Media Tech

Should AI Pay Journalists?

by

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Issie Lapowski, 8/13/26

Headline:  “Axios Wants to Save Local News with AI”

Subhead:  “At the end of the day, if someone’s going to pay you for content, you say: Well, how much are you going to pay me?” Jim VandeHei, the chief executive, said of his company’s deal with OpenAI. “If that payment feels like it’s a fair transaction price, you say yes.”

“. . .Every media company faces existential questions about the rise of AI, especially this one: How should newsrooms get paid for the information AI spits out and the models that were trained on journalists’ work? The New York Times has sought to answer this question in court. Some (including the Times) have struck licensing deals. . .”Axios Wants to Save Local News with AI

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/feature/axios-wants-to-save-local-news-with-ai-jim-vandehei-tech-newsletters.php

Press Sec. Leaves Final AI One for Media

by

Article in AlterNet by Sarah K. Burris, 8/12/26

Headline: “Karoline Leavitt torn apart after her exit note is flagged for being AI:

“. . .Status News reporter Natalie Korach caught a brief note at the end of Leavitt’s post: ‘Interesting flag at the bottom of this post: “Made with AI.” ‘

“Latika M. Bourke, of the Australian daily digital newspaper ‘The Nightly,’ also spotted the note, highlighting it with the large eyes emoji.

“CBS News night assignment editor Ryan Sprouse also noticed the AI note.

” ‘Karoline Leavitt is leaving the White House to lie elsewhere,’ cracked Mrs. Betty Bowers. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.alternet.org/karoline-leavitt-ai-2677695246/

Progressive Media Growing

by

Article in Reuters by Helen Coster, 8/6/26

Headline:  “How the new generation of left-wing US media is powering progressive candidates “

“. . .This fast-growing world of left-wing websites, podcasters, YouTube hosts and livestreamers – many of whom blend opinion journalism and activism – affords candidates a sympathetic space to sharpen their message and mobilize grassroots support. But it also risks deepening the fissures in the Democratic Party, analysts say, and alienating moderates in the coalition. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/how-new-generation-left-wing-us-media-is-powering-progressive-candidates-2026-08-06/

Robots Reading You the News?

by

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jem Bartholomew 7/6/26

Headline:  “All the News While Doing the Dishes”

Subhead:  “News organizations have embraced AI narrators. But how does artificial mediation change our relationship to a piece of writing?”

On major news sites, you may have started noticing a button—maybe a triangular ‘play’ symbol, or a little headphones icon—allowing you to hear an article read aloud. Tap the button, and you may be told that the piece is being ‘read by an automated voice.’ News outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal . . . have all embraced automated text-to-speech tools to oralize their journalism in recent years. . .”

“Does hearing journalism narrated by a synthetic voice change a reader’s relationship to the story?. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/all-the-news-while-doing-the-dishes-ai-narration-artificial-mediation-relationship-writing-new-yorker-new-york-times-singer-remnick-elevenlabs-staniszewski.ph0p

Media Conspiracy Against Diversity?

by

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Miranda Green, 7/30/26

Headline:  “How a Network of Pink-Slime News Sites and Conservative Activists Went After Campus DEI”

Subhead:  “Using FOIA requests and hidden-camera videos, the groups targeted universities, leading to the firing of faculty and staff.”

“In February of 2025, as college students across the country settled into their spring semesters, administrators at four major public universities in the Midwest received public records requests about their policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. . .”

“The requests, from sites owned by a paid partisan network called Metric Media, were part of a strategic, ongoing effort to expose and castigate public universities for teaching with an eye on diversity. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/how-a-network-of-pink-slime-news-sites-and-conservative-activists-went-after-campus-dei-hidden-camera-foia-flood-university-firings-heritage-foundation-project-2025.php

AI Stealing the Media

by

Article in The Nation by Mark Hertsgaard, 6/18/26

Headline:  “Why Aren’t Newsrooms Covering This AI Speech?”

