The golden age wasn’t so golden
Nieman Labby Michael Schudson27d ago
Last month, Routledge published Mainstream News Media Trust: Antecedents, Consequences, and Remedies, a new book edited by Nayla Fawzi, Jesper Strömbäck, and Yariv Tsfati.
Nieman Lab
niemanlab.orgadded August 2026
top 41%The Trump administration killed Climate.gov. A new website is resurrecting it.
Nieman Labby Neel Dhanesha10 Sept 2026
The website from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), launched during President Obama’s first term, provided constant updates on the agency’s climate research in plain...
“Many have said it couldn’t be done”: Local news site Lookout Santa Cruz is profitable thanks to ads and memberships
Nieman Labby Sarah Scire10 Sept 2026
Buried in an opinion piece about California’s Community NEWS Act is the announcement that Lookout Santa Cruz has achieved something remarkable (and rare) in local news: It’s profitable.
Apple launches a new way to prove a photo was shot with an iPhone (not generated by AI)
Nieman Labby Joshua Benton9 Sept 2026
At its annual iPhonepalooza today, Apple announced a new feature aimed at making it easier to know where an image came from or whether it’s been edited — the sort of provenance data that could be...
Two years ago, Meta killed CrowdTangle. Can a new AI tool fill the void?
Nieman Labby Andrew Deck9 Sept 2026
In 2024, Meta shuttered CrowdTangle, a tool used to track how content spread across Facebook and Instagram.
At three years old, Deep South Today threads the needle between “lean and mean” and “aggressive expansion”
Nieman Labby Sophie Culpepper8 Sept 2026
On Adam Ganucheau’s first day at Mississippi Today a decade ago, there was no Wi-Fi, and he used an upside-down cardboard box as a desk. These days, things look a little different.
Twenty years into the Facebook News Feed era, Australia wants to turn back the clock
Nieman Labby Joshua Benton8 Sept 2026
Congratulations/regrets — today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the birth of today’s internet. I suppose there are numerous candidates for that title. The debut of the iPhone in 2007?
Stars and Stripes shows how government‑funded journalism can work — if it’s free to report the truth
Nieman Labby Cindy Elmore8 Sept 2026
As local and national news outlets continue to disappear across the U.S., I’d always thought that the military newspaper Stars and Stripes offered one model for a partial solution: government...
With acquisition of Vermont newspapers, the National Trust for Local News expands to a fourth state
Nieman Labby Sophie Culpepper3 Sept 2026
The nonprofit National Trust for Local News is acquiring the Vermont Community Newspaper Group in a deal that will close this month, the Trust announced Thursday.
Trump can’t get the media to use “Gulf of America.” Will “Lake America” be any different?
Nieman Labby Joshua Benton3 Sept 2026
He’s doing it again: Donald Trump has decided that Lake Ontario is actually Lake America. This follows his similar declaration last year that the Gulf of Mexico was actually the Gulf of America.
Trump administration says a New York Times win in OpenAI lawsuit would “threaten national security” and hurt small newsrooms
Nieman Labby Andrew Deck2 Sept 2026
On Wednesday, the Trump administration threw its support behind OpenAI, backing the AI giant in its ongoing litigation with The New York Times.
News influencers are filling information gaps in New Jersey, but original reporting still lags
Nieman Labby Neel Dhanesha1 Sept 2026
News creators are increasingly where people get their news (check out Hanaa’s ongoing series of interviews with news creators from around the world) and a new study from the Center for Cooperative...
California legislature passes a major local news funding bill: “If you hire more people, you get more money”
Nieman Labby Hanaa' Tameez1 Sept 2026
The state of California has passed a bill that could generate as much as $40 million for California newsrooms each year.
Are newspaper opinion sections embracing AI-written op-eds?
Nieman Labby Joshua Benton31 Aug 2026
Any good op-ed can spark a public conversation, but most won’t start a debate over the nature of opinion writing itself.
Google’s new AI tool helps fact-checkers investigate AI fakes
Nieman Labby Andrew Deck19 Aug 2026
Every day the fact-checking team for one of India’s largest news organizations works to debunk a slew of false and misleading images circulating across social media.
Facing a “deluge” from AI, this publication will only take pitches by phone
Nieman Labby Hanaa' Tameez18 Aug 2026
Whether you’re a reporter or an editor, your inbox has probably seen an influx of pitches, increasingly written with artificial intelligence.
The Athletic teams up with sports creators to reach new (and younger) audiences
Nieman Labby Hanaa' Tameez18 Aug 2026
Last month at the National Sports Card Convention in Chicago, creator Brandon Pereira, who posts as Coach Koe, met a kid named Dominic.
Claude is changing how it generates prose to be more detectable (and maybe worse?)
Nieman Labby Joshua Benton17 Aug 2026
It was in 1964 that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, asked to define obscenity for the purposes of law, wrote his famous heuristic: “I know it when I see it.” But when it comes to AI-generated...
Can we gamify that? The innovators turning investigations on spying scandals and vote rigging into video games
Nieman Labby Bhavya Dore17 Aug 2026
An animated phone vibrates on a blackened screen as ominous piano music tinkles in the background. When you click, speech bubbles appear. “It’s Thanasis Koukakis,” the person on the other end says.
Japanese publishers are fighting imposter news sites with a cryptographic signature
Nieman Labby Andrew Deck12 Aug 2026
On January 1, 2024, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula, killing more than 700 people.