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 …›

What We’re Reading – Nieman Lab→ Reddit’s AI is turning posts into podcasts and short videos

2026-08-18 …›

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 …›

What We’re Reading – Nieman Lab→ “There was a whole lot of chutzpah and a whole lot of vision, and they’re maxed out on their credit cards. It’s the American dream.”

2026-08-18 …›

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 …›

What We’re Reading – Nieman Lab→ Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith calls “Thumbs Down” award by NABJ a “hit job”

2026-08-18 …›

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 …›

What We’re Reading – Nieman Lab→ 29

2026-08-18 …›

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 …›

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 …›

Columbia Journalism Review→ What Karoline Leavitt Leaves Behind

2026-08-17 The outgoing press secretary further damaged the relationship between the federal government and the journalists who cover it. …›

Doc Searls Weblog→ Shots and Misses

2026-08-17 Dome or crater? There is a meteor impact crater in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. It’s called Upheaval Dome, because that’s what geologists thought it was before it became clear that it wasn’t. When I visited the place …›

BuzzMachine→ Words matter. Damnit.

2026-08-15 On this week’s Intelligent Machines, we cohosts had a spirited disagreement about Anthropic’s watermarking of text, as required by EU regulation. The company just released more detail about how it will work, and now I’m upset for a diff …›

Mike Masnick – Techdirt→ Pro Se Plaintiff Caught Hiding Prompt Injections In Court Filings; Responds By Hiding More

2026-08-14 There have now been dozens of stories of bad lawyers using AI results in filings, most of which show up in the form of fake case citations. That’s old hat at this point. But how about prompt injections in court filings? There have been a few peop …›

Doc Searls Weblog→ Byeday

2026-08-14 Well, almost. Tomorrow I fly back to Indiana, where it has been stormy the whole time I've been gone, seems like. In a couple of months, I'll be scanning all the photos I have in dozens of three-ring albums, but keeping the photos themselves, w …›

Mike Masnick – Techdirt→ Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Watermark My Words

2026-08-14 Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice …›

RJI→ 20th RJI Student Innovation Competition open for entries

2026-08-14 Contact: Kat Duncan, duncank@rjionline.org The Reynolds Journalism Institute’s (RJI) Student Innovation Competition is open for entries. Now in its 20th year, the competition challenges student teams at any college or university in the U.S. to create …›