News publishers in the spotlight as another Google monopoly trial begins | “While Google is the target of the trial, the proceedings are also expected to shed some light on how businesses such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal actually make their money these days, and how they depend on arcane marketplaces run by internet giants to do so. [Justice Department attorney Julia Tarver Wood] said prosecutors intend to call executives from companies including USA Today, Journal parent company News Corp. and the Daily Mail to testify in the coming weeks.”

OffBall launches as new sports culture brand | “The new outlet’s homepage directs users to posts on X and Instagram and to other websites, rather than its own pages — which its founders see as an alternative to ubiquitous, low-quality aggregation.”

The Washington Post is giving its homepage a facelift as it seeks a turnaround | “Reporters and editors at the news organization have long grumbled about the drab and dated nature of the Post’s digital front door. Among the frustrations: The homepage featured relatively few stories at any given time and lacked a sense of cohesion.”

Is the press “sanewashing” Trump? | “It’s worth noting that the sanewashing phenomenon figures into a debate that is almost as old as Trump’s political career itself, and legitimately thorny: whether to expose news consumers more to his rhetoric, or shut it out.”

“If journalism is going up in smoke, I might as well get high off the fumes”: Confessions of a chatbot trainer | “Before they ever risk leading to a godlike superintelligence or devastating mass unemployment, they first need training. Instead of using these grandiloquent chatbots to automate us out of our livelihoods, tech companies are contracting us to help train their models.”

It’s time to talk about effective funding practices in local news | “Prioritize small, independent, public service, nonprofit newsrooms. Those newsrooms have to be accountable in more ways than a for-profit newsroom does, because their mission is usually more aligned with the community they represent. They also have limited access to revenue streams available to for-profits, especially if they want to remain independent.”

The power of a single word about media malfeasance | “Trump has become more incoherent as he has aged, but you wouldn’t know it from most of the press coverage, which treats his utterances as essentially logical policy statements — a ‘sweeping vision,’ even.”

Russia vows to restrict U.S. media in response to RT row | “A symmetrical response is not possible. There is no state news agency in the U.S., and there is no state TV channel in the U.S.,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RIA Novosti news agency. “But there will certainly be measures here that will restrict their media disseminating their information.”

Racism, misogyny, lies: how did X become so full of hatred? | “Is it moral to remain on a platform that does so much to bring the politics of division and hatred off the keyboard and into real life? Is X any worse than Facebook, or TikTok, or (for God’s sake!) YouTube? And is it worse on purpose, which is to say, are we watching the unfolding of a Musk master plan?”

A mysterious influencer network has been pushing sexual smears of Kamala Harris | “The network that would push the sexual smears began with more run-of-the-mill Republican talking points, but it was unusual in one way, a person who participated in its video calls said: None of the participants identified themselves by name, and all joined calls with their cameras off to preserve their mutual anonymity. However, Semafor was able to identify one of them: former New York Republican Rep. George Santos, who spoke up on one conference call to object when the parties discussed making sexual allegations against Harris.”