Bruh, this is some story

Media statistic of the week

Ever wondered how Gen Z and millennials pay for or donate to news? Check out this new report.

It’s based on a representative sample of nearly 6,000 news consumers 16 to 40 years old, and is part of a series of studies of these audiences conducted by the Media Insight Project.

Here’s a snippet from the report’s findings:

“51% of Gen Z (16- to 24-year-olds) pay for or donate to news, and that number rises to 63% among younger Millennials (25- to 31-year-olds) and to 67% among older Millennials (32- to 40-year-olds). The numbers suggest a real potential for sustainable revenue — if news organizations, whether legacy or start-up, can create content Millennials and Gen Zers find valuable.”

This past week in the media industry

The AI update you’ve been waiting for

If you browse the news these days, you’re likely to come across tons of reporting on how AI is impacting all industries—but especially media and communications. Here’s a roundup of the latest on AI this week:

Columbia Journalism Review’s Amanda Darrach caught up with Fred Ritchin, former photo editor at the New York Times, to find out how AI is threatening photojournalism.?

Here’s a snippet of what Ritchin had to say: “The other thing to add to the puzzle is, if you start making millions of synthetic images, then the new AI will be training on those images as well. The concept of history will become more and more distorted, because they’ll be training on the images that are not made by cameras, but made according to the way people want to see the world. What happens if people have five million images of World War II according to the way they want the war to look, and they look like photographs, so that’s what the AI is going to be training on in the future?”

WIRED transparently published how they plan to use—and not use—AI technology.?

Some of the key points? WIRED will not publish stories with text generated or edited by AI but they may try using AI to suggest headlines or text for short social media posts.?

The manifesto was met with a lot of praise from those in the journalism community.

“It's smart of @WIRED to publish their standards on the use of generative AI tools in the newsroom. Other newsrooms should follow their lead. Even better, I think they've made the right choices,” tweets Marc Lajoie.?

“This is a superb set of guidelines for any quality publishers considering using AI for content creation, courtesy @WIRED. That said, this will necessarily be a living document as AI products and quality evolve,” adds Vivian Schiller.

“AI is good, but AI is bad at writing,” tweets. Parker Hall

But not from all.

“Most mediatypes are praising this. Hence I have to go the opposite route: this is premature and most performative,” tweets Rafat Ali.

Interesting news out of CNET.?

“Following monthslong questions about how CNET uses artificial intelligence tools, longtime CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo will step down from her role and take on a new job: senior vice president of AI content strategy and editor-at-large, according to an internal draft memo,” reports The Verge’s Mia Sato.??

Sato also recently reported on layoffs at CNET.?

“If anything, cnet is only getting more serious about AI-generated content,” tweets Jacob Kastrenakes.?

“Put a fork in it. CNET - or at least the CNET that once was - is gone,” adds Charles Cooper.?

Bruh.

Dallas Morning News reporter Meghan Mangrum was fired by the outlet for calling Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson “bruh” in a tweet.

D Magazine’s Tim Rogers shares more:?

“[Mangrum] saw that Mayor Eric Johnson had criticized local media for, in his view, not fully reporting the good news about Dallas’ crime numbers dropping for the second consecutive year. The mayor opined that reporters were interested only in bad news.

In a tweet that would change the trajectory of her career, Mangrum wrote the following: “Bruh, national news is always going to chase the trend. Cultivate relationships with quality local news partnerships.”

She was fired a few days later and told she’d violated the paper’s social media policy.

“Mangrum got an email from an editor saying her presence was requested at a Monday meeting. An HR rep got looped in. And that’s how Mangrum found herself getting grilled by the paper’s executive editor, Katrice Hardy. According to Mangrum, Hardy, who is Black, asked her if she would have used the word ‘bruh’ if the mayor were White. Mangrum, who is White, said yes. Her Twitter feed is littered with the word “bruh” directed at all sorts of accounts, including those belonging to hockey fans and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife,” Rogers writes.

Many journalists took to Twitter to lament the publication’s decision.

“Something I always found frustrating about DMN's social media policy was how often it was enforced in situations that came down to a (largely generational) lack of understanding of how ppl use social now + never when it actually should have been applied,” Mallorie Sullivan tweets.

