Evan Gershkovich Freed, Election Coverage Heats Up: Media News Recap for August 2024

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s roundup of media news stories from the month.

August was a busy month for the media industry, dominated by press freedom headlines and examinations of how the media is covering the presidential election. AI in the newsroom and layoff news also continued to make headlines. We’re covering these trends and more in the monthly media news recap.

Read on to get the full scoop.

Russia frees Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan in major prisoner swap with U.S.

August started off with some good news with the announcement that a historic prisoner exchange between the U.S., Russia and Germany resulted in the release of, among others, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and U.S.-Russian citizen and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. (Axios)

Gershkovich had been imprisoned for 16 months on charges of spying and had recently been sentenced to 16 years in prison.

While the prisoner release was welcome news in the media industry, exactly how the news was released caused concerns among publishers when Bloomberg News broke an embargo on the story. Its early publishing of the story led to worries that it could endanger the prisoners, who were still in transit at the time and not yet in U.S. custody. (Associated Press)

Bloomberg later apologized for the broken embargo and announced that the journalist involved had been fired. “Their premature story on Thursday caused a lot of people to panic and could have led to real harm,” Wall Street Journal reporter Dustin Volz wrote on X. “It didn’t, thankfully, but it’s nice to see them own the mistake.”

It was a big month for press freedom news around the world:

• Just this week, Russia announced that a number of journalists from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are barred from entering the country. (New York Times)
• A new Louisiana law makes it a misdemeanor for anyone — including journalists — to be within 25 feet of a law enforcement officer if the officer orders them back. A coalition of media companies has filed a lawsuit alleging the law violates the First Amendment. (Nieman Lab)
• Journalists covering far-right riots and counter-protests in the UK suffered “appalling harassment and abuse.” (Press Gazette)
• A Philippine court reversed a ruling against the independent news website Rappler and called for the company’s business license to be restored. (New York Times)
• August 14 marked the 12th anniversary of the disappearance of Austin Tice, who was abducted while covering the Syrian civil war as a freelance journalist. In a statement, President Biden said, “We have repeatedly pressed the government of Syria to work with us so that we can, at last, bring Austin home. Today, I once again call for his immediate release.” (Poynter)
• A former Las Vegas official was found guilty of murdering a local reporter who wrote articles critical of him, ending a case that had raised fears about press freedom in the U.S. (New York Times)

Meta shutters tool used to fight disinformation, despite outcry

Despite pushback from academics, reporters, politicians and others, Meta officially shuttered CrowdTangle in mid-August. Over the years, journalists and researchers used the tool to get “a glimpse into how Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms work and how false information goes viral.” (NPR)

More than 50,000 people signed letters and petitions urging Meta to halt its plans, or at least wait six months – until the election news cycle slows down. “Against this backdrop, Meta decided to kill one of the best tools that civil society had to monitor and report on the hate speech and election interference that is almost certain to proliferate on its platforms,” Brandi Geurkink, executive director of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, told NPR.

Meta has argued that its new Content Library tool is more comprehensive. However, its access is much more limited than CrowdTangle’s and users aren’t yet convinced that it fills the hole left by the old tool. When Facebook bought CrowdTangle in 2016, researchers and other media partners were allowed to use it for free. It was the first time a major social network provided a tool to the public to monitor trends in real-time.

Not surprisingly, election-related news made up several big media industry headlines in August:

• A new report found that, as of May, almost half of surveyed adults were already sick of hearing about the election. How can media outlets break through the fatigue? (Poynter)
• Five secretaries of state signed a letter calling on X owner Elon Musk to address the platform’s spread of election-related misinformation via its AI chatbot Grok. (MediaPost)
• The New York Times editorial board announced it will no longer make endorsements in New York elections. (New York Times)
• Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post received leaked confidential information from the Trump campaign and explained why they chose not to publish. (AP)
• Satirical publication The Onion announced it would return to print for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (MediaPost)
• One for the grammar nerds: Is it Harris’ or Harris’s? (AP)

New Washington Post AI tool sifts massive data sets

In August, The Washington Post published its first-ever story built on the work of its new AI tool Haystacker. Using the tool, which allows journalists to sift through large data sets to find newsworthy trends, journalists analyzed over 700 presidential and down-ballot campaign ads that mention immigration from the first half of the year.

