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Lessons learned in The Building of Lost Causes
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Lessons learned in The Building of Lost Causes
“The skills we developed while facing down the fossil fuel industry — persistence through trolling campaigns, converting readers one by one, turning an upstart publication into essential reading — these aren’t just about journalism. They’re about how to keep building when everything around you feels like it’s crumbling.”
By Linda Solomon Wood
Publishers find the AI era not all that lucrative
“Welcome, surely. Lucrative, in a sense. Game changer? Hardly.”
By Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Embrace the barbell
“It’s time to abandon middling stories and go very short or very long.”
By Millie Tran
Prediction markets go mainstream
“If all of this sounds like a libertarian fever dream, I hear you. But as these markets rise, legacy media will continue to slide into irrelevance.”
By Taylor Lorenz
The rise of informal news networks
“Once the goal is no longer to recreate news organizations as they existed in the past, but rather to ensure that reliable news and information flows — that there is a place in people’s lives for deliberation and debate — then possibility blossoms.”
By Heather Chaplin
Back to the bundle
“If media companies can’t figure out how to be the bundlers, other layers of the ecosystem — telecoms, devices, social platforms — will.”
By Ben Smith
The longform renaissance
“When journalists take the time to explain these layers, it signals respect for the intelligence and curiosity of their audience.”
By Geetika Rudra
Journalists explain legislative procedure
“If civic-affairs news is the broccoli of American journalism, then coverage of legislative procedure is the unsalted lima bean.”
By Nik Usher
More small and mid-level podcasts hit the stage
“Podcast super listeners are ready to take things to the next relationship level with their favorite shows.”
By Juleyka Lantigua
Data and context makes a comeback
“In the quest to remove friction from our everyday lives, we have designed and adopted digital products that narrow our field of vision and traded exploration for convenience.”
By Robin Kwong
Newsrooms will keep losing their conservative audiences
“It grieves me to predict that even the newsrooms who say they want to serve all Americans won’t do any of this. At best, they will mostly continue to ignore the problem. At worst, some journalists will blame the audience.”
By Jonathan Stray
The 2024 gift guide for journalists
A news board game, a “power” read-it-later app, journalist-curated jewelry, so many books, and more.
By Nieman Lab Staff
The media reckons with AGI
“Rather than treat AGI as a fringe concern, we must be proactive and ambitious: taking the possibility seriously, considering the implications, and starting a public, democratic conversation.”
By Shakeel Hashim
AI companies grapple with what it means to be creators of news
“The media and tech industries, frequently to the dismay of both, are deeply and inextricably intertwined.”
By Maggie Harrison Dupré
AI helps us revisit old journalism territory
“Some pivots, once deemed infeasible, might be worth a second look using new technology.”
By David Cohn
The 2024 gift guide for journalists
A news board game, a “power” read-it-later app, journalist-curated jewelry, so many books, and more.
By Nieman Lab Staff
Dow Jones negotiates AI usage agreements with nearly 4,000 news publishers
Earlier this year, the WSJ owner sued Perplexity for failing to properly license its content. Now its research tool Factiva has negotiated its own AI licensing deals.
There’s now a way for journalists to verify their Bluesky accounts through their employers (while still keeping control of them)
It may be too late for @edwardrmurrow.cbsnews.com, @huntersthompson.rollingstone.com, or @mikewallace.60minutes.com, but today’s reporters have another way to prove who they are on the rapidly growing social network.
What We’re Reading
WIRED / Kate Knibbs
Wired has handy visualizations for every AI copyright lawsuit in the U.S.
There’s a war between content publishers and AI companies unfolding in courts across the country. The outcome could make, break or reshape the information ecosystem.
Heated / Emily Atkin
Climate newsletter Heated changes course
“Our paid subscriber community did not grow in tandem with our free community this year. In fact, we have fewer paying subscribers now than we did at this time last year … That’s why I’ve made the difficult decision to abandon my goal of growing HEATED into a reader-funded newsroom. Instead, I’ll be moving back to a more personal, one-author newsletter in 2025.”
Boston Globe / Aidan Ryan
Can the Union Leader, New Hampshire’s only statewide newspaper, survive?
“New Hampshire knows far less about itself now, and that’s a damn shame.”
The Nation / Adam Johnson and Othman Ali
Survey: Sunday morning news shows promote anti-Palestinian bias
“With the exception of one interview, the Sunday shows covered and debated the so-called ‘Israel-Hamas war’ for 12 months without speaking to a single Palestinian or Palestinian American.” The shows included in the survey include NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, CBS’s Face the Nation, and CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.
The Guardian / Robert Booth
UK arts and media reject plan to let AI firms use copyrighted material
“In a joint statement, bodies representing thousands of creatives dismissed the proposal made by ministers on Tuesday that would allow companies such as Open AI, Google and Meta to train their AI systems on published works unless their owners actively opt out. The Creative Rights in AI Coalition (Crac) includes the British Phonographic Industry, the Independent Society of Musicians, the Motion Picture Association and the Society of Authors as well as Mumsnet, the Guardian, Financial Times, Telegraph, Getty Images, the Daily Mail Group and Newsquest.”
Fortune / Leo Schwartz
Billionaire Justin Sun allegedly pushed CoinDesk’s new owners to remove banana article, editorial chair Matt Murray resigns
“After Sun’s team complained about the tone of the piece, CoinDesk’s owners, the crypto exchange Bullish, demanded editorial staff remove it from the publication’s website, according to sources familiar with the matter. Tron is a major sponsor of CoinDesk’s flagship Consensus conference series. In response, sources close to CoinDesk say the site’s journalists raised concerns over editorial independence.”
The Hollywood Reporter / Winston Cho
Filmmakers sue to end “unconstitutional” permitting rules to shoot in national parks
“In August, Rienzie and Burkesmith were denied a permit to film an attempt to break the record for the fastest time to ascend a mountain in Grand Teton National Park. They filmed anyway from publicly accessible areas of the park using small handheld cameras and minimal equipment but haven’t fully commercialized the content due to National Park Services threatening criminal charges.”
BBC / Ahmed Nour, Joe Tidy and Yara Farag
How Facebook restricted news in Palestinian territories
“Facebook has severely restricted the ability of Palestinian news outlets to reach an audience during the Israel-Gaza war, according to BBC research. In a comprehensive analysis of Facebook data, we found that newsrooms in the Palestinian territories — in Gaza and the West Bank — had suffered a steep drop in audience engagement since October 2023. The BBC has also seen leaked documents showing that Instagram — another Meta-owned platform — increased its moderation of Palestinian user comments after October 2023. Meta, the owner of Facebook, says that any implication that it deliberately suppressed particular voices is ‘unequivocally false.'”
L.A. Taco / Lexis-Olivier Ray
More than 70 people reported feeling ill after eating oysters at the L.A. Times “101 Restaurants” food event
“For this story, L.A. TACO spoke to more than 11 people who attended the reveal party—including one of our staff members—who suspected they got food poisoning at the event.”
BBC / Graham Fraser
Apple urged to scrap AI feature after it creates false headline
“The AI-powered summary falsely made it appear that BBC News had published an article claiming Mangione, the man accused of the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He has not. Now, the group Reporters Without Borders has called on Apple to remove the technology. Apple has made no comment.”
Nieman Lab is a project to try to help figure out where the news is headed in the Internet age. Sign up for The Digest, our daily email with all the freshest future-of-journalism news.