Meet the first-ever accessibility engineer at The Washington Post
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Wednesday, February 1, 2023
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Meet the first-ever accessibility engineer at The Washington Post“It is definitely stressful to be the first in this new role. I feel deep down like I need to justify its creation with every step that I take.” By Sarah Scire. |
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BDG shutters Gawker 2.0: “We have to prioritize our better monetized sites”BDG CEO Bryan Goldberg called Gawker “a pre-monetization product,” but the brand is really old in internet years. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
BuzzFeed News / Pranav Dixit
Why are AI-generated hands so messed up? →
"’In images, hands are rarely like this,’ Winger-Bearskin said, holding up her hands with fingers spread apart. ‘If they were like this in all images, the AI would be able to reproduce them perfectly.’ AI, she said, needs to understand what it is to have a human body, how exactly hands are connected to it, and what their constraints are.”
Futurism / Jon Christian
Leaked messages show CNET’s parent company is happy to publish unlabeled AI content →
“Disclosing AI content is like telling the IRS you have a cash-only business.”
Houston Landing / Mizanur Rahman
A year ago, three philanthropies pledged $20 million to fund an ambitious, nonprofit newsroom for Houston. Now the project has a name. →
The Houston Landing will fully launch in the spring.
Bloomberg / Jeff Green
Pay transparency laws are spreading →
At least nine cities and states are proposing new measures to disclose salary ranges in job listings. (Laura Hazard Owen looked at media listings in New York when their law went into effect.)
Washington Post / Lizzie Johnson
The Washington Post teamed up with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to complete an investigation started by slain reporter Jeff German →
“A folder on German's desk contained court documents he'd started to gather about an alleged Ponzi scheme that left hundreds of victims – many of them Mormon – in its wake. Post reporter Lizzie Johnson began investigating, working with Review-Journal photographer Rachel Aston.”
The New Yorker / James Somers
ChatGPT is in the spotlight but don’t miss OpenAI’s speech-transcription program →
“Ever since I've had tape to type up—lectures to transcribe, interviews to write down—I've dreamed of a program that would do it for me. The transcription process took so long, requiring so many small rewindings, that my hands and back would cramp. As a journalist, knowing what awaited me probably warped my reporting: instead of meeting someone in person with a tape recorder, it often seemed easier just to talk on the phone, typing up the good parts in the moment.”
Variety / Todd Spangler
NBC Universal will no longer offer a free ad-supported tier to new Peacock users →
“The move to end signups to Peacock Free comes as Comcast reported 20 million paid subscribers for the streaming service as of the end of 2022, more than doubling from 9 million a year earlier.”
Boston Magazine / Gretchen Voss
The mayor, the muckraker, and the bombshell defamation lawsuit →
“During his deposition, Resnek sealed his legacy: not that of a fearless journalist but of a fabulist. He admitted that he'd found no evidence of DeMaria receiving a kickback for the Encore casino deal in Everett, even though he'd reported in the paper that he had. Resnek claimed he was merely expressing his ‘opinion.’ Resnek also confessed that he had made up all the quotes attributed to Cornelio in his explosive September articles about the Corey Street deal. Every single one of them.”
CNN / Eric Levenson, Madeline Holcombe, and Josh Campbell
Tyre Nichols’ death is the latest instance of video contradicting police accounts →
“Once again we have a huge gap between what was in the police report and the facts that later came out. This issue of believing police reports on their face as they are immediately released is something that we need to reconsider."
WSJ / Alexandra Bruell
Bloomberg will rename its streaming channel and feature more documentaries and talk shows →
The news publisher plans to launch climate, science, and sports shows on its rebranded "Bloomberg Originals" channel. The platform doesn't require a subscription, but its content comes with ads.
POLITICO / Jack Shafer
“Self-glorifying features”: The New York Times fails to take readers behind the scenes →
“After the vanquishing of the public editor, the paper still ran its barbed media column, launched by the late David Carr and continued by Jim Rutenberg and Ben Smith, which occasionally made the Times its subject. But the paper has yet to replace Smith, who departed about a year ago for his Semafor venture, which means that just about the only place in the Times to read about the Times is this soft, accommodating feature that denies its writers the freedom to be fully honest about how their stories come together.”
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