Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

What is news, anyway? Readers’ answers depend on how much they see people like themselves in the story

“The disconnect many young people feel may come from a lack of representation, which we show violates a fundamental aspect of how audiences — teens and adults — define what is news.” By Joshua Benton.
What We’re Reading
The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin
New York Public Radio to cut 12% of workforce →
“New York Public Radio is also planning to eliminate a majority of open positions.”
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Gretel Kahn
How the BBC fact-checks celebrity deaths (and other prominent news stories) →
“Most people don’t realise or understand that it is in [BBC News’] guidelines that we need two sources on a story. That is because you need a verification of what you’ve heard is true. A death wouldn’t be reportable purely based on something that was posted on Instagram.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Jon Allsop
Back to the future in Slovakia →
“I hope that another journalist will not have to die for people to realize that they might lose democracy in democratic elections.”
TechCrunch / Ivan Mehta
Google is killing Gmail’s basic HTML view in 2024 →
“The HTML version lacks a lot of features such as chat, spell checker, search filters, keyboard shortcuts, and rich formatting. But it is useful in situations where you are in a low-connectivity area or want to just look at emails without any extra bells and whistles. It’s not clear if Google plans to add a mode for low connectivity.”
Vanity Fair / Joe Pompeo
What Adam Nagourney learned mining the Times →
“I always thought there was a need to do another book on the Times. There were two major ones, but it’s been a long time, and I think the paper has gone through a major change, both in how it’s viewed in society and how it has succeeded and not succeeded. There was just a lot to write about. I decided this is something I wanted to do, and I spent seven years doing it.”
The Boston Globe / Hiawatha Bray
In Arlington, an AI news site takes root →
“Inside Arlington’s stories are little more than a compressed litany of facts, unseasoned by insightful analysis, historical context, or a trace of wit. In short, the site makes for deadly, dull reading. Still, it provides Arlington residents with useful information about city government — information that’s otherwise quite hard to come by.”
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times launches Climate California, a new section covering the impact of climate change on the state →
“Climate California will include coverage from our newly formed Environment, Health and Science department, which includes existing Environment, Science and Health reporters and several new contributors.”
Poynter / Tom Jones
The Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce story is a fascinating study of media consumption →
“…our nation’s two most powerful entertainment forces collided.”
The Present Age / Parker Molloy
Newspaper columnists owe readers better than trolling →
“In a just world, publishing such confidently incorrect pieces in an actual newspaper would result in the author’s career in opinion journalism coming to an end soon after. This is not a just world.”
TechCrunch / Natasha Lomas
X (Twitter) is worst for disinformation, according to a new EU analysis →
“X (formerly Twitter) has been called out in the European Union for having the worst ratio of disinformation/misinformation to posts not spreading falsehoods among mainstream social networks.”
Pew Research Center / Sara Atske
What do Black Americans think about news coverage of Black people? →
“Half say coverage is often missing important information, while only 9% say it often reports the full story.”
Reuters / Blake Brittain
Reuters AI copyright dispute must go to trial, judge says →
“The decision by U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas sets the stage for what could be one of the first trials related to the unauthorized use of data to train AI systems.”
TechCrunch / Sarah Perez
Google Podcasts will shut down in 2024 →
It’s part of “a broader transition to move its streaming listeners over to YouTube Music. The company earlier this year announced YouTube Music would begin supporting podcasts in the U.S., which will expand globally by year-end, and more recently said it was adding the ability for podcasters to upload their RSS feeds to YouTube also by year-end.”
Gizmodo / Mack DeGeurin
Meta’s Canadian news blackout is crushing student publications and nonprofit community outlets →
“Our goal is to provide educational opportunity and share community information by attending community events,” [Luke Smith, the station manager of the University of Toronto’s CIUT-FM] said. “Commercial radio talks to the public, the CBC talks for the public, but community radio talks from the public.”