From zines to paying every staffer $84K: How the LA Public Press is trying to do local news differently

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Monday, March 18, 2024 [From zines to paying every staffer $84K: How the LA Public Press is trying to do local news differently]( “I don’t think there’s a circumstance where if you can just twist the dials the right way it’s going to unlock lots and lots of earned revenue from a big subscriber base.” By Sophie Culpepper. [How Sahan Journal grew into a vital source of news and information for Minnesota’s immigrant communities]( Five years after launch, Sahan Journal has a $3 million annual budget and 23 full-time staffers. By Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy. What We’re Reading Garbage Day / Garbage Day [“The traffic firehose days of the 2010s aren’t coming back” →]( “And LinkedIn is not the secret to infinite pageviews. But it might be a fertile spot to build an audience with relatively manageable issues. For all its retro, business casual vibe, LinkedIn is actually more in line with the way we tend to use the internet now…They’re using specific platforms to express specific parts of themselves.” The Markup / Jon Keegan [I used ChatGPT as a reporting assistant. It didn’t go well. →]( “The fact that a tool as powerful as ChatGPT can’t produce a ‘receipt’ of exactly how it knows something goes against everything we are trained to do as journalists. Also I worry about small, understaffed newsrooms relying upon these tools too much as the news industry struggles with layoffs and closures.” The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin [Sports Illustrated may end up sticking around in print after all →]( “Minute Media’s license with Sports Illustrated will stretch for 10 years with an option to extend for up to 30 years total, into the magazine’s centenary…The deal is a significant expansion for Minute Media, a New York-based company founded in 2011 whose holdings — which include the sports websites The Players’ Tribune and Fansided — generate more than $400 million in revenue annually.” The New York Times / Jim Rutenberg and Steven Lee Myers [How Trump’s allies are winning the war over disinformation →]( “‘The people that benefit from the spread of disinformation have effectively silenced many of the people that would try to call them out,’ said Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington whose research on disinformation made her a target of the effort.” Ars Technica / Dan Goodin [The newest way to hack AI chatbots: ASCII art →]( “It turns out that chat-based large language models such as GPT-4 get so distracted trying to process these representations that they forget to enforce rules blocking harmful responses, such as those providing instructions for building bombs.” Tedium / Ernie Smith [Deadspin’s new owners appear to be tied to a Finnish casino spam blog →]( “Now, nothing against Finnish gamblers, but this is actually a very telling detail. Offshore countries or territories in the Mediterranean, particularly Malta, Cyprus, and Gibraltar, are known as online gambling havens…this affiliation hiding in its hosting might speak to a broader trend in sports journalism in 2024: The piggybacking of sports brands with online betting.” Variety / Brian Steinberg [DirecTV encourages subscribers to drop local TV stations →]( “The satellite content distributor said Sunday it would give its subscribers the choice to ‘opt out’ of receiving the feeds of local TV stations ‘for as long as they want,’ and get a discount for doing so. Customers who choose to do so will reduce their bills by $12 a month, or $144 a year.” The Guardian / Vanessa Thorpe [“People question everything now”: How Kate’s photo scandal rips up the rules for royals and the media →]( “At this point it almost doesn’t matter whether the rather clumsy edits that the princess, the official patron of the Royal Photographic Society since 2019, has now suggested she herself made to the image were an innocent act, born of habit, or something more deliberate. They have already sown seeds of mayhem that will have an impact on the public relations industry for some time.” The Verge / Lauren Feiner [Supreme Court defines when it’s illegal for public officials to block social media critics →]( “In an opinion signed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court established a test to determine when a public official can be considered to be engaging in state action in blocking someone from their social media account. The official must have both ‘(1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf on a particular matter, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when speaking in the relevant social-media posts.'” Financial Times / John Gapper [Fleet Street’s rotten borough has seized the Telegraph from Abu Dhabi →]( “There is an issue of principle here: whether a foreign state should be allowed to acquire a large UK news publisher. Foreign proprietors have already taken over swaths of the national press, from Rupert Murdoch’s acquisitions of The Sun and