- What Were America’s Journalists Thinking?
- Unions Sue Feds Over Speech-Based Surveillance
- Women Are Wary of AI
- CBS News Rots Away Before Our Eyes
- Chinese Social Media and Gen Z
- Special Solidarity in Indiana
- NYT Covers No Kings (Barely)
- Defunding Local Public Stations
- UK: Why and How Opinion Journalism Stinks
- Nostalgic for AI Slop
What Were America’s Journalists Thinking?
By Mark Jacob
Stop the Presses
Even though Trump says it should be illegal for news networks to criticize him, let’s keep avoiding the obvious fact that he’s building a dictatorship. After all, if the news gets too negative, that would be bad for engagement.
Unions Sue Feds Over Speech-Based Surveillance
By Matt Bracken
FedScoop
A trio of labor unions is suing the Departments of State and Homeland Security over what they say is an interagency technology surveillance program that targets citizens and noncitizens with viewpoints that differ from the Trump administration and effectively suppresses their speech online.
Women Are Wary of AI
By Andi Zeisler
Salon
The encouragement toward more widespread adoption ignores one reason women might be side-eyeing AI omnipresence: The virtual revolution has repeatedly made them targets of real-world aggression.
CBS News Rots Away Before Our Eyes
By Justin Baragona
Independent
John Dickerson revealed Monday that he was not only leaving the weeknight news broadcast within the next two months but that his time at the Tiffany Network was coming to an end after 16 years. Dickerson’s departure comes as Bari Weiss, the network’s new “anti-woke” editor-in-chief, has been openly looking to revamp CBS News’ perennially third-place evening program.
Chinese Social Media and Gen Z
By Yun Sheng
London Review of Books
Chinese Gen Z-ers have a digital solution for every mental health issue. They talk to AI chatbots about their frustrations and negative feelings. They find loving virtual boyfriends and girlfriends in video games.
Special Solidarity in Indiana
By Kevin Gosztola
The Dissenter
Indiana University Media School administrators shut down printing of the school’s student newspaper after firing the newspaper’s chief adviser. The brazen act of censorship sparked widespread media coverage and a show of solidarity from student journalists at Purdue University, which is the school’s rival.
NYT Covers No Kings (Barely)
By Riddhi Setty
Columbia Journalism Review
Media critics called out the conspicuous absence of a lead story covering the historic No Kings demonstrations in the Sunday New York Times October 19, which ran two small images of the protests below the fold, along with a teaser to the story on page A23.
Defunding Local Public Stations
By Amy Kroin
Free Press
A New York Times analysis found that 245 stations in rural communities were at risk of closure. Rural stations were far more dependent on CPB funding than many urban stations. At a time when media consolidation has decimated local news, public-media stations are often the only source of local journalism.
UK: Why and How Opinion Journalism Stinks
By Juliet Jacques
Novara Media
By 2025, most of the millennial writers who emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s could no longer be found in legacy media, exhausted by the low pay and constant pressure to mine their own lives for material, or alienated by editorial lines taken on the 2019 election, Palestine or trans rights.
Nostalgic for AI Slop
By Sarah Krichel
The Tyee
The unceremonious launch and use of a tool that lets us hand over our faces and voices to generative AI with the toggle of a button — agreeing to terms and conditions we likely don’t understand — seems to mark a shift away from any principles we once held around how we use generative AI, and how it, as a result, uses us.
