Tuesday 28th March: We need an army of internet culture correspondents

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We need an army of internet culture correspondents

Chris has taken to the Media Voices website to express his disquiet about the state of reporting surrounding the coming tsunami of AI generated disinformation. His worry is that while tech journalists can tell us how AI creates disinformation, what we really need is a legion of specialist internet culture reporters to tell us why it is being created.

The trigger for Chris seems to have been a picture of The Pope in a big white coat, or maybe it was scenes of Trump getting arrested, or it might have been those fake Oregon Earthquake shots. Actually, that's the point, there's so much fake stuff out there and all of it needs debunking.

Chris says specialist reporters will be required to explain the context behind AI fakes. "Even when the created image is trivial in its importance it will be incumbent upon newspapers to debunk them to build up trust in their capabilities, so that when something seismic happens the public knows where to turn to check if photos and videos of the event are real."

UK’s regional newspapers fight for survival in a digital world

If you're looking for a cheery read this morning, maybe skip this from the Guardian. At least numbers like 'in the past decade about 300 local newspapers have shut'. Douglas McCabe from Enders Analysis doesn't offer much cheer either, but there is a nice statement about all the great things Reach is doing regionally (if you skip past the 600 redundancies) and there is actually some encouragement from Manchester Mill's Joshi Herrmann confirming that he still sees a 'massive demand for high-quality journalism'.

Newsletter publishers say they see uptick in ad revenue

None of six newsletter companies spoken to by Digiday for this mini 'state of the sector' report have suffered layoffs since the economic downturn began in the second half of last year; most are planing to grow their teams. Advertising revenue at 1440, The Gist, Front Office Sports and Puck is up this quarter and some have brought in new advertisers this year. “E-newsletters are relatively inexpensive, trackable and provide advertisers with a great deal of flexibility," said Katie Driggs, media director at ad agency FerebeeLane.

Publishers demand advertisers stop harvesting their data and IP

Feels like forever since I've read anything about third-party cookies, but of course it's not over. And Richard Reeves, president of the AOP, looks set to ignite a whole new front in the battle for control of the post-cookie world. He's issued an open letter urging dodgy advertisers and agencies to stop scraping publisher sites, writing: "Nefarious first-party data extraction amounts to theft of publishers’ intellectual property (IP), with negative impacts extending across publishers, advertisers, and agencies." Ooft.

More from Media Voices

Listen again: AOP CEO Richard Reeves on how publishers are addressing diversity and inclusion

While we're taking a break, why not listen to some classic episodes? In this episode we hear from Richard Reeves, CEO of the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) . He talks to us about the issues and roadblocks surrounding diversity and inclusion efforts in media. He discussed initiatives publishers are using to improve DE&I, problems of retention, and how ageism impacts women particularly.