The Times to Nikkei’s 2015 purchase of the Financial Times. Until now, the influence of another country has not really come up.” The Wall Street Journal / Tim Higgins [Behind the breakup of Elon Musk and Don Lemon →]( “For [Twitter] Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino, Lemon was supposed to be Exhibit A in the case that [Twitter] isn’t a right-wing partisan tool but, as Musk has claimed, a town square for all sides of debate — left, right, and everything in between. Now Lemon is just the latest exhibit of how Musk blows up plans seemingly at a whim, another setback in Yaccarino’s thankless task of trying to assure brands that they can trust her and [Twitter].” The New York Times / David McCabe and Sapna Maheshwari [The push to ban TikTok slows in the Senate →]( “Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader who determines what legislation gets a vote, has not decided whether to bring the bill to the floor, his spokesman said. Senators — some of whom have their own versions of bills targeting TikTok — will need to be convinced.” Committee to Protect Journalists [The Committee to Protect Journalists demands Pakistan court release journalist Asad Ali Toor →]( “Pakistan authorities must immediately and unconditionally release independent journalist Asad Ali Toor, return his devices, and cease harassing him in retaliation for his journalistic work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.” Houston Landing [Manny García is the new top editor at Houston Landing →]( It has fired top editor Mizanur Rahman [unexpectedly (and controversially)]( in January. The New York Times / Ruth La Ferla [Going through Barbara Walters’ closets →]( “If anyone could make a baby pink suit look intimidating, it was Barbara Walters. The TV news anchor coolly lobbed questions at the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in a 1989 interview while sheathed shoulder to knee in pastel Chanel and pearls.” Axios / Russell Contreras [Latino leaders, including Dolores Huerta and Julián Castro, hit the L.A. Times over layoffs →]( “Like many media outlets in recent months, the LA Times was forced to cut about 20% of newsroom jobs amid heavy financial losses and slowing advertising…The job losses at the Times in January hit Latino journalists hard, with the paper’s Latino Caucus losing around 38% of its members and reversing recent gains in diversity hiring.” Press Gazette / Bron Maher [“Not a podcast app”: New York Times Audio exceeds 1 million downloads →]( “Whereas The Daily spends approximately 20 minutes exploring a single story each day, The Headlines spotlights three or so stories over ten minutes, once again bringing reporters into the studio to speak about their coverage.” The Washington Post / Michael Cavna [Female artists are disappearing from print comics at chain newspapers →]( “What began to concern some cartoonists and industry observers: None of the dozens of comics listed as print offerings for Gannett papers was actively being created by a woman artist.” The Guardian / Julianne Schultz [The brutal reality is that Australia’s media is broken and policy tinkering will not help →]( “Almost every prime minister since Robert Menzies has shared his assessment that he was constrained by the self-interest of the proprietors.” The Guardian / Alexandra Topping [“Glimmer of hope” for U.K. local news as a publication is given charitable status →]( “‘The local newspaper as it existed in the 1950s has been dying for years, but it’s comprehensively dead now. There’s a very real crisis and that is a very real problem for democracy,’ said Jonathan Heawood, the executive director of the Public Interest News Foundation, a charity that funnels donations into public interest journalism.” The Guardian / Sam Wolfson [Bill Gates, Dua Lipa, Meghan, Hillary: How interview podcasts became a must-have for celebrities →]( “If there is a foundational belief underpinning the format, it is that conversation conquers all; that two celebrities with a free hour and a premium Zoom subscription might be able to make the world a better place.” The Guardian / Richard Luscombe [Pranksters dupe Tucker Carlson into believing they edited Princess of Wales photo →]( “In a video posted on X that has already received more than a million views, Josh Pieters and Archie Manners explained how they concocted a story about being released by the Prince and Princess of Wales for ‘not doing a good enough job’ in manipulating a photograph of Middleton and her children that has stoked an international furor and endless conspiracy theories.” Press Gazette / Dominic Ponsford [The Economist is attracting younger readers with cut-price Espresso digital edition →]( “Espresso, which launched in 2014 but has only published audited circulation numbers since 2022, grew 74% year on year to an average of 21,775 subscribers…Economist digital subscriptions fell 2% year on year to 966,947 in the second half of 2023. Print subscribers (most of whom also take digital subscription) fell 12% to 485,787.” [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](