaking out against AI →“Their protests have taken different forms. Writers and artists are locking their files to protect their work or are boycotting certain websites that publish A.I.-generated content, while companies like Reddit want to charge for access to their data. At least 10 lawsuits have been filed this year against A.I. companies, accusing them of training their systems on artists’ creative work without consent.”
Reuters / Jahnavi Nidumolu and Krystal Hu
In March, Elon Musk said Twitter might be cash-flow positive by June. (Nope.) →“This is the latest sign that the aggressive cost-cutting measures since Musk acquired Twitter in October alone are not enough to get Twitter to cash flow positive, and suggests Twitter’s ad revenue may have not recovered as fast as Musk suggested in an interview in April with the BBC that most advertisers had returned to the site.”
Vanity Fair / Charlotte Klein
Politico Europe / Clothilde Goujard
Press Gazette / Clara Aberneithie
Does VR still have potential for publishers? →“…in 2016, there was a widespread assumption that VR headsets would become a common household item by around 2022. That same year also saw the Guardian found a VR team, and the BBC experimented with VR through projects such as ‘We Wait’, which transported viewers to ‘experience’ the lives of a Syrian refugee family crossing the sea. Since then, the BBC’s VR hub has closed.”
Press Gazette / William Turvill
The Guardian / Vanessa Thorpe and Jon Ungoed-Thomas
The Sun’s splash, Huw Edwards, and the drama that gripped Britain and shook the BBC →“The public debate has focused on who to blame. Some are upset that a vulnerable young victim may have been exploited, as their mother alleges. Others put all the trouble caused at the door of the Sun. How did such a personally invasive story reach the threshold required for publication, they ask. Others point to the toxicity of social media. And journalists inside and outside the BBC are questioning its handling of the crisis and the news story itself.”
The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin, Brooks Barnes, and Nicole Sperling
Labor Day looms as a crisis point in Hollywood’s stalemate with unions →“… Hollywood’s content factories could sit idle for little more than a month — roughly until Labor Day — until there would be a serious impact on the release calendar for 2024, particularly for movies. A work stoppage that stretches into September could force studios to delay big projects for next year by six months, making 2024 resemble the ghost town of recent memory set off by the Covid-19 pandemic.”
The Washington Post / Taylor Lorenz
The Guardian / Natashya Gutierrez
Student journalists in Indonesia face backlash after reporting on sexual harassment →“In March last year, the student magazine Lintas — of which [Yolanda] Agne was then editor-in-chief — published a damning piece on the prevalence of sexual harassment on her campus at Ambon Islamic State Institute…[Officials] ordered the closure of Lintas, reported nine student journalists to the police for defamation and later suspended Agne and two of her colleagues.”
The Wall Street Journal / Keach Hagey and Alexa Corse
Tucker Carlson is creating a new media company →“The new company would be anchored by longer versions of the free videos that Carlson has been posting regularly on Twitter since shortly after his departure from Fox News, but would ultimately be driven by subscriptions, some of the people said. Carlson and Patel are looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the company, the people said.”
The New York Times / Penelope Green
Sally Kempton, rising star journalist turned swami, dies at 80 →“Four years after the Esquire piece was published, Ms. Kempton essentially vanished, to follow an Indian mystic named Swami Muktananda, otherwise known as Baba, a proponent of a spiritual practice known as Siddha Yoga. Baba was touring America in the 1970s and accruing devotees from the chattering classes by the hundreds and then the thousands — including, at one point, seemingly half of Hollywood.”
Bloomberg / Thomas Buckley and Lucas Shaw
Bob Iger’s Disney shifts from building an empire to a yard sale →“Iger put roughly a third of the company up for sale this week, declaring Disney’s linear TV assets noncore. That includes TV networks ABC, FX and Freeform. He also said Disney is looking for a strategic partner for ESPN — though he’s not willing to sell the whole thing — and the company is already looking to sell or restructure its TV and streaming business in India.”