People share misinformation because of social media’s incentives — but those can be changed

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Tuesday, August 8, 2023 [People share misinformation because of social media’s incentives — but those can be changed]( “After a few tweaks to the reward structure of social media platforms, users begin to share information that is accurate and fact-based.” (Though the tweaks involved paying people to do so.) By Ian Anderson, Gizem Ceylan and Wendy Wood. [“Pink slime” news sites turn to print ahead of Ohio referendum]( What We’re Reading Nieman Foundation [Bob Giles, former Nieman Foundation curator, dies at 90 →]( “The veteran journalist oversaw the launch of Nieman Journalism Lab, Nieman Storyboard, and several national journalism awards…Giles was a Nieman Fellow himself in the class of 1966. As Nieman curator, he served as publisher of Nieman Reports and was a frequent contributor to the magazine.” The Atlantic / Steven Waldman [The local news crisis is weirdly easy to solve →]( Steven Waldman, president of Rebuild Local News and a co-founder of Report for America: “Journalists are not particularly well compensated. Assuming an average salary of $60,000 (generous by industry standards), it would cost only about $1.5 billion a year to sustain 25,000 local-reporter positions, a rough estimate of the number that have disappeared nationwide over the past two decades. That’s two-hundredths of a percent of federal spending in 2022. I personally think this would be an amount well worth sacrificing to save American democracy. But the amazing thing is that it wouldn’t really be a sacrifice at all. If more public or philanthropic money were directed toward sustaining local news, it would most likely produce financial benefits many times greater than the cost.” Axios / Sara Fischer [OpenAI is funding a “journalism ethics initiative” at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute →]( With funding of $395,000 from OpenAI, “The initiative will provide workshops and discussions on existing and emerging journalism ethics issues…[like] how to deal with covering the 2024 election in the face of disinformation and polarization, how to manage the challenges of AI, and how to create diverse newsrooms and to cover marginalized communities with knowledge and insight,” said Stephen Adler, former editor-in-chief of Reuters, who will lead it. Axios / Sara Fischer [Puck raises around $10 million →]( “Today, Puck has 31 employees. With the new funding, it plans to add another 8-10 people by the end of the year. The firm is not yet profitable on a 12-month trailing basis but has charted several profitable months.” Embedded / Substack / Kate Lindsay [Digital footprints are meaningless now →]( “An employer can fire one person for being weird online, but they can’t fire everyone.” New York Times / Katie Robertson [The New York Times now has 9.19 million digital-only subscribers →]( “The company added 780,000 net digital-only subscribers in the 12 months through June.” Press Gazette / Killian Faith-Kelly [A Times UK obituary writer on how to make a living out of death →]( “Everybody has an interesting story. You just have to get to it.” Platformer / Casey Newton [It’s time to change how we cover Elon Musk →]( “[If] ‘Musk says’ posts are going to exist, they ought to be much more skeptical than the ones we’ve seen lately. For starters, assume that anything he says about a prospective fight with Zuckerberg isn’t true unless Zuckerberg or Meta confirm it. And about those lawsuits? Maybe wait until X covers a single user’s legal bills before giving it ink.” [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](