Postcards and laundromat visits: The Texas Tribune audience team experiments with IRL distribution

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Thursday, May 23, 2024 [Postcards and laundromat visits: The Texas Tribune audience team experiments with IRL distribution]( As social platforms falter for news, a number of nonprofit outlets are rethinking distribution for impact and in-person engagement. By Sarah Scire. [Radio Ambulante launches its own record label as a home for its podcast’s original music]( “So much of podcast music is background, feels like filler sometimes, but with our composers, it never is.” By Hanaa' Tameez. [How uncritical news coverage feeds the AI hype machine]( “The coverage tends to be led by industry sources and often takes claims about what the technology can and can’t do, and might be able to do in the future, at face value in ways that contribute to the hype cycle.” By Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. What We’re Reading Substack / Hamilton Nolan [Media companies cutting deals with OpenAI is like “selling your house for firewood” →]( “The conceit that any new technology renders all preexisting laws and regulations inapplicable is a profitable one. Hundreds of billions of dollars can be made with the ‘ask forgiveness, not permission’ philosophy. That is what OpenAI is doing now.” Puck / Dylan Byers [The Washington Post, losing readers and money, will add new subscription tiers, including a “pay as you go” option →]( “For core audiences, the Post will introduce three additional subscription tiers: ‘Plus,’ a B2C offering with additional editorial content for superfans; ‘Pro,’ a B2B offering with in-depth policy data and analysis (the Post’s answer to Politico Pro and Axios Pro, essentially) for the K Street and Capitol Hill crowd; and ‘Membership,’ which adds access to exclusive events and forums (think: WSJ C.E.O. Council). For non-core audiences, such as younger news consumers who engage with Post content on social media, the Post will also introduce a pay-as-you-go option to access single articles or work from a specific author. “ GBH / Liz Neisloss [Boston’s GBH cuts staff and programming →]( “GBH announced layoffs of 31 staff members on Wednesday, representing 4% of its overall workforce…The most dramatic cuts are to programming within the news division, the organization’s largest department with approximately 100 employees.” The New York Times / Sapna Maheshwari [TikTok moves to limit Russian and Chinese media’s reach in big election year →]( “The company in 2022 started labeling state-affiliated media accounts — like those from RT, the global Russian television network, and People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. It said it would no longer allow videos from such accounts into users’ main feeds if they ‘attempt to reach communities outside their home country on current global events and affairs.’ TikTok also said the accounts would not be permitted to advertise on TikTok outside their home countries, to further reduce their reach.” Wall Street Journal / Alexandra Bruell, Sam Schechner, and Deepa Seetharaman [OpenAI and News Corp strike a content deal valued at over $250 million →]( “Terms of content-licensing agreements between publishers and OpenAI aren’t public, but the News Corp deal is among the biggest, if not the biggest, reached to date.” The New York Times Company / Kathleen Kingsbury [Masha Gessen will join The New York Times as an opinion columnist →]( “There are few greater authorities on the planet on the rise of authoritarianism than Masha Gessen.” Washington Post / Heather Kelly [Meta walked away from news. Now the company’s using it for AI content →]( “Meta’s new chatbot, Meta AI, is happy to scan news outlets and summarize their latest stories and headlines for anyone who asks. It’s even doing it in Canada, where the company banned links to news sources on Facebook and Instagram in August to get around a law that could require it to pay publishers.” Digiday / Sara Guaglione [How sending fewer emails and content previews improved The New Yorker’s newsletter engagement →]( “While its news and politics-related email volume has decreased by 65% since this change, [Jessanne Collins, The New Yorker’s director of newsletters] said that the publishers’ page views coming from the News & Politics newsletter have gone up by 35%.” [Nieman Lab]( / [Fuego]( [Twitter]( / [Facebook]( [View email in browser]( [Unsubscribe]( You are receiving this daily newsletter because you signed up for for it at www.niemanlab.org. Nieman Journalism Lab Harvard University 1 Francis Ave.Cambridge, MA 02138 [Add us to your address book](