“While I don't care much about one rabble-rousing reporter, nobody with middle-school or high-school kids these days thinks "bruh" is racist. That term is used daily (hourly, minute-ly) without regard to race,” adds Ross Kaminsky.?

“Seems like this will not make it easier to recruit young journalists,” tweets the author of the piece Tim Rogers.?

“Bruh, this is some story,” adds Greg Rajan.

The latest at Fox News?

Hundreds of pages of testimony, private text messages and emails from top Fox News journalists and executives were made public yesterday, “adding to the trove of documents that show a network in crisis after it alienated core viewers by reporting accurately on the results of the 2020 presidential election,” reports Jane Timm, Dareh Gregorian and Amanda Terkel for MSNBC.?

“A judge unsealed the documents, along with parts of some employee depositions, as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News,” they report.

One of the more uh, interesting, texts released?

"We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait," Tucker Carlson texted an unidentified person. "I hate him passionately. ... I can’t handle much more of this.”

The story is a lot more in-depth—get all the details here.

‘An insane overreach’

Oh boy, the Wall Street Journal’s Ryan Tracy just broke some major news about the FTC and Twitter. Check it out:

“The Federal Trade Commission has demanded Twitter Inc. turn over internal communications related to owner Elon Musk, as well as detailed information about layoffs—citing concerns that staff reductions could compromise the company’s ability to protect users, documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal show.

In 12 letters sent to Twitter and its lawyers since Mr. Musk’s Oct. 27 takeover, the FTC also asked the company to “identify all journalists” granted access to company records and to provide information about the launch of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service, the documents show.”

“ah, there’s the other shoe,” tweets Whet Moser.?

“Which journalists a company or its executives talk to is not remotely the government’s business. This is an insane overreach,” adds Matt Taibbi.

A few more

• The Washington Post and Headspace have teamed up to give the publication’s new subscribers access to the science-backed mindfulness and meditation content app’s “deep library of content.” Cool partnership! The Post also launched its first in-house game, reports Digiday’s Alexander Lee. “On the Record” is a Sporcle-esque news quiz that tests readers’ knowledge of the week’s top stories.
• The former executives in charge of The Week magazine are launching a new subscription-based climate media company called Heatmap News, according to Sara Fischer from Axios. “It aims to publish newsletters and website articles about climate change for a high-level audience that ranges from those who need climate coverage to do their jobs to general consumers who are passionate about the topic,” Fischer writes.
• TikTok has introduced a new way for creators to make money from the app—it’s called Series. “Series allows eligible creators to post Collections of premium content—a group of up to 80 videos, each of which can be up to 20 minutes long—behind a paywall,” reports Christianna Silva for Mashable.
• Vox is making some changes. “Vox announced it will retire the branding for Recode and The Goods. You can still find all the same great work by the same reporters you know and love via Vox’s technology section for Recode, and Vox’s culture and money sections for The Goods,” the outlet writes. “End of an era,” tweets Kevin Raposo.?
• SiriusXM is eliminating 475 jobs (about 8% of its headcount) due to “economic uncertainty and a need to operate with ‘greater agility and efficiency.’” Variety’s Todd Spangler has more details.?
• The reason behind major social media platforms like Meta and Twitter charging for features like verification? Big Technology’s Alex Kantrowitz explains: “These benefits appeal more to professional creators than amateurs, and they coincide with social media’s swift move away from the latter. After long relying on ordinary users for content, social media companies are giving up on them. Regular people either post too infrequently, are too boring, or both. And now they’re being pushed aside.”
• Is there a future for video games journalism? Nieman Lab’s Luke Winkie explores the answer to this question.
• “YouTube will ease its restrictions on swearing in videos after an update it rolled out in November sparked backlash from several creators, and the company will be reviewing videos that had their monetization affected by the policy,” reports Mitchell Clark for The Verge.

From the Muck Rack team

PR coach Michael Smart analyzed the best 100 pitches over the last three years that earned major coverage, from placements in the News York Times, major market TV stations, trade outlets, podcasts and more.

We teamed up with Michael for a Muck Rack webinar where he presented his findings and showed word-for-word examples of successful email pitches, explained why they did so well and provided actionable tips on how you can send more successful email pitches.?

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from Michael's analysis of the most successful pitches, including the sweet spot for pitch length and when to deviate from conventional wisdom.

Check out the on-demand webinar and download the ebook.