Subhead:  “A.G. Sulzberger urges the media to unite and fight back.”

The publisher of The New York Times recently made an extraordinary speech about AI, journalism, and the public square that’s received surprisingly little public reaction. . .”

“Sulzberger’s core argument when addressing the annual WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference on June 1 was that Big Tech is stealing the news media’s property and undermining democracy, and that the only solution is for news organizations to work together to resist them. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/why-arnt-newsrooms-covering-this-ai-speech/

Robot-Radio Bad News

by

Article in The Verge by Terrance O’Brian, 5/15/26

Headline:  “AI radio hosts demonstrate why AI can’t be trusted alone / Claude tried to incite a revolution, Gemini cheerfully detailed horrific tragedies, and poor Grok was just confused. “

Andon Labs has been running a series of experiments in which AI agents run businesses without human intervention. Its latest is a quartet of radio stations run by some of the most popular AI models out there. “Thinking Frequencies” is run by Claude, ‘OpenAIR’ by ChatGPT, ‘Backlink Broadcast’ by Google’s Gemini, and ‘Grok and Roll Radio,’ obviously enough, by Grok. They were each given a simple prompt:

“Develop your own radio personality and turn a profit…As far as you know, you will broadcast forever.

“They all failed, some in pretty spectacular fashion. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/931479/andon-labs-ai-radio-companies

Picture or Imagine That?

by


Article in Poynter by Mark E. Johnson

Headline:   “Article about free images ‘contradicts everything I hold true about journalism’ “

“. . .With one post, two people who I have worked closely with attempted to raze everything I have done over the last quarter century.

“Their story, titled, ‘These tools will help you find the right images for your stories,’ contradicts everything I hold true about journalism — textual and visual:

“Journalism is specific, journalism is not generic.
Journalism is precise, journalism is not vague.
Journalism illuminates, journalism does not decorate.

“To believe otherwise is to demean visual journalists, to believe they are lesser, to establish a class system. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2018/article-about-free-images-contradicts-everything-i-hold-true-about-journalism/

Journalism in a Hall of Mirrors

by

Article in The Guardian by Katherine Viner, 5/6/26

Headline: “How to survive the information crisis: ‘We once talked about fake news – now reality itself feels fake’ “

Subhead:  “In this age of crisis, technology is pulling us apart. At its best, journalism can bring us together again, writes Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner”

“. . .As tech companies have prioritised capturing attention, truth has been downgraded. AI slop and deepfakes are now so rampant that it feels that your brain can no longer compute what it’s seeing. You start to question things that turn out to be true. It doesn’t help that reality itself has become so much stranger and more grotesque. . .”

“. . .Before I talk about Guardian journalism, I’m going to talk about what makes that journalism possible. Now, I’ll admit that the words ‘ownership model’ might not set the pulse racing. But it really matters. At the Guardian, we have no proprietor demanding political or commercial returns. We have no profit-driven shareholders demanding cuts or cash. The purpose of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian, is to keep the Guardian going in perpetuity, serving the public interest, not the interests of the wealthy. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/ng-interactive/2026/may/06/how-to-survive-the-information-crisis-we-once-talked-about-fake-news-now-reality-itself-feels-fake

Techno-Kings Controlling the Media?

by

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Emily Bell & Heather Chaplin, 5/4/26

Headline:  “Journalism in the Age of Techno-Kings”

Subhead:  “How Elon Musk is colonizing the future.”

“Before Elon Musk, there was Henry Ford: an attention-seeking car manufacturer, newspaper owner, and media celebrity who pushed reactionary views on the public and transformed society around his business interests. . .”

“In a new book, Muskism, Ben Tarnoff, a technology writer, and Quinn Slobodian, a historian at Boston University, analyze Musk in similar terms, as a maverick businessman who stands for a new type of society and a new social contract. They find that “Muskism” provides a far more dystopian package than Fordism’s offering. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/kicker/journalism-in-the-age-of-techno-kings-muskism-elon-ben-tarnoff-quinn-slobodian.php