Nieman Lab→ MS NOW will launch a paid membership program for “super fans”

2026-08-19 When MS NOW — known until last year as MSNBC — celebrated its 30th anniversary last month, Status reported that the focus was “as much about the future as the past.” Natalie Korach described early conversations about the network’s …›

Nieman Lab→ Google’s new AI tool helps fact-checkers investigate AI fakes

2026-08-19 Every day the fact-checking team for one of India’s largest news organizations works to debunk a slew of false and misleading images circulating across social media. For the six-person team at India Today, that might include addressing an AI-gene …›

Mike Masnick – Techdirt→ French Constitutional Council Blocks Under-15 Social Media Ban, In A Ruling That Should Concern Every Other EU Country

2026-08-19 Even as the wider EU was grinding through a long, drawn-out process to figure out which regulatory levers to pull on kids’ safety online, France decided to YOLO it earlier this summer by jumping at the chance to ban all social media for kids unde …›

Current→ Shae Hopkins to retire as CEO of Kentucky Educational Television

2026-08-19 Hopkins joined the state network in 1986. The post Shae Hopkins to retire as CEO of Kentucky Educational Television appeared first on Current. …›

Current→ University moves forward with plan for sharing management of KTEP

2026-08-19 The University of Texas at El Paso and the El Paso Community Foundation “hope to execute an agreement reasonably soon.” The post University moves forward with plan for sharing management of KTEP appeared first on Current. …›

RJI→ Journalism tells people what’s happening. This tool helps them take action.

2026-08-19 The Civic Action Toolbox connects local reporting to public meetings, comment periods and the officials who make decisions If you’re a journalist, you’ve undoubtedly gotten this email. A story publishes about a utility rate increase, a rezoning, an …›

Pew Research Center→ Is teen summer employment in the U.S. rebounding after a long fade?

2026-08-19 Only 35.5% of U.S. teens ages 16 to 19 worked this summer, up slightly from 2025 but far below the more than half who worked most summers before 2000. …›

Doc Searls Weblog→ Webday

2026-08-19 Worth reading A Reddit discussion among and about our local homeless. …›

Poynter→ A fake poll made real news. What does that say about political polling?

2026-08-19 A poll of Los Angeles voters released last week found Mayor Karen Bass leading Councilmember Nithya Raman by a wide and growing margin. Days earlier, a poll of Wisconsin’s Democratic […] The post A fake poll made real news. What does that say a …›

Columbia Journalism Review→ ‘Talked About More, but Described Less’

2026-08-19 Research commissioned by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project suggests that newspapers fall short on covering the realities of working-class life. …›

Mike Masnick – Techdirt→ An Update On How I Use AI To Help With Techdirt (It’s Still Not Writing Articles)

2026-08-18 Over in our Insider Chat, someone recently pointed out a tiered “REAL Rating” five-tier scale designed to replace the fairly blunt and misleading question of “did you use AI on that?” with something a bit more nuanced. As someon …›

What We’re Reading – Nieman Lab→ A network of more than 200 AI-generated local news sites has shut down

2026-08-18 …›

Nieman Lab→ Facing a “deluge” from AI, this publication will only take pitches by phone

2026-08-18 Whether you’re a reporter or an editor, your inbox has probably seen an influx of pitches, increasingly written with artificial intelligence. They’re likely bad, irrelevant, and annoyingly clogging up your email. But one publication is over …›

Doc Searls Weblog→ Oozeday

2026-08-18 I was overheard to have said Exhumed this from a Facebook comment to repost here: About advertising, there have been two state changes in the business. One I unpacked eleven years ago, here: https://dsearls.medium.com/separating-advertisings-wheat̷ …›

PRX Official - Medium→ Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Radiotopia, and Talkhouse Announce A New Season of “Music Makes Us”

2026-08-18 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Radiotopia, and Talkhouse Announce A New Season of “Music Makes Us” Hosted by Kathleen Hanna And Featuring Today’s Revolutionary MusiciansEpisodes will feature Belinda Carlisle and Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go’s, Shei …›

Doc Searls Weblog→ On What Still Hasn’t Happened

2026-08-18 My own photo. Not AI. Everything is real, including the ?. I posted what follows more than twenty-six years ago on Searls.com, which now brings up a danger warning because it’s still http and not https. (Yes, I’ll fix it.) It makes inte …›

Mike Masnick – Techdirt→ MAGA GOP Keeps Taking Ownership Stakes In Private Companies, Then Warning You The Communists Are Coming

2026-08-18 Words used to mean things. The MAGA GOP strategy lately seems to be pulling a page from the 1980s playbook (a Trump specialty) and declaring anyone they don’t like to be “communist.” The whole thing is laughable. Even if you disagree …›

Pew Research Center→ Young adults in the U.S. are increasingly wary of AI, concerned it will take jobs

2026-08-18 About half of Americans say they're more concerned than excited about AI, and young adults' concern is rising. …›

Nieman Lab→ The Athletic teams up with sports creators to reach new (and younger) audiences

2026-08-18 Last month at the National Sports Card Convention in Chicago, creator Brandon Pereira, who posts as Coach Koe, met a kid named Dominic. Dominic had spent the summer washing garbage cans to earn money to come to the convention and buy cards for his coll …›

Online Journalism Blog→ How to judge (and minimise) the risk of using sensitive information with an AI chatbot

2026-08-18 What are the risks of information you put into an AI chat becoming public? Evaluating those risks is slightly different to other information security challenges because of the way large language models work, so here’s a guide to assessing and ma …›

