The internet isn’t eternal
The Muck Rack Weekly newsletter includes some of the most talked about stories in the journalism and public relations communities over the past week, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of Muck Rack.
Media statistic of the week
According to a new fact sheet by Dr. Richard Fletcher, Director of Research at Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, by the end of 2023, 48% of the most widely used news websites across ten countries were blocking OpenAI’s crawlers , while only 24% of the sites were blocking Google’s AI crawler.?
“The headline figures mask very large differences by country,” Reuters Institute notes. “The proportion of top online news websites blocking @OpenAI ranged from 79% in the US, to just 20% in Mexico and Poland…In general, outlets in the Global North were more likely to be blocking than those in the Global South.”?
This past week in the media industry?
Disappearing digital news sites
Last week, Alexander Saeedy and Alexandra Bruell of The Wall Street Journal broke the news that digital media company Vice Media will stop publishing on Vice.com and plans to cut hundreds of jobs following a failed effort by owner Fortress Investment Group to sell the digital publisher and its brands. As Christopher Calnan says, “Ugh.”
What happened? At Defector, Chris Thompson put it this way: Vice's Avaricious Stewards Finally Succeeded At Bleeding It Dry .
“Former VICE editor here, Heartily co-signing most of this piece,” Danielle Riendeau said of Thompson’s piece, “*except the point about journalists being able to make a living wage if we just band together for subscription models (glad for those who CAN do it, but that'll only ever be a tiny fraction)*”
Overall, though, Sharon Waxman says, “This is a scorching, blazingly well written flame-throw at the folly of #Vice by Chris @MadBastardsAll Thompson who I do not know; humble bow to the combo of fury, righteous rage and grasp of the English language.”
Meanwhile, Scott Nover spoke with Vice journalists who were scrambling to download PDFs of their articles and save links on public archive sites, just in case the content on the Vice website gets erased.?
He reminds us, “The internet isn't eternal; in fact, journalists live in fear of not only losing their jobs, but also losing access to their work. For @Slate, I wrote about what happens when digital news sites are disappeared—and why it never needs to be this way.”
Read Nover at Slate on Why Sites Like Gawker and the Messenger Go Blank—and Why It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way .?
Jill Lawrence dubs it a “Good piece on a big problem but doesn’t go back far enough. I’d love to see restoration of the late great politicsdaily.com , wiped off the web in 2011 when AOL bought Huffington Post.”
On the local news front
The hits keep coming. Sara Fischer broke the news at Axios that Washington NPR affiliate WAMU plans to lay off 15 staffers and shut down local news site DCist to focus on audio. Celeste Headlee notices, “Leaders at WAMU chose to give an embargoed interview to Axios about the layoffs before they notified staff. Which is an interesting choice.”
Robinson Meyer says, “This is a catastrophe for DC. Between this and the Post’s decision to focus on national news, we have almost nowhere to get local news.”
领英推荐
One organization working to strengthen local news is Press Forward , which will be investing more than half a billion dollars to shore up local newsrooms, close gaps in journalism coverage, scale the needed infrastructure and more.?
For Columbia Journalism Review, Feven Merid and Ayodeji Rotinwa spoke with Dale Anglin, who was recently named to lead the organization, A new leader for Press Forward, at a pivotal moment for journalism? .
“It is time for us to declare in local news that the predominant business model is nonprofit or little profit.” -@jpalfrey,” Peri Strathearn quotes from the piece, adding, “I'm gonna keep on banging this drum. Journalism is a community service & doesn't lend itself to a for-profit model.”
Sophie Culpepper of Nieman Lab has the latest as Press Forward adds 11 new local chapters bringing the total number of local chapters throughout the country to 17.
And for The Boston Globe, Kate Tuttle spoke with Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy about their new book, “What Works in Community News.” They offer some hope for the survival of local news coverage .
AI goes to Hollywood
The Hollywood Reporter had a pair of stories last week about OpenAI’s text-to-video system Sora and its potential impact on the entertainment industry. Winston Cho set the stage with his piece, AI’s New Job? All-Purpose Hollywood Crewmember .
“During the next three years, it is estimated that nearly 204,000 positions will be adversely affected,” Cho writes. “Sound engineers, voice actors and workers in VFX and other postproduction jobs were identified as vulnerable,” according to a study published in January.
And Katie Kilkenny reported that Tyler Perry has put his $800M studio expansion on hold after seeing OpenAI’s Sora, warning, “Jobs are going to be lost.”
Kilkenny says, “Tyler Perry wants to raise the alarm about AI developments and their potential impact on Hollywood jobs: ‘There’s got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us.’”
“Just reading this interview with Perry, here are a few people who would likely lose their jobs to AI: -makeup artists -set designers -location scouts -gaffers -key grips -construction workers Just to name a few,” notes Leigh Giangreco .
Grrr
We’ll leave you this week with what Roben Farzad calls a “vital read,” by Amie Parnes for Vanity Fair, How Jimmy Finkelstein Wooed Me to The Messenger-And Left Me High and Dry .?
As Ben Mullin says, “Amie Parnes, a former staffer at The Messenger, tells her story, and it’s searing.” Or as Nicholas Riccardi puts it, “Grrr.”
To sum up, “This story made me nauseous. It is also a must-read,” tweets Kate Bennett , who adds, “@amieparnes, hang in there; the cavalry is coming.”
More notable media stories
From the Muck Rack Team
As the countdown to the anticipated SXSW conference begins, we are thrilled to announce Muck Rack’s continued partnership with the conference for the third consecutive year. Once again, Muck Rack proudly serves as the official sponsor of the SXSW press suite, located at the Austin Convention Center on the 4th floor, Room 14. Find out more here .