Mather Report - David Clinch

Happy Saturday! I am a day late this week as I was attending the #ONA23 conference in Philadelphia.

It was so wonderful to see so many friends there and to meet new friends. It is encouraging to know that so many great people are working on real solutions and strategies to secure the future of original local journalism.

I was also touched by the gathering to honour the memory of our beautiful friend Mandy Jenkins. Thank-you Jim Brady Duc Luu and Marc Lavallee for hosting us.

It was great to connect with some of the companies we work with that use technology, including AI, in ways that support journalism, but never replace it. Lots of industry leaders expressed excitement at the news of Mather adding Sophi by Mather Economics to the family.

If you see articles about?#MediaRevenue,?AI in newsrooms, or the impact of local journalism, please let me know so I can include them in this roundup.

Here is this week's curated selection of?#MediaRevenue?news

-->

"Mather Economics, a global subscription and revenue management company, has acquired the artificial intelligence-based content curation and analytics platform Sophi Inc. from The Globe and Mail." Globe and Mail and Axios.

--

"New York Times, CNN and Australia’s ABC block OpenAI’s GPTBot web crawler from accessing content." Guardian.

--

"AI Chatbots Help Web Content Farms Copy Work From Top Publishers, Report Says. NewsGuard identified?37 websites that have posted?articles containing text, photos and quotes identical to pieces from major news outlets." Bloomberg.

--

"What is the value of news on social media, search, and other platforms that freely aggregate headlines, snippets and even photos so that most people never even feel the need to click through to read a whole story?? This question is at the heart of recent efforts around the world to level the playing field between technology platforms and news organizations in order to make Big Tech firms pay for the news they use." Tech Policy Press. Courtney Radsch, PhD

--

"A group of prominent media, tech and research executives have raised nearly $3 million to launch an independent policy research center focused on addressing global internet issues, such as disinformation, algorithmic accountability, and the economic health of the news industry. While the Center for News, Technology & Innovation (CNTI) is not designed to lobby or advocate on behalf of specific policy proposals, it does hope to influence future internet policy toward maintaining an open internet and an independent press." Axios.

--

"There has been a “substantial” increase in philanthropic spending for journalism over the past five years, particularly outlets that serve poor and minority communities, a report issued on Thursday said — but journalists need to tighten ethical rules that govern the new spending, it recommended." AP.

--

"Local journalism is in crisis. Microsoft released a comprehensive guidebook based on our learnings from partnering with local news organizations to help the industry reach a more economically sustainable future." Microsoft On the Issues - Blog. Ginny Badanes Matthew Masterson

--

"Texas Tribune holds first layoffs in 14-year history. CEO Sonal Shah told staff that 2023 has been uniquely challenging for the outlet, which many have come to see as a model for nonprofit journalism" Poynter.

--

"Cox Media Group is the latest local broadcaster to launch a hyper-local streaming service —"Neighborhood TV" follows Sinclair's STIRR (2019) and Hearst's "Very Local" (2021)" Axios.

--

"Investment firm Francisco Partners has agreed to acquire The Weather Company assets, including the popular Weather dot com platform, from International Business Machines for an undisclosed sum." WSJ.

--

"X/Twitter, is planning a major change in how news articles appear on the service, stripping out the headline and other text so that tweets with links display only an article’s lead image, according to material viewed by Fortune." Fortune.

--

"The top editor at one of G/O Media’s most famous properties has quit, Confider has learned, as staffers say CEO Jim Spanfeller has become unhinged and impossible to work for. Jezebel editor-in-chief Laura Bassett resigned from her post on Friday, becoming the seventh EIC in a portfolio of ten sites to quit G/O over the last eight months—the second EIC in as many weeks." The Daily Beast.

--

"The former owners of The Daily Telegraph have lined up hundreds of millions of pounds from Middle Eastern investors in a bid to wrest back control of the newspaper from Britain's biggest high street bank." Sky News.

--

"CNN+ may not have worked, but perhaps CNN on Max will. Warner Bros. Discovery is planning to launch new original programs from CNN that will stream on its Max streaming service, according to three people familiar with the matter. Jim Sciutto, Bianna Golodryga, Rahel Solomon and Christiane Amanpour are among the CNN journalists who have been tapped to take part in the effort, according to two of these people." Variety.

--

"The former New York Times and BBC chief Mark Thompson is a leading candidate to lead CNN, according to people familiar with the conversations on both sides of the Atlantic. Thompson, who left the Times in 2020 after 8 years, is among a group of candidates in the mix for the job, three people familiar with the recruiting process told Semafor." Ben Smith - Semafor.

--