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“Lightning in a bottle”: Meredith Clark on Black Twitter’s journalistic impact, legacy — and writing its “obituary”
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The (nearly) full list of Good Daily’s AI-generated local newsletters
Nieman Lab’s public database of the AI newsletter network operating in over 300 towns and cities across the U.S.
By Andrew Deck
“Lightning in a bottle”: Meredith Clark on Black Twitter’s journalistic impact, legacy — and writing its “obituary”
“No matter what the technology is, we’re going to be using it.”
By Hanaa' Tameez
Less is more, and discounts work: A new study looks at the minutiae of paywall strategy
“Reducing the information density of teaser elements on paywalled articles and offering discounts may help newspapers increase their online subscriber numbers.”
By Sophie Culpepper
How DeepSeek stacks up when citing news publishers
The DeepSeek hype cycle is in full force, but can the chatbot attribute sources more accurately than its competitors?
By Andrew Deck
The Trump war on the news media takes an absurd turn
Now even a paid subscription is tantamount to bribery for some.
By Joshua Benton
How ProPublica reported on homeless encampment sweeps in 11 cities
Homelessness is at a record high, and there are many investigative stories to tell. ProPublica compiled some of the tips and lessons its reporters learned.
By Asia Fields
Meet the first-ever policy and advocacy director at LION Publishers
“If policy is being crafted that impacts our members, I think it’s important that we are making efforts to help shape it to their benefit. The sausage-making is going to happen whether we choose to be a part of it or not.”
By Sophie Culpepper and Sarah Scire
A new outlet covers climate policy in the language Brazil knows best: Soccer.
With quippy headlines, a “betting” portal, a tournament bracket, and more, Central da COP is pulling out all the stops to inform Brazilians ahead of the next U.N. Climate Change Conference.
By Hanaa' Tameez
The BBC asked marginalized groups how it could do better. They didn’t hold back.
“They’re going to the shop for sense-making, I think. And there’s nothing on the shelf.”
By Neel Dhanesha
How El Tímpano is changing its reporting practices to protect immigrant sources
“We were trying to think, how do we balance these two things? How do we keep these people safe and tell their stories at the same time?”
By Sophie Culpepper
An independent journalist doubled paid subscriptions after scooping everyone on the federal funding freeze
Marisa Kabas has published The Handbasket since 2022. “The jump has been staggering.”
By Sarah Scire
What will a conservative National Labor Relations Board mean for news unions?
“If you want something out of your crappy news company, you’re going to have to go fight for it yourself out on the picket line.”
By Hanaa' Tameez
News for young people by young people: How this new Spanish outlet aims to reach an elusive audience
“People are tired of the political news cycle in Spain. It’s non-stop. It’s four big things a day. It’s crazy. And that’s something that doesn’t benefit news consumption. People are overwhelmed.”
By Marina Adami
How young Kenyans turned to news influencers when protesters stormed the country’s parliament
A recent study shows the country’s news ecosystem is shifting towards alternative sources. This trend might shape journalism in the years to come.
By Maurice Oniang'o
Are you being tailed? Tips for reporters concerned about physical surveillance
“As a profession, you’d hope reporters would be good at reading people, situations, scenarios. So how many do you think spotted the spotters? None.”
By Laura Dixon
“Lightning in a bottle”: Meredith Clark on Black Twitter’s journalistic impact, legacy — and writing its “obituary”
“No matter what the technology is, we’re going to be using it.”
By Hanaa' Tameez
Less is more, and discounts work: A new study looks at the minutiae of paywall strategy
“Reducing the information density of teaser elements on paywalled articles and offering discounts may help newspapers increase their online subscriber numbers.”
How DeepSeek stacks up when citing news publishers
The DeepSeek hype cycle is in full force, but can the chatbot attribute sources more accurately than its competitors?
What We’re Reading
Ars Technica / Benj Edwards
Who needs TikTok when there’s WikiTok
“It’s a neat way to stumble upon interesting information randomly, learn new things, and spend spare moments of boredom without reaching for an algorithmically addictive social media app. Although to be fair, WikiTok is addictive in its own way, but without an invasive algorithm tracking you and pushing you toward the lowest-common-denominator content. It’s also thrilling because you never know what’s going to pop up next.”
