Nieman Lab
The Daily Digest: March 19, 2026

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok are all bad at crediting news outlets, but ChatGPT is the worst (at least in this study)

“ChatGPT, one of the most widely used models, covered distinctive content in 54% of responses but almost never credited the originating newsroom.” By Laura Hazard Owen.
What keeps journalists up at night? Funding, disinformation, and “unchecked” AI
What we’re reading
Washingtonian / Paul Farhi
How Will Lewis lost The Washington Post →

“Management produced a PowerPoint presentation in early 2025 that included a ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goal’ of reaching at least 200 million paying users — roughly 80 times its then–subscriber base — including ‘firefighters in Cleveland.’ One person who saw the presentation tells Washingtonian it helped convince them to leave the Post: ‘My thought was that Lewis and Bezos didn’t know anything about firefighters in Cleveland or anywhere else.'”

The Washington Post / Scott Nover
How Kari Lake’s dismantling of Voice of America unraveled in court →

“For [Patsy Widakuswara, Voice of America’s White House bureau chief] and her fellow plaintiffs, who include Jessica Jerreat, VOA’s press freedom editor, and Kate Neeper, USAGM’s director of strategy and performance assessment, the past year has been anything but idle. Rather than doing their usual jobs, they have focused on the lawsuit: explaining their work to lawyers, explaining the litigation to co-workers, running a public social media campaign to ‘Save VOA,’ and helping colleagues through a tumultuous year.”

thatshubham.com / Shubham Bose
The 49 MB web page →

“I went to The New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data. It took two minutes before the page settled. And then you wonder why every sane tech person has an adblocker installed on systems of all their loved ones. It is the same story across top publishers today.”

The Verge / Mia Sato
Prediction markets are trying to lure journalists with partnership deals →

“Rick Ellis, an independent entertainment journalist who runs AllYourScreens.com and writes a newsletter on Substack about TV and streaming, told The Verge he received an offer this week.

The deal involved producing two stories a week based on data from prediction markets — in Ellis’ case, that could be things like who might win this season of ‘Survivor’ or which couples will end up together at the conclusion of ‘Love Is Blind.’ Ellis said the proposed payment was in the ‘mid to upper hundreds [of dollars] per post,’ with potential for more money if the article hit certain metrics like click-throughs. Ellis declined to name the specific exchange the offer came from.”

Wired / Dell Cameron
FCC enforcement chief offered to help Brendan Carr target Disney, records show →

“A senior Federal Communications Commission official overseeing ABC-owned California stations privately offered to assist FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s campaign last year against the Walt Disney Co. and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, according to internal emails obtained by Wired.”

CNN / Brian Stelter
Eight states sue to block Nexstar-Tegna merger, another Trump-backed megadeal →

“The deal would strengthen the right-leaning Nexstar and shrink the number of TV station owners in the US. State officials, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, say the deal would hurt consumers by hiking prices and weakening local news coverage.”

WESA / Rachel McDevitt
Pittsburgh City Paper, three months after being shut down, announced it’ll relaunch under a new nonprofit owner →

“A new nonprofit, LocalMatters, has bought City Paper from Block Communications. The nonprofit was started by Chris Maury, founder of the government reporting site InformUp and former Apple engineering manager.” (Block Communications has also announced plans to shut down the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.)

The Guardian
The Guardian launches a new quarterly magazine “celebrating food and culture” →

“The Guardian Food Quarterly builds on the Guardian’s rich heritage in food journalism, with more than 100 years of recipes in its archive. This includes the much-loved Feast brand, the Feast app (downloaded over half a million times since launch), and the weekly Guardian Feast newsletter.”

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