It’s been another busy week. Recap it with the second edition of the Nieman Lab News-About-News Quiz, your weekly incentive to keep up with the latest happenings in the world of digital journalism. All questions are based on the week’s Nieman Lab stories or articles elsewhere that we’ve linked to in What We’re Reading. The quiz will appear here through November as a trial run; if people seem to like it, we’ll keep it going in 2027. Good luck!
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What journalism organization announced this week that it was canceling its annual conference and laying off most of its staff?
An attendee at the Online News Association's 2004 conference looks at the Associated Press' website on a “wireless OQO ultra personal computer.” (AP/Damian Dovarganes) “Since we gathered in Chicago for ONA26, many of you have asked when we will be together again,” CEO Niketa Patel wrote. “Unfortunately, it will not be in 2027. ONA has decided to pause our in-person events and will not host a conference in 2027.”
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For the first time ever, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has officially called for the impeachment of a U.S. official. Which one?
Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr testifies before a House subcommittee, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP/Jose Luis Magana) “RSF does not take the question of impeachment lightly. In fact, our organization has never before called for the removal of a US official. But the severity and persistence of Carr’s misconduct as FCC chairman demand an extraordinary response. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to hold him accountable. Restoring the FCC’s independence must be central to that effort.”
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Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. (AP/Charles Krupa) Emerson College recently announced a new degree program aimed at helping students build “a career across a rapidly changing media landscape.” What’s the program’s name?
(Emerson College) “Our new Content Creation major prepares students to be a part of the evolving creator economy, teaching them not only how to produce compelling digital content but also how to build a successful entrepreneurial career.”
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What news organization — after a challenging few years — says it is now “within striking distance of break-even,” financially?
A member of The Washington Post Guild holding a newspaper at a rally protesting massive layoffs February 5, 2026. (Mehmet Eser/AP) “I’ll be honest,” executive editor Matt Murphy said at a conference. “We had years of losses, and steepening losses. That’s the truth. We’re a private company and don’t share the figures, but it was hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Now we’re within striking distance of break-even, and I expect next year will be our best year in seven years. We’ve done the right-sizing we needed, which was tough.”
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(High Level Chamber of Commerce) The Echo-Pioneer — the local newspaper in the town of High Level, Alberta (population 4,000) — has an unusual business model. What is it?
Town officials signed a two-year “advertising and readership agreement” in 2025. It’s one of the many ways local Canadian news outlets are trying to stay afloat — most notably the federal Local Journalism Initiative.
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Google's AI Mode. (Matteo Della Torre/AP) Which online publisher’s CEO announced that Google search traffic had “dropped by more than 1 million referrals on average per week” in October?
As a result of the search decline, CEO Steve Huffman announced Reddit would be shifting to a primarily “logged-in experience.”
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The Asia-Pacific outlet The Diplomat retracted an interview with a South Korean CEO last week. Why?
“The author presented themselves as a South Korean freelance journalist and claimed to have interviewed Newtype’s CEO. We now know that the journalist fabricated the interview and may not even be who they claimed to be.”
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The parliament of an Asian nation is debating requiring tech companies like Google and Meta to pay news outlets when they direct users to their stories. Which nation?
The proposed law would also require compensating news publishers when AI models are trained on news content.
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Which international news outlet, sensing a political opening, is expanding its reporting team in the United States?
A man reads Haaretz in Tel Aviv on Dec. 31, 2006. (AP/Ariel Schalit) “Market research indicated there was room to grow among politically liberal Jews in the United States. Gali Arnon, who became the chief executive of Haaretz Group last year, said she wanted the newspaper to become in other countries what it is in Israel: an ‘identity brand.’”
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This photo shows an early editorial plan from one of the first important publications on the World Wide Web, a mononymic website that has recently been in the news. What site was it?
The photo is from Salon co-founder Laura Miller, laying out some early “issues” of the influential web “magazine” which closed last week. “People sometimes tell me about reading Salon avidly in their youth, how it felt like connecting to something exhilarating and cool and a bit crazy in the strange new expanses of the internet. All I can say is: That’s exactly how it felt to work there.”
