We keep an eye out for the most interesting stories about Labby subjects: digital media, startups, the web, journalism, strategy, and more.
“I don’t know how a book becomes The Book, but I do know that when it does, everybody’s ready to talk about it. Everybody’s ready to get on the train,” Maris Kreizman says. “So it’s really not about discovery anymore. It’s about, ‘What’s the book that people are talking about and should we then cover it?’” —SS
“I don’t take lightly what it means to suggest that a professional writer’s work could be AI generated,” [The Atlantic’s Vauhini Vara] said. “But the incursion of corporate AI into cultural and artistic production is a matter of enormous public interest, and the Caine Prize is one of the most high-profile and prestigious literary prizes in the world. If Pangram interprets a prizewinning story as almost 100 percent AI — and all previous 25 winners of the prize as 100 percent human — it is in the public interest to raise the possibility that the Pangram analysis is correct.” —SS
It’s now in 89 countries in total. —LO
“The Catch Up was launched in 2022 and was pitched as an attempt to ‘bring back’ 16- to 24-year-old viewers to traditional news bulletins. Its debut coincided with BBC Three being restored to linear TV, a decision that was reversed on Tuesday.” —LO
“The filing followed prolonged negotiations as the company wrestled with a high debt load and a shift of customers using AI-generated images instead of stock photos.” —LO
Previously. —LO
“With dynamic ad insertion, podcasters will be able to run campaigns with their own sponsors and update ads across their back catalog without re-editing episodes…If you’d rather not find sponsors yourself, you’ll soon be able to tap into third-party sponsorship marketplaces to fill the ad breaks you mark in your episodes.” —LO
“Several close to [Trump] believe that moving the news media, most likely to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street, may be the latest escalation in a remarkable series of moves against the news media that have already gone further than most of them expected.” —LO
The average increase in revenue across 170 public radio stations over the past year, as a “surge of ‘rage giving’ spared public broadcasting” from deep cuts. “The question now: Will the surge in support that materialized after the rescission last beyond this year?”
(Maybe not: “An index of new donors maintained by Contributor Development Partnership showed a 16% decline in July, the first such decrease since the rescission. The fundraising partnership said quarterly growth in donations is ‘beginning to normalize’ after the rescission-driven surge.”) (Local News Initiative / Paul Farhi) —LO
The site’s United Arab Emirates–based parent company is withdrawing funding “owing to a strategic realignment during a difficult economic period.” Hyphen launched in 2022. —LO
“Veteran journalists in the state have come to view competing outlets working on the same story as wasteful duplication. ‘There are so many stories in Alaska and so much here that goes uncovered, and there is absolutely no good reason why anyone should be competing at this point,’ said Nathaniel Herz, executive editor of The Anchorage Press, a monthly newspaper. ‘Resources now are such that it really does cry out for better cooperation.'” —LO
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