We keep an eye out for the most interesting stories about Labby subjects: digital media, startups, the web, journalism, strategy, and more. Here’s some of what we’ve seen lately.
April 11, 2024
NPR’s editor-in-chief Edith Chapin reportedly said she didn’t want to make senior business editor Uri Berliner a “martyr.” —LO
New York Times / Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson
/ Apr 11“One of the big mistakes a lot of media companies made over the last 15 years was worrying too much about how do we get paid by other platforms that are eating our lunch as opposed to figuring out how do we eat people’s lunch by having a superior product.” —
New York Times / Katie Robertson
/ Apr 11April 10, 2024
“An internal ‘traffic sheet’ obtained from a source with access to the numbers shows 55 million monthly web visits in February 2024, the paper’s lowest in several years. By comparison, the number of Post web visitors is below the New York Times (82 million), USA Today (63 million), and Forbes (60 million).” —SS
Washington City Paper / Vince Morris
/ Apr 10The “Digital Democracy” database tracks every word uttered in public hearings, every dollar given to a politician, every bill introduced, and every vote taken. A smart AI tool searches the data and generates news tips for journalists. —
CalMatters / Sonya Quick
/ Apr 10“What concerns me is that not everyone wants there to be more creators, some want the creators to be automated away…I think this technology can be incredibly beneficial to society, but if it’s not harnessed correctly, if it’s not managed correctly, it could be quite detrimental.” —
The Hollywood Reporter / Scott Roxborough
/ Apr 10“Although the environment of press freedom has flourished significantly in Brazil since the end of the military dictatorship in the mid-1980s, journalists still face many setbacks when their work goes against the interests of the judiciary. It is not uncommon for judges at all levels to censor reports or take legal action against journalists.” —
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Murillo Camarotto
/ Apr 10“Given Berliner’s account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication.”
Here is NPR’s memo to staff.
—LONPR / David Folkenflik
/ Apr 10“Vox Media, which owns SB Nation, had a series of layoffs and cutbacks last year that involved shuttering various sites and podcasts. The podcasts that survived those cuts were the ones that ended Thursday.” (Last year, The Athletic also
cut most of its local sports podcasts.)
—SSAwful Announcing / Sean Keeley
/ Apr 10April 9, 2024
“Under siege, OpenAI is turning to some of the world’s top legal and political human minds. It has hired about two dozen in-house lawyers since March 2023 to work on issues including copyright, according to a Washington Post analysis of LinkedIn. The company has posted a job for an antitrust lawyer with a salary of up to $300,000.” —ND
The Washington Post / Cat Zakrzewski, Nitasha Tiku and Elizabeth Dwoskin
/ Apr 9Anastasia Nyrkovskaya, who was previously Fortune’s chief financial officer and chief strategy officer, is the first woman to run the company since it was launched in 1929. —ND
The New York Times / Katie Robertson
/ Apr 9
