BREAKING: The ways people hear about big news these days; “into a million pieces,” says source

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Monday, July 22, 2024 [BREAKING: The ways people hear about big news these days; “into a million pieces,” says source]( The New York Times and the Washington Post compete with meme accounts for the chance to be first with a big headline. By Joshua Benton. [In 1924, a magazine ran a contest: “Who is to pay for broadcasting and how?” A century later, we’re still asking the same question]( Radio Broadcast received close to a thousand entries to its contest — but ultimately rejected them all. By Julia Barton. What We’re Reading Substack / Taylor Lorenz [The Pop Craveification of breaking news →]( “As more people online recognize breaking news as an opportunity to amass followers and attention, more non-traditional accounts and content creators will move into covering breaking news. We’re already seeing this phenomenon through the proliferation of what Caitlin Dewey [recently described]( as ‘news hustlers.'” New York Times / Rebecca Robbins [Donald Trump’s libel lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board will proceed →]( “A state judge in Florida has given former President Donald J. Trump a legal victory, refusing to toss a libel lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump over a statement made by the board of the Pulitzer Prizes on coverage of the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to Russia … The case hinges on a statement made in 2022 by the panel reaffirming its decision to award the national reporting prize in 2018 to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Russian ties to the Trump campaign.” Washington Post / Elahe Izadi [How a one-man news site beat the national media on a Trump shooting scoop →]( “All news is local,” said John Paul Vranesevich, the owner and only full-time reporter for the Beaver Countian. “Everything that happens that the national [media] cares about is happening in some community, somewhere.” Los Angeles Times / Keri Blakinger and Alene Tchekmedyian [The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department secretly investigated an L.A. Times reporter who wrote about “problem deputies” →]( “The Sheriff’s Department confirmed its investigation into [journalist Maya] Lau is closed and said it is no longer surveilling reporters.” New York Times / Kevin Roose [The data that powers AI is disappearing fast →]( “Over the past year, many of the most important web sources used for training A.I. models have restricted the use of their data, according to a study published this week by the Data Provenance Initiative, an M.I.T.-led research group. The study, which looked at 14,000 web domains that are included in three commonly used A.I. training data sets, discovered an ’emerging crisis in consent,’ as publishers and online platforms have taken steps to prevent their data from being harvested.” Reuters [On the same day Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to prison, another Russian court sentenced a different American journalist →]( “A Russian court has sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), to 6-1/2 years in prison for spreading false information about the Russian army, the court revealed on Monday.” Columbia Journalism Review / Selina Cheng [“I pushed for press freedom in Hong Kong. The Wall Street Journal fired me.” →]( “Even at news publications, there were vastly fewer revelatory stories on sensitive political issues and investigations on abuses of public power. Journalists shifted uncomfortably in their seats when they heard story ideas they felt could touch a nerve in the government. I saw editors press for extra-solid sourcing in anticipation of government condemnation.” The Atlantic / Charlie Warzel [Twitter has always been in the doomscrolling business, and business is booming →]( “Biden’s staff posted the news on X because they must have understood that, for better or worse, it is the quickest, least mediated way to inject information into the bloodstream of political and cultural discourse. (As Musk remarked about the mainstream media this afternoon: ‘They’re so slow.’)” [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](