The tool was built by the outlet’s engineering team and is primarily used by visual forensics and data journalism teams. In addition to helping reporters analyze big data sets, it can also help summarize video footage quickly to save journalists time.

In an interview with Axios, the Post’s chief technology officer Vineet Khosla said, “It’s a far superior product than just the general purpose stuff you get from Big Tech.” Haystacker is the third AI tool debuted by the Post in recent months, following an AI chatbot on its site and an article summary product. (Axios)

In other AI news from August:

• Several prominent news outlets, including The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Atlantic and Vox Media, have opted out of Apple’s AI scraping. (Wired)
• Reddit CEO Steve Huffman called out Microsoft’s Bing, Anthropic and Perplexity for scraping Reddit’s data without permission. (The Verge)
• WordPress owner Automattic launched an AI tool, Write Brief with AI, to help bloggers write more clearly and succinctly. (TechCrunch)
• Wyoming newspaper The Cody Enterprise was found to have published fake AI-generated quotes attributed to Governor Mark Gordon. The reporter responsible has since resigned. (MediaPost)
• AI company Perplexity gifted $250k in support of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. (Editor & Publisher)
• The Financial Times, Axel Springer, The Atlantic, Fortune and Universal Music Group agreed to license their content to ProRata.ai. The AI company plans to evenly split revenues from subscriptions to its forthcoming chatbot search engine with its content licensing partners. (Axios)

Time Magazine Lays Off 22 Staffers Amid Advertising Pullback, Restructuring

Time magazine announced that it was cutting 22 roles, impacting the editorial, technology, sales & marketing and Time Studios departments. The cuts follow the magazine’s announcement in January that 15% of its members were subject to layoffs in a round of cuts.

It’s been a year of change for the storied magazine. Time dropped its paywall in late 2023 to attract more ad revenue. And in July, Dave O’Connor, president of Time Studios, reorganized the division into one team as it navigated a tough market for scripted and unscripted content.

“Like our peers, we continue to face significant challenges — from heightened competition for decreased advertising budgets to drastic shifts in consumer behavior, changes to search and social algorithms, and overall economic uncertainty. We are making changes now across our business to protect against this period of transformation and unpredictability in the media industry,” Time CEO Jessica Sibley wrote in a memo to staff. (The Hollywood Reporter)

It was a tough month for closures and layoffs in the media industry:

• Axios announced the first layoffs in its 7-year history. In all, 50 people, or about 10% of its staff, were laid off. (Nieman Lab)
• Longtime TV industry publications Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News shuttered, impacting an unknown number of staffers. (Variety)
• The Tampa Bay Times announced buyouts in an effort to reduce its payroll by 20%. (Tampa Bay Times)
• Game Informer, a gaming magazine started in 1991, announced its closure. (MediaPost)
• After a planned round of cuts was announced for Disney’s television division, ABC News staffers braced for layoffs. (New York Post)
• United Airlines’ Hemispheres, one of the remaining inflight magazines, announced that its September issue would be its last print edition. (MediaPost)

ICYMI

In addition to the large trending topics like AI and the media’s coverage of the election, there were plenty of unique stories coming out of the media industry in August:

• Politics: Former President Trump spoke at the NABJ’s annual conference, resulting in controversy and blowback from the organization’s members. (NPR)
• Merger: Newspaper company McClatchy announced its merger with a360media, a magazine firm. The combined company will reach 100 million unique readers per year. (MediaPost)
• Media Moves: Almin Karamehmedovic, the senior executive producer of “World News Tonight with David Muir,” was named the new president of ABC News. (New York Times)
• Streaming: NBC’s coverage of the Paris Olympics earned a gold medal. (Wired and Poynter)
• Podcast: Wirecutter debuted its first podcast. The first two episodes focused on the secrets to better laundry and ways to keep indoor air clean. (Axios)

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