Recent articles
September 9, 2026
Apple launches a new way to prove a photo was shot with an iPhone (not generated by AI)
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 u...
www.niemanlab.org
September 8, 2026
Twenty years into the Facebook News Feed era, Australia wants to turn back the clock
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? The laun...
www.niemanlab.org
September 3, 2026
Trump can’t get the media to use “Gulf of America.” Will “Lake America” be any different?
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. (H...
www.niemanlab.org
September 1, 2026
Go west: With a new operation in California, ProPublica continues its expansion outside Manhattan
In October 2007, The New York Times ran a story about an unusual new news startup named — at least according to the Times copy desk — “Pro Publica.” “The plan is to do long-term projects, uncoverin...
www.niemanlab.org
August 31, 2026
Are newspaper opinion sections embracing AI-written op-eds?
Any good op-ed can spark a public conversation, but most won’t start a debate over the nature of opinion writing itself. Last week, a Wall Street Journal piece by the billionaire financier Stanley ...
www.niemanlab.org
August 17, 2026
Claude is changing how it generates prose to be more detectable (and maybe worse?)
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...
www.niemanlab.org
August 5, 2026
Is Americans’ declining trust in media driven by political messaging?
Why has trust in American news media dropped so much in the past 50 years — much more than it’s declined in other rich western countries? To some people, I’m sure, the answer will seem obvious: Jou...
www.niemanlab.org
August 3, 2026
U.S. news jobs are more than 3× more likely to be based in Manhattan than they were 25 years ago
Ten years ago, I wrote a piece on how the internet was sucking journalistic resources out of the middle of the country and concentrating it on the coasts — primarily New York City. While digital pu...
www.niemanlab.org
July 27, 2026
Tacos, elk sheds, and Facebook ads: How some local news sites saw their traffic spike
It’s time for our latest look at which newsrooms are having success increasing their web traffic. We bring you four of these each quarter, looking at four different market segments: local newspaper...
www.niemanlab.org
July 14, 2026
Capital B is ready to open a third local news operation — about two hours east of its first one
The Black-focused national-and-local news outlet Capital B launched in 2022 with a staff of 16 and a first local focus on Atlanta, with plans to expand. Co-founders Lauren Williams and Akoto Ofori-...
www.niemanlab.org
July 1, 2026
Now we’re getting AI fake news complaining about how AI fake news is the death of real news
Reading sad things about journalism — newspapers, especially — has been a big part of my job for almost two decades. On Monday, I came across such a story that seemed to be getting traction on soci...
www.niemanlab.org
June 23, 2026
The British government wants to force more trustworthy news into your doomscrolling
The British government is asking social media companies to put more news — real news, produced by public service broadcasters like the BBC — high up in people’s feeds. And if companies refuse, it’l...
www.niemanlab.org