What’s in a byline? For Hoodline’s AI-generated local news, everything — and nothing

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Monday, June 3, 2024 [What’s in a byline? For Hoodline’s AI-generated local news, everything — and nothing]( None of the AI writers seems to have a specific beat, except possibly for what can be best described as “police exploits,” which they all cover with gusto. By Neel Dhanesha. [For most news outlets, Trump’s conviction was front-page news. What about local chains?]( [The Washington Post loses its executive editor and heads in a new direction (or three)]( What We’re Reading Slate Magazine / Scott Nover [When a lifetime Rolling Stone subscription isn’t for life →]( “‘That was not our agreement. Our agreement was the lifetime of you or the lifetime of the magazine, if you pay $99—and $99 back then was a lot of money for a magazine subscription.’ He even put the subscription in his son’s name so it would live on beyond him.” The Hollywood Reporter / Winston Cho [Hollywood nightmare? A streaming service that lets viewers create their own shows using AI →]( “Fable Studio, an Emmy-winning San Francisco startup, on Thursday announced Showrunner, a platform the company says can write, voice and animate episodes of shows it carries. Under the initial release, users will be able to watch AI-generated series and create their own content — complete with the ability to control dialogue, characters and shot types, among other controls.” Wired / Vittoria Elliott [Wired is tracking generative AI use in the 2024 elections →]( “Experts know that generative AI is poised to drastically change the information landscape, but we’re still learning how exactly that will happen … So, in order to get a real sense of how generative AI is entering and changing the political and information landscape, we’re tracking it, all over the world, for the rest of the year.” Rest of World / Russell Brandom [What the AI boom is getting wrong (and right), according to Hugging Face’s policy chief →]( “It’s actually more expensive by token to train on and generate non-English languages. You’re paying a higher price to process each unit of data, especially non-Latin character languages. But that’s getting a lot better as costs come down. OpenAI with their latest GPT-4o launch has shown huge reductions in the cost of tokenization for many Indic languages.” Semafor / Max Tani [Money woes, staff issues strain the Intercept →]( “Staff at the Intercept are imploring the nonprofit’s board to fire its CEO and chief strategy officer amid a dispute that involves allegations of gender bias, the likely departure of two top staffers, and the failure to secure a major donor who expressed interest in funding the news site.” The Washington Post / Joseph Mann [The Grayzone editor’s ties to Iran and Russia show misinformation’s complexity →]( “Hacked emails and other documents from the Iranian government-funded Press TV show payments of thousands of dollars to a writer who is now a Washington-based editor for Grayzone, whose founder regularly appears on Russian television and once accepted a trip to Moscow for a celebration of Russian state-controlled video network RT that featured Vladimir Putin.” The Washington Post / Laura Wagner [New York Times made ‘petty’ cuts to staff bios, union says →]( “The goal of letting reporters’ individuality shine, the Times said, was to ‘bolster trust with readers by letting them know who we are and how we work.’ But in some cases, it seems a little too much personality came through for the company’s liking. This week, the Times deleted language that several employees used in their bios to extol the work they have done with the Times Guild.” CNBC / Hayden Field [Twitch terminates all members of its Safety Advisory Council →]( “Twitch’s decision to end the SAC’s contracts comes amid more than a year of belt-tightening and layoffs across the tech industry, especially on safety and ethics teams, which some companies view as cost centers. The cuts come at a time of increased cyberbullying, which has been linked to higher rates of adolescent self-harm, and as the spread of misinformation and violent content collides with the exploding use of AI.” Bloomberg / Kurt Wagner [Meta revamped Facebook’s feed to fend off TikTok and win back younger users →]( “Right now, most of the company’s algorithms are product-specific…But Meta is working on a more universal algorithm that could work across all its various features. In a perfect world, a user who visits Marketplace to buy an Instant Pot, for example, might then also see recommendations for cooking-related content within other products, like Groups or Reels.” Semafor / Ben Smith [Why politicians want to buy the news →]( “Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal for BuzzFeed — to turn it into a platform for video-makers across the spectrum, a kind of YouTube with a higher quality standard and commitment to editorial openness — describes a decade-long graveyard of startups, some of which make BuzzFeed look like a runaway success.” [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](