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The Weekly Wrap: June 14, 2024
What’s in a deal with OpenAI? Business Insider’s union wants to find out
“We are…deeply worried that despite this partnership, OpenAI may be downplaying rather than elevating our works,” Business Insider’s union wrote in a letter to management this week. They’re calling on BI to share the details of parent company Axel Springer’s multi-million-dollar deal with OpenAI, Andrew reported for us this week.
When BI staffers tried to get ChatGPT to link to their scoops, it usually couldn’t. Andrew was able to replicate many of their queries and found that ChatGPT also hallucinated fake links to BI stories: “When prompted to name the outlet that broke the Dave Portnoy investigation, ChatGPT correctly identified Insider but hallucinated an incorrect URL. It used a seemingly fabricated slug: ‘barstool-sports-dave-portnoy-sexual-misconduct-allegations-report-2021-11,’ instead of one for the many stories on businessinsider.com that covered the allegations.”
OpenAI told us that the type of citation promised in its licensing deals is…uh, coming, but not live yet. It’s “an enhanced experience still in development and not yet available in ChatGPT,” a company spokesperson said. The company wouldn’t say when the features will be available.
— Laura Hazard Owen
From the week
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Business Insider’s owner signed a huge OpenAI deal. ChatGPT still won’t credit the site’s biggest scoops“We are…deeply worried that despite this partnership, OpenAI may be downplaying rather than elevating our works,” Business Insider’s union wrote in a letter to management. By Andrew Deck. |
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How Newslaundry worked with its users to make its journalism more accessible“If you’re doing it, do it properly. Don’t just add a few widgets, or overlay products and embeds, and call yourself accessible.” By Hanaa' Tameez. |
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How YouTube’s recommendations pull you away from newsPlus: News participation is declining, online and offline; making personal phone calls could help with digital-subscriber churn; and partly automated news videos seem to work with audiences. By Mark Coddington and Seth Lewis. |
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Apple brings free call recording and transcription to iPhones; journalists rejoice“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” By Joshua Benton. |
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What can The Wall Street Journal’s new ad campaign tell us about its future?The new brand campaign is aimed at younger versions of existing Journal readers. The various “It’s Your Business” ads center some of the newsroom’s edgier and more evergreen journalism. By Sarah Scire. |
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“Neither feast nor famine”: In 2023, nonprofit news continued to grow — but the audience picture is more complicatedWhile the sector is still growing, that growth is slowing, by some metrics. And audience data for 2023 shows that across all outlets surveyed, average monthly web traffic fell. By Sophie Culpepper. |
Highlights from elsewhere
Platformer / Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer
The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled →
“House Republicans attacked the lab’s reports on misinformation and election integrity — and now Stanford is pulling the plug.”
Nieman Reports / Megan Cattel
The BBC’s Lifeline program delivers vital information in Gaza →
“I want this project to continue for as long as possible because the ongoing situation in Gaza will not end soon. Even though the war will stop or end, the humanitarian situation in Gaza will be dire for a very long time. [In January] the program was extended for another three months. The program has been extended for the third time, for three more months.”
Press Gazette / Dominic Ponsford
“Devastating” investigation reveals widespread rollout of AI Overviews on news-related Google queries →
“A Press Gazette-led investigation has found that AI-written summaries were returned for nearly a quarter of news-related search queries in mid-May in the US, with the result that organic links to publisher articles were pushed far down the page.”
WIRED / Boone Ashworth
Artifact’s DNA lives on in Yahoo’s revamped AI-powered news app →
“In the new app, users will see a prompt in some stories to generate ‘Key Takeaways.’ After tapping the prompt, users will see a quick summary load after a second or two of computation. The AI summaries appear in the desktop version of Yahoo News too, but only for a small subset of users who are selected and then choose to opt in.”
Puck / Dylan Byers
CNN has struck a deal with the Associated Press →
CNN will use AP’s copy for digital stories for the first time since CNN canceled its contract with the AP in 2010 to focus more on original reporting. “The deal would appear to portend further staff cuts, and that’s certainly how some CNN insiders are reading it.”
NPR / Meg Anderson
This prison newspaper has been publishing for more than a century →
“The Prison Mirror is one of the oldest prison newspapers in the country, running since 1887. Publications like this aren’t common, but in an era where many journalism outlets in the free world are struggling to thrive amid scores of layoffs, journalism behind bars is actually growing.”
Pew Research Center / Elisa Shearer, Sarah Naseer, Jacob Liedke, and Katerina Eva Matsa
How Americans get news on TikTok, X, Facebook, and Instagram →
“Majorities of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok users say keeping up with news is not a reason they use the sites. X (formerly Twitter) is the exception to this pattern: Most X users say that keeping up with news is either a major or minor reason they use the platform, and about half say they regularly get news there.”
404 Media / Jason Koebler
Elon Musk tweeted a thing →
“Writing an article about a thing that Elon Musk said about a PR event that most tech websites were already live blogging alongside mass social media attention means that a large portion of the remaining human beings doing journalism have been in effect doing free PR for the richest man in the world and the richest company in the world.”
Boston Globe / Aidan Ryan
At least nine GBH executives had salaries of over $300,000 last year. Reeling from layoffs, employees have questions. →
“To meet its budget goals, GBH laid off 4 percent of its workforce and suspended three television programs it said had low viewership, terminating six workers on those shows. Many had salaries ranging from $50,000 to $65,000, according to interviews with current and former employees.”
Mississippi Today / Adam Ganucheau
Mississippi Today: “A judge ordered us to turn over privileged documents. We’re appealing to the Mississippi Supreme Court.” →
“With our appeal, the stakes are incredibly high: The Supreme Court could guarantee these critical rights for the first time in our state’s history, or it could establish a dangerous precedent for Mississippi journalists and the public at large by tossing aside an essential First Amendment protection.”
