February 27, 2024

• Digital media giants enter survival mode (Axios) / ‘Someone is going to build a great media company out of the ashes of the last two months. The amount of talent on the market right now is unreal’ (Ben Mullin) / Kara Swisher warns news organizations need to ‘reinvent’ themselves amid existential crisis (CNN)

• As Sports Illustrated sputters, Authentic Brands parties on (Washington Post) 

• Supreme Court casts doubt on efforts in Florida, Texas to regulate social media (Associated Press) / All the social media cases in front of the Supreme Court this term (Columbia Journalism Review) 

• OpenAI says New York Times 'hacked' ChatGPT to build copyright lawsuit (Reuters) / How AI is already transforming the news business (POLITICO) / Google is paying publishers to test an unreleased gen AI platform (AdWeek) / Tumblr and Wordpress to sell users’ data to train AI tools (404Media) 

• Trump pays $392k in legal fees to New York Times after failed lawsuit over disclosure of his tax documents (CNN)

• CBS News returns confidential files of reporter covering Hunter Biden laptop scandal (New York Post) 

• More crime and conservatism: How new owners are changing 'The Baltimore Sun' (NPR) 

• Union lobbies WAMU’s Board to make archives of recently shuttered website DCist.com publicly available (WeMakeWAMU) / 'It’s a matter of democracy’ (WeMakeWAMU)

• Law360 staffers vote to strike (Talking Biz News) 

• Investigative journalist Julia Angwin launches Proof News, a nonprofit journalism studio that aims to address the purpose of journalism (Proof News)

• Julia Johnson is now a Senate reporter for Fox News Digital. She previously was a politics reporter at the Washington Examiner (POLITICO) / Colorado’s Post Independent hires new editor, Claudia Perez Rivas (Post Independent) / Will Tilghman joins New York Times Cooking as a video journalist (New York Times) 

• CNN pays Don Lemon $24.5 million to settle anchor's network ouster (The Wrap) 

• Molly Ringwald, Dulé Hill and ‘Ted Lasso’s’ Brendan Hunt among actors headed to DC for White House Correspondents’ dinner weekend (The Hill) 

Press Freedom

• An Iowa reporter was refused legislature access for 5 years — a frightening denial of press freedom (Poynter) 

• Mexican president's dox of journalist shows perils of reporting in country (Axios) 

• ​​Pakistani journalist Asad Ali Toor arrested after responding to summons for questioning (Committee to Protect Journalists) / Pakistan arrests two journalists as X remains restricted for 10 days (Voice of America) 

Election 2024: Questions to inform your coverage

“Don’t spend too much time asking voters who they think will handle the economy better. Ground stories in specific challenges candidates and the country will face: Will a candidate extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts? How will they invest in a future affected by AI? Does the COVID-19 generational learning loss matter to American productivity? How will tight immigration laws affect inflation? Are Medicare and Social Security going bankrupt? What are the options?”

-- John Dickerson, CBS News Prime Time anchor, on advice to journalists covering the presidential campaign in 2024 (The Journalist’s Resource)

Join us for Career Day at the National Press Club

The 2024 Career Day at the National Press Club will be held in-person from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday, March 22, 2024. Participants will have direct access to top recruiters as well as representatives from journalism programs and communication groups. We’re also offering free professional headshots and career-focused training sessions.

All career stages are encouraged to join. Whether you make a day of it or spend only an hour, get your ticket to grow your network and explore your career options:

Thank you to our exhibitors who will be recruiting at Career Day

• American Chemical Society
• American University School of Communication
• The Associated Press
• The Baltimore Banner
• Capital Gazette
• Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies
• Missouri School of Journalism
• Nexstar Media Group
• Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland
• The Washington Post

Click here to see the full agenda, as well as the growing list of exhibitors.  

Resources

• An illustrated guide to using unnamed sources in your reporting (Poynter) 
• How to identify and investigate AI audio deepfakes, a major 2024 election threat (Global Investigative Journalism Network)
• Our toolkit to cover Latino communities (RJI) / Reliable sources for data on Latino communities and for Spanish-speaking journalists (RJI)

This newsletter is written & edited by the National Press Club Journalism Institute staff: Beth Francesco, Bara Vaida, and Holly Butcher Grant. Send us your questions and suggestions for topics to cover.

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