RJI→ Finding the sweet spot with the Google Ad Grants Program

2026-08-18 A conversation with Tyler Dedrick from Mountain State Spotlight Innovation in Focus spoke with Tyler Dedrick about his newsroom’s approach to utilizing the Google Ad grants program. With a background in Google Ads before he started working in local n …›

What We’re Reading – Nieman Lab→ ABC sues FCC, claiming First Amendment violations

2026-08-18 …›

Poynter→ More than 200 AI-generated ‘local news’ sites just went dark

2026-08-18 Prism News has suspended its network of more than 200 AI-generated “local news” sites following investigations from multiple outlets that exposed plagiarism and falsehoods. Over the last few weeks, I […] The post More than 200 AI-generated …›

Poynter→ Decades of research show vaccines do not cause autism

2026-08-18 President Donald Trump has called for big changes for how U.S. children are vaccinated. As he signed an executive order recommending a new schedule for vaccines, the president said the […] The post Decades of research show vaccines do not cause a …›

Columbia Journalism Review→ The 69-Year-Old Rookie

2026-08-18 I was a fifty-year newspaper veteran and a journalism professor. Then I joined the Salt Lake Tribune as a junior editor. …›

Doc Searls Weblog→ You can hear the squeak of sphincters closing

2026-08-17 How Claude marks AI-generated content is the most self-destructive utterance I’ve ever heard coming out of an AI company. Wow: When a supported Claude model generates text, it weaves an imperceptible watermark directly into the text itse …›

Doc Searls Weblog→ Doneday

2026-08-17 No, neither makes sense I had two posts titled Whensday. Now there is one. It is re-headlined Densday. And give gentle advice Trunkline, the least-written of the three WordPress blogs I run and write for, all with the kind assistance of the good folks …›

Current→ Cheryl Hirasa steps down as Pacific Islanders in Communications leader

2026-08-17 Hirasa joined the organization in 2013. The post Cheryl Hirasa steps down as Pacific Islanders in Communications leader appeared first on Current. …›

RJI→ RJI Student Innovation Fellows unveil tools and strategies for community newsrooms in public webinar

2026-08-17 Contact: Kat Duncan, duncank@rjionline.org This summer, four international master’s students at the Missouri School of Journalism each spent 12 weeks stationed in a community newsroom, where they helped bring to life everything from new audience enga …›

Nieman Lab→ Claude is changing how it generates prose to be more detectable (and maybe worse?)

2026-08-17 It was in 1964 that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, asked to define obscenity for the purposes of law, wrote his famous heuristic: “I know it when I see it.” But when it comes to AI-generated content, we may think we know it when we s …›

Mike Masnick – Techdirt→ Federal Court Rules That Blocking Speech Is Protected By The First Amendment, But Recommending It Isn’t

2026-08-17 This ruling came out a week and a half ago at this point and I’ve been so annoyed with it that I kept putting off writing about it, but it’s so bad that it requires a discussion. A federal district court in San Jose denied motions from a bu …›

Doc Searls Weblog→ RainyAgainDay

2026-08-17 Enjoying the warm Indiana outdoors between stretches of rain On my way back to Bloomington from Santa Barbara on Saturday, while I sat in the first row of an Embraer short-haul vectored to Indianapolis but delayed while awaiting its pilot and parked a …›

Poynter→ When it comes to “teen takeovers,” journalists may be telling only part of the story

2026-08-17 Poynter is offering a free webinar Tuesday, Aug. 18 from 1 to 2:15 p.m. Eastern about how to cover “teen takeovers” with accuracy and care. You can register here. In […] The post When it comes to “teen takeovers,” journalists may be telli …›

RJI→ Building a civic information hub

2026-08-17 Civic Strata: A shared foundation for data, documents and community reporting Type “data centers” into Google, and you’ll get thousands of results, including an AI summary, the latest reporting from various news outlets, a Reddit thread, and a li …›

Pew Research Center→ Refugee admissions to the U.S. are dropping sharply in Trump’s second term

2026-08-17 U.S. refugee admissions have dropped sharply in Trump's second term, with just over 10,000 so far in fiscal 2026, down from about 38,000 in fiscal 2025. …›

Current→ Comings and goings: NPR names Bryan Moffett SVP of transformation, WABE’s Douglas Bell steps up to new VP position …

2026-08-17 In his expanded role, Moffett will oversee cross-team collaborations supporting audience and revenue growth. The post Comings and goings: NPR names Bryan Moffett SVP of transformation, WABE’s Douglas Bell steps up to new VP position … appeared firs …›

American Press Institute→ Call on experts to help with persistent problems

2026-08-17 This week’s action: Identify an expert to help you address a challenge your newsroom frequently encounters. Addressing systemic local news issues, such as building trust or overcoming polarization, can be more effective and sustainable when part of y …›

Poynter→ An FT column was condensed with AI. It crossed a novel ethical line.

2026-08-17 Financial Times appended an unusual note to the top of a column published late last week. “It has come to our attention that AI was used to condense a longer […] The post An FT column was condensed with AI. It crossed a novel ethical line. appe …›

Poynter→ New to editing? Embrace being behind the scenes

2026-08-17 Most editors start as reporters. At some point, either because there’s an opportunity, an urgent need, or sometimes both, those reporters become editors. And in most newsrooms, that’s about it.  […] The post New to editing? Embrace being beh …›