A year of consolidation in nonprofit news

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Thursday, December 14, 2023 Today we continue our [Predictions for Journalism 2024]( series, which will run through next week. [A year of consolidation in nonprofit news]( “Mergers, acquisitions, and joint-operating agreements will become more prevalent among nonprofit news entities.” By Paul Cheung. [Online-to-real-world terror campaigns will be called out for what they are]( “Often, when institutions are confronted with the moral panics they’ve helped enable, they respond with contempt.” By Parker Molloy. [Journalist safety training isn’t limited to war reporters]( “Looking ahead to an election year and taking the lessons learned from 2020, we are obligated to better prepare journalists.” By Juanita Islas. [News avoiders shouldn’t be ignored]( “For anyone who thinks the value of news is obvious, it can be tempting to dismiss consistent news avoiders as a lost cause. But journalists who see it as their mission to serve the whole public should think twice about that stance.” By Ruth Palmer. [“AI” discourse as misinformation]( “The ‘AI’ that dominates our collective imagination differs significantly from the technology at our fingertips. For most of us, this imagined technology is based more on the fiction of the last decades than reality. Journalism’s task, then, should be to bridge that gap.” By Jonas Kaiser. [Memberships go off-platform]( “Platform-born news brands could prove better equipped than traditional organizations to leverage their relationships with online communities to build a more sustainable future for journalism.” By Francesco Zaffarano. [Journalism refuses to die in Latin America (despite everything)Â]( “The problem is not only the murders: Journalists suffer from non-lethal violence, threats, job insecurity, imprisonment, and being forced to live in exile.” By Mael Vallejo. [Fact-checking needs a reboot]( “‘Informing democracy’ is not enough in an age of rampant lies about elections and public health and climate. Fact-checkers need to be more assertive in getting truthful information to the audience that needs it.” By Bill Adair. [“Link in comments” won’t save democracy]( “Since 2015, I have dutifully penned these predictions and try to do so, year after year, with a sense of idealism and optimism. I feel neither right now.” By S. Mitra Kalita. [Stop ignoring the news that audiences actually care about]( “Are these the most Earth-shattering stories? No. And that’s the point. It’s a distraction from the chaos of life. The internet has found a way to make everything feel like doom and gloom, especially after 2020. People need a break.” By Kendall Trammell. [Raising the alarm bell for public media]( “It’s critical to acknowledge that local public radio stations bear considerable risk in the current podcast environment.” By Kerri Hoffman. [Elon Musk’s behavior forces uncomfortable questions for media]( “In 2024, maintaining a relationship with the hate-drenched platform that was once a key communications tool used by newsrooms and authorities around the world will become even more untenable.” By Oliver Darcy. [Legal rigor meets journalistic inquiry to yield groundbreaking investigations]( “Ethical considerations will be the compass guiding these partnerships, weaving together the principles of truth, accuracy, and public interest from journalism, the expertise of NGOs, and the commitment to fairness and accountability from legal initiatives.” By Basile Simon. [We find out how good (or bad) 21st-century polling really is]( “So much attention has (rightly) focused on local news gaps in recent years. But I think 2024 is a year when some of that attention — by funders, experts, industry leaders — will turn to the states.” By Jesse Holcomb. [The news industry learns which stories not to write]( “There is still far too much vanity publishing or fire-and-forget reporting that may meet the egotistical needs of reporters or editors but not the needs of readers or your businesses.” By Peter Bale. [Weathercasters help us navigate the trust-in-news storm]( “Why does the public trust weathercasters — especially since a prevalent stereotype of them is that they’re always wrong?” By Christoph Mergerson. [Science journalism has its Defector moment]( “We need science journalists now more than ever, but with alarming frequency, legacy and digital-first publications alike are showing that they can’t provide these journalists with stability. So who will?” By Michael Greshko. What We’re Reading Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Matthew Leake [These journalists from Gaza risk their lives to cover the Israel-Hamas war: “Nothing can describe what you feel” →]( Al Jazeera correspondent Youmna ElSayed “believes her protective equipment