We keep an eye out for the most interesting stories about Labby subjects: digital media, startups, the web, journalism, strategy, and more. Here’s some of what we’ve seen lately.
May 25, 2023
“We had a jobs team, we had a needs team, we had a financial support team, a moral support team,” said reporter Kati Kokal, who created an aid network for laid-off journalists. “The moral support team ended up starting a letter-writing campaign with encouraging notes, with Starbucks gift cards and things like that.” —SC
Poynter / Omar Gallaga
/ May 25In general, if you don’t want OpenAI to save your chats and use them to further train those language models, there’s a “chat history and model training” option you can manually disable. Though the app initially lacked this option, the option to disable the feature was added in an update — but to work, you’ll need to ensure the option is off on all devices you use to talk to ChatGPT. —
The Washington Post / Chris Velazco
/ May 25“There is no television station devoted to Mercer Island issues, and the shrunken Mercer Island Reporter, the longtime local newspaper, is down to 1,600 paying subscribers for its print edition. Even so, the 25,000 people on this six-square-mile crescent of land remain hungry for information about their community. As elsewhere, the local media void is being filled by residents sharing information online, particularly over the platform Nextdoor, which aims to be at the center of all things hyperlocal.” —SC
The Atlantic / Eli Sanders
/ May 25May 24, 2023
More in the job description
here.
—SS“The sheer volume of decisions and the breakneck pace at which they’re released has created a pretty predictable mode for news coverage.” —SS
Slate Magazine / Jay Willis
/ May 24“In committee meetings, her public remarks have been limited and she is always surrounded by staff. They often form a human barrier between her and the press corps, with one staffer pushing her wheelchair while others shout at photographers to move out of the way.” —
Los Angeles Times / Kent Nishimura
/ May 24“The AI Hub will spearhead The Post’s experimentation, collaboration, and proof-of-concept AI initiatives company-wide. It is also accountable for coordinating efforts and ensuring alignment of our AI projects with the strategies, guardrails, and priorities established by the AI Taskforce, while also focusing on future innovation.” —SS
The money from disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Bankman-Fried, roughly $10 million, will be placed returned to his creditors at the direction of the authorities, the news outlet said. New investors in Semafor include the Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, owner of the Middle East news website Al-Monitor Jorge Paulo Lemann, private equity giant Jamal Daniel, and a network of business leaders founded by Charles Koch. —
New York Times / Benjamin Mullin
/ May 24Founded in 2017, the Lebanon-based news site publishes up to eight articles, videos, and social media-first stories a day with a core team of 20. —
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Laura Oliver
/ May 24“What was presented to me as the job and what the job was was two entirely different things. I was told that this was going to be long-form journalism and all it was was aggregated content and clickbait, and to me, that’s not journalism.” (We
wrote about their launch last week.)
—SSThe Daily Beast / Corbin Bolies
/ May 24
