The National Trust for Local News keeps buying local newspapers. Here’s what they’ve learned.

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Thursday, September 26, 2024 [The National Trust for Local News keeps buying local newspapers. Here’s what they’ve learned.]( “What we’re trying to solve for is not necessarily a business model problem. We’re trying to solve for an ownership incentive problem.” By Sarah Scire. What We’re Reading Wired / Marah Eakin [Soon after the deadly Hezbollah pager explosions, this AI-generated fictional podcast went up →]( “Caloroga Shark’s other founder, Mark Francis, says that when he read about the explosions in Lebanon, he started to have questions about how they were executed. ‘It had the spirit of a really intriguing story,’ Francis says, ‘so I put the idea into Claude, which spat out an outline of a story.’ The team then quickly wrote a script and ‘put it back into the AI for even more massaging.’ Once the script was at a good place, Caloroga Shark fed it into Audiosonic and ElevenLabs for narration, created some podcast art with Ideogram, and used ChatGPT and Claude to create the episode descriptions.” The Guardian / Anna Bawden and Mark Sweney [Pressure mounts on publisher of Economist over ties to tobacco →]( The Economist Group already had to cancel a cancer conference in Brussels, and two more conferences are in jeopardy as health experts are starting to pull out after a report showed that Economist Impact, which creates paid editorial coverage, has multimillion dollar contracts with Philip Morris International, Japan Tobacco International, and British American Tobacco. NPR / Shannon Bond [How Russia’s RT went from a cable news clone to covert operator →]( “It’s not a totally novel thing for them to sort of blur the lines between covert and overt.” Bloomberg / Alan Wong [An editor in Hong Kong was jailed for 21 months in the first media sedition case since the city returned to Chinese rule →]( “The city’s District Court on Thursday announced the sentencing of Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, top editors at the now-shuttered Stand News. They were found guilty last month of taking part in a ‘conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications’ for posting articles the court found to have seditious intentions…Chung’s punishment was close to the offense’s maximum penalty of two years in jail, while Lam received a term that allowed him to be freed immediately.” The Verge / Emma Roth [California’s new law forces digital stores to admit you’re just licensing content, not buying it →]( “When the law comes into effect next year, it will ban digital storefronts from using terms like ‘buy’ or ‘purchase,’ unless they inform customers that they’re not getting unrestricted access to whatever they’re buying. Storefronts will have to tell customers they’re getting a license that can be revoked as well as provide a list of all the restrictions that come along with it. Companies that break the rule could be fined for false advertising.” The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin [Coming up next on CNN: A paywall →]( “In early October, CNN will begin experimenting with charging some readers for digital access as part of a bid to shore up its business as cable television erodes industrywide…The subscription wall is one of the first major business initiatives from Mark Thompson, CNN’s chairman and chief executive, who joined the network nearly a year ago.” Poynter / Angela Fu [Over half the U.S. journalists surveyed in a new report considered quitting their jobs this year →]( “One potential reason that figure is so high is because this year is an election year, [Matt Albasi, a data journalist at Muck Rack, which conducted the survey] said. Newsrooms are putting resources towards covering the election, and that energy shift affects all desks…The journalists surveyed reported that their primary sources of stress include their workload, salary and the expectation that they always be ‘on.’ Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they work more than 40 hours a week, and the vast majority, or 80%, said they work outside regular business hours at least once a week.” The Athletic / Andrew Marchand [ESPN lays off NBA senior writer Zach Lowe →]( “Lowe’s salary, which was in excess of seven figures annually, was the biggest factor in ESPN’s decision, according to sources briefed on the terms of his contract … ESPN’s NBA coverage is in a state of transition with the surprise retirement of insider Adrian Wojnarowski.” [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](