Startups track business metrics. Newsrooms should learn from them.
I've rarely seen newsroom business teams discuss metrics like LTV, CAC, and even ARR outside fundraising or finance. They should be commonly known.
Latest
CNN and CNBC promote gambling to make a cheap buck
Some newsrooms are making money from deals with prediction markets. It will only serve to further destroy the public's trust in news.
Governance can prevent AI from being used to undermine democracy. But only if it has teeth.
The apparatus to cement centralized, undemocratic power has already been built. Regulations have a part to play, but they can't just be recommendations.
Happy 250th birthday, America
Let's keep building.
Notable links: July 3, 2026
AI, surveillance, open tech, and news as a business.
A new media spinout provides streaming apps for public service broadcasters. I just wish it was open.
We need to see more technical collaborations between public service media organizations. It's also really important that they're based on open technology that doesn't lock them in.
Newsrooms need to get comfortable expressing their business value - and raising money on it.
Newsrooms like to spend their time on the journalistic process and assume that the value of their work will speak for itself. They need to start selling themselves.
OpenAI wants to give us 5% of its success. It's a bad bargain.
A wealth fund that shares 5% of AI success with government and voters is either based on hype or not nearly enough to cover the damage. Either way, the incentives are perverse.
I have a theory about AI fake news site The Editorial
I was taken in by a fake AI news site. I think it may be an attempt to poison LLMs with propaganda.
AI's costs are going through the roof - so businesses are telling LLMs to talk like cavemen
Me think this hilarious sign of times.
They tell us surveillance makes us safer. It undermines our democratic rights.
Civil society actors in nearly every region of the world now operate under the assumption that they are being surveilled. The result is a less democratic world for everyone.
A concrete tool to help newsrooms cover emergencies
A new site to help newsrooms cover disasters is refreshing in its concrete practicality. Wouldn't it be great if these existed for every aspect of running a newsroom?
Community Survey 2026
How can I serve you over the coming year?
Media
A right-wing media chain tried to replace 47 newspapers with AI. They all died.
A right-wing media chain bought local papers, replaced their journalists with AI, and died. Now their communities are left to plug the gaps.
Asides
Two posts about writing
Ideas that spoke to me
AI
Are frontier models really too dangerous?
To an increasingly authoritarian regime, the opportunity to shape how models describe the world may be too good to pass up on.
Notable links
Notable links: June 26, 2026
To meet your community where it's at, you need to empower your people.
AI
All you need to poison an LLM is 13 words.
"It really is just that simple. The way that you can attack these systems is usually so much dumber than you think it is, or than you think it needs to be."
Business
To build resilient organizations, you need to empower your team to make decisions.
"That is not leadership. That is control. And it creates dependency, not growth."
Media
Journalism is rearranging the deckchairs. It needs to reinvent itself.
"In philosophy, we have a term for this: a logical fallacy. And right now, journalism is full of them."
Democracy
Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines
The unusually long sentences criminalize being an anti-fascist activist, reading the wrong zines, and using the wrong communication apps. They're incredibly dangerous.
Notable links
Notable links: June 19, 2026
Preparing for the fastest period of technical change in decades.
Technology
The European Commission falls for openness theater by working with W Social
The European Commission has moved its profiles to W Social. That's a terrible decision.
Media
More people get their news from social media than anywhere else - globally. The platforms we use matter.
"For the first time, social media and video networks are, on average across the markets covered, more popular than both TV and owned news websites and apps as sources of news."