The week we wrote Taylor Swift puns

As you’ve surely heard, The Tennessean is hiring a Taylor Swift reporter and a Beyoncé reporter so Taylor song titles took up a lot of space in our brains this week. The mix of arts and culture and local news is nothing new to this Mexico City publisher. We also learned that engagement journalism “can have both business and community benefits.” And The Colorado Sun moved away from a hybrid for-profit/nonprofit model that “was just one step maybe too complicated for some people.”

P.S. We’re expanding! Learn more and apply for our open positions here.

— Laura Hazard Owen

How a 19th-century news revolution sparked activists, influencers, disinformation, and the Civil War Long before anyone was accused of being “woke,” the Wide Awakes used new news technology to rapidly construct a national movement. By Jon Grinspan.

How The New York Times incorporates editorial judgment in algorithms to curate its home page The Times’ algorithmic recommendations team on responding to reader feedback, newsroom concerns, and technical hurdles. By Zhen Yang.

Want to change money in Cuba? It’ll probably involve an exiled news outlet — and AI El Toque’s informal exchange rate is used by taxi drivers, restaurateurs, and small businesses across the island. It’s also grown the news site’s traffic tenfold. By Andrew Deck.

The former host of S-Town has a new subject to investigate: Journalism After more than a decade in the industry, Brian Reed is Question(ing) Everything about it. By Neel Dhanesha.

What’s the journalism we can make for people who don’t trust journalism? “You just need somebody with enough charisma that they would carry people over the line. And it wouldn’t be a traditional journalist.” By Neel Dhanesha.