effectively puts a target on her back: ‘We got to the point where wearing our press vests seems like putting ourselves in danger. We’re afraid to wear them because we don’t want to label ourselves as journalists.'” The Wall Street Journal / Keach Hagey, Miles Kruppa and Alexandra Bruell [News publishers see Google’s AI search tool as a traffic-destroying nightmare →]( “While Google says the final shape of its AI product is far from set, publishers have seen enough to estimate that they will lose between 20% and 40% of their Google-generated traffic if anything resembling recent iterations rolls out widely. Google has said it is giving priority to sending traffic to publishers.” The New York Times / Katie Robertson [Mother Jones will merge with the Center for Investigative Reporting to form a single nonprofit news outlet →]( “Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief of Mother Jones, will lead the combined newsroom, which will have more than 70 people.” Vanity Fair / Charlotte Klein [“We wanted to keep chasing it”: How student journalists at Harvard and Penn are beating big-time reporters to the punch →]( “‘We made several trips between The Crimson’s office and the library that night,’ said [Crimson reporter Miles] Herszenhorn. ‘We kept trying to just call it a night and spend the rest of the night at the library’—they are, after all, in the middle of finals—but ‘we wanted to keep chasing it.’ That they did: Around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Crimson reporters, beating every national newspaper, scooped that Gay would stay on as president with the support of the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing board, which had remained silent since the hearing.” The Verge / Jon Porter [Threads launches for nearly half a billion more users in Europe →]( “Until now, Threads hasn’t been available to the 448 million people living in the EU, and the company has even blocked EU-based users from accessing the service via VPN. To coincide with today’s launch, Meta is giving users in the region the ability to browse Threads without needing a profile.” The Washington Post / Laura Wagner [Masha Gessen won a “political thought” prize. Then they wrote on Gaza. →]( “The Hannah Arendt Association wrote in a statement: ‘We find it remarkable that the public debate about understanding and condemning Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel and Israel’s bombing of Gaza is being blocked by boycotting a political thinker who is trying to bring knowledge, insight and sharp thinking to this debate.'” The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin [Punchbowl News strikes deal to buy data start-up →]( “Punchbowl News said Thursday that it was acquiring Electo Analytics, a company that provides data to help decipher and analyze legislation…The deal is a sign of an increasingly popular approach among digital news start-ups. Instead of trying to cover the whole world and rely on advertising, the outlets are focused on narrow lanes of coverage that people are willing to pay for.” Rest of World / Andrew Deck [Japan’s SmartNews was growing fast in the U.S. What went wrong? →]( “SmartNews was one of the few Japanese startups to crack the U.S. market — and the second ever to clear a billion-dollar valuation and reach unicorn status. But employees told Rest of World the U.S. expansion’s initial success was tempered by a chaotic product development process and [former CEO Ken] Suzuki’s own obsession with the fractures of American political life, distracting from more central business challenges.” Columbia Journalism Review / Yona TR Golding [Q&A: Alexa Koenig on the potential and pitfalls of open source investigations →]( “One thing that’s been lauded about open source investigations is that they can be democratizing. Most people, if they want to, can learn some of these skills fairly quickly. It takes a lot of practice to get really good at them, but they’re not out of reach for most people who have any proficiency with the internet. I think the challenge, however, is the community’s growth without the safeguards in place around professional ethics. Just because you can do something in digital spaces doesn’t mean you necessarily should.” Poynter / Kristen Hare [5 local news experts on the best and worst of 2023 →]( “I think journalists and people who care deeply about equitable local information systems should care about things like broadband internet access for all (i.e. how are people going to read all of your great stories online?) and Section 230,” said Darryl Holliday, the co-founder of City Bureau and a co-author of The Roadmap for Local News. “I think it’s important that people building a future of local news organize and understand policy issues.” [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](