The Weekly Wrap from Nieman Lab

[Nieman Lab] The Weekly Wrap: October 25, 2024 From the week [Why do broadcast journalists look and talk the way they do? Look to the imagined audience.]( I interviewed dozens of journalists and reviewed decades of research on how audiences evaluate journalists’ on-air presentation. By Elia Powers. [Medill’s 2024 State of Local News report expands what it qualifies as local news — and asks readers to point out what it missed]( This year’s report documents “network local news sites” like Patch and Axios Local for the first time. By Sophie Culpepper. [Why millions of Americans avoid the news — and what it means for the election]( “We are seeing a huge divide between people who are interested in news and those who are not, and I suspect that this divide is intensifying.” By Eduardo Suárez. [Israel has posted 1,200+ videos of airstrikes. This visual investigation shows the view — and the costs — on the ground in Gaza.]( “By revealing the impact of these strikes, we were able to use footage released for one purpose to show a different perspective on the incidents.” By Hanaa' Tameez. [Don’t trust the polls? Neither did The New York Times in 1956 (spoiler: it didn’t work out great)]( “There was some feeling that the Times should stick to reporting trends and let the pollsters make the forecasts.” By W. Joseph Campbell. [The Lenfest Institute launches $10 million AI news program for big-city dailies with backing from OpenAI and Microsoft]( Highlights from elsewhere NPR / David Folkenflik [Washingon Post won’t endorse in White House race for first time since 1980s →]( “The editorial page editor, David Shipley, told colleagues that the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, would publish a note to readers online early Friday afternoon. Shipley told colleagues the editorial board was told yesterday by management that there would not be an endorsement. He added that he ‘owns’ this decision. The reason he cited was to create ‘independent space’ where the newspaper does not tell people for whom to vote.” The Guardian / Lois Beckett [Los Angeles Times sees resignations and loss of subscriptions after owner blocks Harris endorsement →]( “On Tuesday and Wednesday, the paper saw a spike in readers cancelling their subscriptions to the paper, with a total of 1,793 citing ‘editorial content’ as the reason, a number that has circulated among current and former Los Angeles Times journalists.” Axios / Sara Fischer [Meta strikes multi-year deal with Reuters to provide real-time news content in its AI chatbot →]( “It’s the first news deal Meta has brokered in the AI era.” (The tech company has [moved away from news partnerships]( in recent years and [news is a tiny fraction]( of what people see on Facebook.) Wired / David Gilbert [Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity are promoting debunked race science in search results →]( “The problem with it is that the data [noted proponent of race science Richard Lynn] used to generate this dataset is just bullshit, and it’s bullshit in multiple dimensions…It’s actually not surprising [that AI systems are quoting it] because Lynn’s work in IQ has been accepted pretty unquestioningly from a huge area of academia. So the fault isn’t with AI. The fault is with academia.” St. Louis Magazine / Sarah Fenske [Press Forward presses pause on St. Louis Argus grant →]( “The national initiative that awarded $100,000 to the St. Louis Argus says it has ‘paused payment’ on the grant while it looks into allegations that the newspaper has [helped itself]( to the work of numerous other media outlets.” The Economist [The Rest Is Politics, U.K.’s most popular podcast, is “the most sensible show on earth” →]( “[The Rest is Politics’] format is hardly revolutionary. In hour-long shows the pair talk about the state of their respective parties, the war in the Middle East, elections in Japan and much else besides. But its success reveals two things about British politics.” Intelligencer / Charlotte Klein [New York Magazine interviews “57 of the most powerful people in media” about how the media works →]( “Not to be dire, but it feels like Axios and The Athletic are going to go down as the two luckiest places that got hundreds of millions while you still could.” [Nieman Lab]( | [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 · USA