In the 1980s, many cash-flush news organizations employed a public editor specifically to build and foster trust between readers and journalists. These days, just two news organizations in the United States — NPR and PBS — still appear to employ a public editor. So, is it time for more news organizations to consider hiring ombudspersons to help rebuild trust in the media — one community at a time? more

AI is now powering an upheaval of the search economy that could devastate news publishers desperately needing good news. For the first time since it became the world’s largest search engine in 2000, Google’s dominance in the search market is facing a serious threat. One of the challengers, Perplexity, shoots back short, AI-generated responses to direct questions. Is it perfect? No. Is it pretty useful? Of course. But it comes at a terrible cost to publishers. more

Are AI-powered chatbots covered under fair use laws, or are they stealing copyrighted content at the expense of the newsrooms that paid to produce it? Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, has been partnering with Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal on legislation that would help news organizations grapple with quick-moving changes in the tech world. more

When I was asked to write some predictions for the upcoming year in journalism, the name Clifford Stoll immediately began ping-ponging around my brain. Stoll, an astronomer, systems manager and professor, wrote an infamous column in Newsweek in 1995 where he predicted the internet would have no impact on newspapers and called the then-emerging worldwide web a “trendy and oversold community.” more

Are we all going to be replaced by computers? There's an understandable fear of artificial intelligence in journalism, with computers quickly able to do many of the basic writing tasks that until recently were the exclusive domain of us humans. Here are some AI-powered tools that can benefit reporters and editors right now, while we all still have jobs. more

I miss Twitter. I hate X. But despite all the terrible changes to the platform, I’m still posting, reading, scrolling, liking and bookmarking. I am far from alone in the world of journalism. What’s wrong with us? Anyway, if you haven’t left X yet and plan to remain until the lights get turned off, here are a couple of ways you might be able to improve your experience slightly... more

Ginger Meggs is an institution in Australia, where the beloved comic strip has run in newspapers nationwide for over 100 years. But that relationship between generations of Australians and the newspapers that have long published the comic strip was instantly severed when the two major chains decided to eliminate all comic strips. Cartoonists and syndication companies in the United States are keenly aware of what happened in Australia and what it could portend for comic strips here. more

Puzzles and games have always been central to the newspaper experience, but no media company has had as much success mining that obsession digitally as The New York Times. Games are so popular at the Times they’ve become one of four main pillars bundled to keep subscribers paying each month, along with The Athletic, Cooking and Wirecutter, their consumer review website. more

In the wake of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the United States, founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison agreed that securing and growing a free press was essential to the country’s future. So in 1792, then-President George Washington signed into law a sweeping act that created the postal service and subsidized the delivery of newspapers. This lesson of government support of the news industry is extremely relevant today, as communities across the country continue to lose local news sources at an alarming rate. more

It’s easy to understand why some news organizations would make it difficult to cancel subscriptions. Churn is churn; even angry readers with a subscription still hand over their hard-earned money. But, there is a real price to pay for displaying such short-sighted contempt for your readers. more

When Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Sack decided to retire last year after four decades at The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Opinion Editor Scott Gillespie decided to buck industry trends and announced he had an opinion position to fill: editorial cartoonist. The Star Tribune may be an outlier in an industry that no longer appears to value the work of editorial cartoonists. more

Advance Local's Alabama Media Group recently announced the end of the print editions for their three newspapers: The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register. However, even though the presses have stopped, the newsrooms have grown in size. In this month's "News Media Today," E&P's Rob Tornoe takes a look at how an "all in" digital strategy seems to be working for Advance in Alabama and could be a model worth replicating. more

Working remotely in the COVID era has led to a host of unexpected benefits for journalists. But one of the major downsides has been spending less time with colleagues talking shop. Here are a handful of fun apps and tools that Rob Tornoe uses in his reporting. He hopes you find them useful, possibly even making an assignment or two that much easier. more

Teddy bears on the moon. A cat wearing VR headsets. Homer Simpson in “The Blair Witch Project.” It’s time for journalists to have a serious discussion about how good artificial intelligence has become at creating an image for just about any idea imaginable. more

For more than two-thirds of journalists in the U.S., Twitter is their go-to social media site for work. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, journalists use Twitter more often than Facebook, and they use it more than Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. Thanks to Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover of the popular social media site, that relationship is suddenly in jeopardy. more

For the better part of 10 years, journalists have been told that paywalls are the future to funding a sustainable newsroom. Free is out, the funnel is in and pageviews matter a lot less than subscription conversions. What if there is another way? Well, journalists in Chicago are putting that to the test. more

Many local reporters across the country have been forced to deal with an increasingly alarming trend in our media ecosystem — the nationalization of news led by outlets like Fox News, which often grab local stories, strip them of their context, and use them to push political agendas or conspiracy theories aimed at keeping their viewers angry. That anger trickles back down into communities, infects local politics and forces reporters at small news outlets already stretched thin to grapple with larger issues of misinformation and polarization. more

Should I tell my daughter why we’re getting a divorce? Is it bad that my wife doesn’t want to spend time with my mother? Should I remain friends with my ex-boyfriend if I still love him? When Washington Post readers have questions, they turn to Carolyn Hax. She has written the newspaper’s daily advice column for 25 years and is syndicated to over 100 newspapers nationwide. more

How reporters cover the first few hours and days of politically-charged events like the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago is vital to properly informing local and national readers. The subjects will obviously be different. But as New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen suggests, reports should be mindful of the distinction between the properly political and the unduly politicized. more

While Twitter remains a powerful tool for journalism, especially when it comes to breaking news, the audience for our reporting on Twitter is shockingly small. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, just 13% of adults in the U.S. regularly get their news from Twitter, trailing both Facebook and YouTube. So, if just a fraction of adults regularly use Twitter to consume news, who is actually using the platform? more