Anthropic
Anthropic’s data says AI is primarily used for coding
“The tasks and occupations with by far the largest adoption of AI in our dataset were those in the ‘computer and mathematical’ category…The second largest category was “arts, design, sports, entertainment, and media” (10.3% of queries), which mainly reflected people using Claude for various kinds of writing and editing. Unsurprisingly, occupations involving a high degree of physical labor, such as those in the ‘farming, fishing, and forestry’ category (0.1% of queries), were least represented.”
Bloomberg / Alice Robb
How much should authors get paid to license their books for AI?
“‘HarperCollins request re. AI — time sensitive,’ read the subject line. My publisher, I learned, had negotiated a licensing agreement with Microsoft Corp., which wanted to train its AI models on a selection of HarperCollins’s backlist — including my 2018 nonfiction book Why We Dream. Microsoft was offering HarperCollins $5,000 per title; HarperCollins would pass on half of that fee to consenting authors.”
Semafor / Ben Smith
Trump chaos is helping The Washington Post regain some ground
“The week of Jan. 27 saw the organization’s biggest audience since the election…That included 15 million unique visitors on the Post’s platforms, as well as 76.9 million uniques off-platform (largely Apple News)…A story following the response to the sudden funding freeze was the Post’s biggest hit since August 2022.”
The Wall Street Journal / Isabella Simonetti and Natalie Andrews
“We’ve already won”: Podcasters and influencers gain new standing in Trump’s White House
“Meanwhile, the Department of Defense recently announced an even bigger reshuffling, removing dedicated Pentagon office space for the New York Times, NBC News, NPR and Politico. They will be replaced by the New York Post, One America News Network, Breitbart News Network and HuffPost News, as part of an annual rotation.”
On the Media / Micah Loewinger and Brooke Gladstone
How Wired is scooping the competition
“Wired is fundamentally a tech publication. These are people we have been covering for many years. We understand how they like to run their companies, what they value. We have been listening to their thoughts about government, about regulation for years and years and years. Now they are in a position to make the world run that way. Because we have done that work, we’re able to see, in the words of Wayne Gretzky, where the puck is moving next.” — Wired reporter Vittoria Elliott
The New Yorker / Jill Lepore
The editorial battles that made The New Yorker
“Most editors remain unsung. To be unknown is, ordinarily, to be underestimated…Editing, though, is a dying art. And it’s this decline that justifies breaking Harold Wallace Ross’s rule about never writing about writers and never naming editors…in an age of tweets and TikToks and Substack posts and chatty podcasts, a vanishingly small percentage of the crushingly vast amount that is published on any given day has been edited, by anyone. A whole lot of people are wandering around in hospital gowns with their butts out, patootie to the wind.”
The New York Times / John Koblin
Who’s watching what on TV? Who’s to say?
“People now watch so many programs at so many different times in so many different ways — with an antenna, on cable, in an app or from a website, as well as live, recorded or on-demand — that it is increasingly challenging for the industry to agree on the best way to measure viewership. In some cases, media executives and advertisers are even uncertain whether a competitor’s show is a hit, or something well short of that.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Jon Allsop
Covering the “Mad King”
“The press might lack the power even of the courts, but we are still a check on government, even if only through our choice of words and the stories we decide to prioritize, and we can and should be clear-eyed and open-minded about what Trump might actually be able to achieve without rhetorically imbuing him with powers he doesn’t actually have.”
404 Media / Emanuel Maiberg
Microsoft study finds AI makes human cognition “atrophied and unprepared”
“‘The data shows a shift in cognitive effort as knowledge workers increasingly move from task execution to oversight when using GenAI,’ the researchers wrote. ‘Surprisingly, while AI can improve efficiency, it may also reduce critical engagement, particularly in routine or lower-stakes tasks in which users simply rely on AI, raising concerns about long-term reliance and diminished independent problem-solving.'”
Nieman Lab is a project to try to help figure out where the news is headed in the Internet age. Sign up for The Digest, our daily email with all the freshest future-of-journalism news.