The Salt Lake Tribune will experiment with a “free-for-all model” after acquiring a Utah weekly

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Thursday, July 20, 2023 [The Salt Lake Tribune will experiment with a “free-for-all model” after acquiring a Utah weekly]( The Moab Times-Independent, owned for generations by the Taylor family, will be donated to the Tribune. The newspaper will transition to free in print for Moab residents and free online for all. By Sarah Scire. [Google wants you to let its AI bot help you write news articles]( Dystopian, yes — but tools don’t have to be perfect to be useful to journalists. By Joshua Benton. What We’re Reading The New York Times / Katie Robertson [University departures put student journalists in spotlight →]( “Two prominent departures at top universities this month have a common link: inquisitive student journalists.” Pew Research Center / Christopher St. Aubin and Jacob Liedke [­Most Americans favor restrictions on false information, violent content online →]( “65% of Americans support tech companies moderating false information online and 55% support the U.S. government taking these steps. These shares have increased since 2018. Americans are even more supportive of tech companies (71%) and the U.S. government (60%) restricting extremely violent content online.” The Verge / Jess Weatherbed [Google starts the next phase of its plan to kill third-party cookies →]( “There are still several stages to go until Google completes its Privacy Sandbox rollout, but shipping these APIs is a significant milestone toward the company’s goal of phasing out third-party cookies entirely. Google is still aiming to enable an opt-in testing mode that will allow advertisers to experiment with the Sandbox tools without cookies by late 2023 and to turn off third-party cookies for 1 percent of Chrome users sometime in Q1 2024. The company has set a goal to completely turn off third-party cookies by Q3 2024.” Press Gazette / Jim Edwards [Publishers must adapt to life outside the world wide web or be crushed, says Bustle CEO Bryan Goldberg →]( “BDG’s editors are not simply trying to game the duopoly’s algorithms for clicks. Instead, BDG is looking for audiences and revenue in places where Google and Facebook cannot compete,” such as email and events. Financial Times / Hannah Murphy and Cristina Criddle [Meta unfriends the news industry in growing rift with publishers →]( “Meta is shunning the news business, giving lower priority to current affairs and politics on its social media platforms while refusing to engage with efforts from governments to make the US tech giant pay more to media organisations.” Semafor / Max Tani [How Paramount buried a Vice documentary on Ron DeSantis at Guantanamo Bay →]( “Showtime’s decision to kill the DeSantis story has gotten lost amid the two companies’ other woes — Vice’s bankruptcy, Paramount’s scramble to cut expensive original programming. But the episode is in fact a rare, and serious, glimpse at how a big media company killed a potentially controversial story.” The Atlantic / Gary Shteyngart [I watched Russian television for five days straight →]( “So many of the shows I’ve watched during the past five days were obsessed with the West, with our Clintons and Soroses and Von der Leyens. Russia is the spurned lover with the ‘very aggressive nature’ taking out his inhumanity on the innocent neighbor next door. Despite all the posturing and doublespeak, Russian television announces as much to the world.” Second Rough Draft, Substack / Richard J. Tofel [Lessons from the end of newspaper sports coverage →]( “None of this is the product of malevolence, nor is it anybody’s fault in particular. But the effects are to tighten the vise gripping newspaper publishers who still need print ad revenues but can’t sustain the product that delivers them, and to further undermine local news, even as we increasingly recognize how much [is] lost when it is threatened.” The Journalist's Resource / Clark Merrefield [How Fox News viewership affects criminal sentencing decisions →]( “Counties with high exposure to Fox News tend to elect judges who impose harsh criminal sentences, finds the research, which analyzes 7 million prison sentencing decisions from 2005 to 2017.” The Guardian / Hibaq Farah [TikTok is the most popular news source for 12 to 15-year-olds, says Ofcom →]( “The study found that for children aged 12-15, TikTok is now the most used single source of news across all platforms at 28%, followed by YouTube and Instagram at 25% each.” [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](