Hey, local news publishers: Give the people a calendar
▪ “It shouldn’t be that difficult to keep an updated list of when and where and what the meetings are.”
Negative words in news headlines generate more clicks — but sad words are more effective than angry or scary ones
▪ A massive study of Upworthy headlines — remember Upworthy? — shows how a few emotionally charged words can mean the difference between viral and ignored.
Amazon calls it quits on newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
▪ One Redditor: “I actually enjoy reading my local newspaper when it’s on the Kindle as opposed to the paper’s poorly designed website and frequently broken app.”
The Gary Lineker tweet scandal shows how the BBC has struggled to adapt to the social media age
▪ Can “impartiality” be required from all actors, musicians, scientists, or sport pundits appearing on the BBC without thwarting the principle of free speech?
Journalists should be looking for undocumented APIs. Here’s how to start.
▪ “Especially in circumstances when data is not accessible otherwise, finding an undocumented API can be the key to allowing us to do an investigation — by finding public access to the data.”
The Prison Newspaper Directory finds that the number of prison-based papers is growing
▪ There are at least 24 known prison newspapers in 12 states, and four of them were launched in 2022.
Don’t trust “the news media”? That may be a good thing
▪ The pervasive amount of news media criticism in the U.S. has intensified the erosion of trust in American journalism, but such discussion can be seen as a sign of democratic health.
Punches have been thrown in the first U.S. newspaper strike in two decades
▪ No matter who you see as at fault, it’s evidence of the bad blood keeping this labor action going for 150 days.
How Bellingcat gets 15,000 people on Discord to talk about investigative journalism
▪ “I picture a Discord server like a room full of chairs and people sitting and talking to each other, while posting on Twitter is like putting up a banner at a corner of a street.”
The scale of local news destruction in Gannett’s markets is astonishing
▪ It might not be as mustache-twirling a villain as Alden Global Capital, but its enormous scale has meant enormous losses for local journalism.
Pew’s Stateline finds a new home with nonprofit States Newsroom
▪ “Many nonprofits that pop up are [focused on] long-term investigative reporting … but we need the daily hard-hitting coverage to complement that.”
In Sacramento, local outlets join forces to report on solutions to the city’s tricky problems
▪ Since launching in June 2022, Solving Sacramento has published more than 80 stories on affordable housing and homelessness that are free to all the outlets in the collective to republish.
Social media policies are failing journalists
▪ Plus: The trouble with journalists’ involvement in news literacy programs, soft news as a gateway to propaganda, and social media editors between news and marketing.
Wired tells readers what it will use generative AI for — and what’s off-limits
▪ “I don’t want to close off experimentation, and we know these tools will evolve.”
Apple News too corporate for you? Try this app
▪ OptOut aims to be a daily news app “100% free from corporate media narratives.”
Those meddling kids! The Reverse Scooby-Doo theory of tech innovation comes with the excuses baked in
▪ “The largest, most profitable, most powerful companies in the world ought to be judged based on how they are impacting the present, not based on their pitch decks for what the future might someday look like.”
How will journalists use ChatGPT? Clues from a newsroom that’s been using AI for years
▪ If we stay on the current trajectory, it’s utterly plausible that AI language tools will begin to blend into our daily workflows, similar to how Google and Google Translate have.
Is there a future for video games journalism?
▪ The world’s power brokers are investing desperately in the games industry, but games media is another story entirely.
Meet the first-ever artificial intelligence editor at the Financial Times
▪ “I want to make AI more understandable and accessible to our readers, so it doesn’t feel like magic but merely a tool that they can wield.”
After a decade of tracking politicians’ deleted tweets, Politwoops is no more
▪ “That’s one of the things I’ll miss most about running Politwoops: getting a glimpse behind the carefully crafted images that politicians present to the public.”