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Stories of interest
3 people killed when NBC and Telemundo news helicopter crashes while covering LA bus collision
By ASHLEY DUONG and HALLIE GOLDEN
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A news helicopter crashed in a Los Angeles neighborhood on Tuesday and burst into flames, killing at least three people while reporters were covering the collision of an SUV and a city bus, officials and the news outlet said.
Colleen Williams, an NBC4 Los Angeles anchor, confirmed during live broadcasts that two people were killed when the chopper went down. At least one other person was killed on the ground, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
“We are going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, process it,” Williams said, her voice shaking with emotion. Moments later the coverage cut off.
The helicopter, used by NBC and Telemundo, went down near a large storage facility in the neighborhood of Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley, officials said. News crews were reporting on a collision from earlier in the day, when an SUV slammed into the middle of a city bus, killing at least two people and injuring six others. Photos and videos online showed half the SUV lodged in the side of the bus.
“From the helicopter itself, it’s pretty well destroyed,” Capt. Branden Silverman, a spokesperson for the fire department, said. “So we are going to have to go through the rubble and see how many victims there were on board, as well as identify the helicopter; we couldn’t even see a tail.”
At least four cars and two storage containers on the ground burned after the helicopter caught fire, which was quickly put out, according to officials. NBC4 reporter Robert Kovacik was at the bus scene and saw black smoke and rushed to the helicopter crash site. Dozens of police cars surrounded the scene as ambulances entered.
Read more here. Shared by Adolphe Bernotas.
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Americans value press freedom, but new surveys show support for restrictions in certain cases
By Jocelyn Noveck
The Associated Press
Americans value press freedom — with some exceptions.
About three-quarters of U.S. adults said press freedom is “extremely” or “very” important to society’s well-being, according to a newly released Pew Research Center study. But at least half said they also support government restrictions on reporting in specific circumstances, such as protecting national security or preventing inaccurate information.
At the same time, many Americans said it is “never acceptable” for the U.S. government to give journalists access to public figures in exchange for positive coverage, or to revoke a news organization’s broadcast license.
“People are not all or nothing,” says Katerina Eva Matsa, director of news and information at Pew Research Center, when asked what was striking about the findings. “When you give them options and scenarios … they are negotiating. That was a very interesting perspective that the data gave us.”
The study, which was based on two surveys conducted earlier this year, also found that Americans were divided about whether the media is completely free to report the news, with Democrats and Republicans expressing very different levels of worry about restrictions on the press.
Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac.
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Texas QB Arch Manning apologizes to ESPN reporter Holly Rowe for laughing about fake video of slap
By Jim Vertuno
The Associated Press
Texas quarterback Arch Manning apologized Tuesday for publicly joking about an AI-altered video that depicted Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian slapping ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe in the moments after Texas’ big win over Ohio State.
At the team’s weekly media availability on Monday, Manning was asked if he’d seen any social media posts about the postgame celebration. He mentioned the fake video clip, called it “hilarious” and laughed about it. Several others in the room laughed with him.
A clip of Manning’s remarks posted later on social media quickly drew widespread criticism directed at Manning over joking about violence against women in general and Rowe in particular.
“I made an insensitive comment about an AI video. There is nothing funny about it. It’s easy to say I didn’t mean it, but I know my words and actions were hurtful to a lot of people. I do not take that lightly and am deeply sorry for that,” Manning posted on Instagram.
“I specifically want to apologize to Holly Rowe for what she personally had to deal with because of my comments. I have a ton of respect for her and appreciate her showing me grace in this moment. I need to do better and will be more thoughtful going forward,” Manning said.
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Byron Allen’s Local Now Adds 111 Gray Media Stations
By Lucas Manfredi
The Wrap
Byron Allen’s Local Now has added 111 free, ad-supported streaming channels to its lineup that will carry coverage from Gray Media’s local stations across the U.S., TheWrap can reveal exclusively.
The partnership solidifies the FAST service’s position as the largest source of free local news and television coverage in the United States, with nearly 600 channels nationwide.
Local Now, which has a presence in all 210 markets across the country, offers localized news, weather, sports, traffic, and entertainment, customized seamlessly by a user’s device geolocation. It has 223 proprietary channels and 370 standalone local news channels from a network of 28 traditional broadcast television groups.
Byron Allen’s Local Now has added 111 free, ad-supported streaming channels to its lineup that will carry coverage from Gray Media’s local stations across the U.S., TheWrap can reveal exclusively.
The partnership solidifies the FAST service’s position as the largest source of free local news and television coverage in the United States, with nearly 600 channels nationwide.
Local Now, which has a presence in all 210 markets across the country, offers localized news, weather, sports, traffic, and entertainment, customized seamlessly by a user’s device geolocation. It has 223 proprietary channels and 370 standalone local news channels from a network of 28 traditional broadcast television groups.
Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac.
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Guild wins historic offshoring case at Oxford University Press
News Media Guild release
NEW YORK – In a clear victory for academic publishing workers and the Guild at large, an impartial arbitrator ruled Sept. 8 that Oxford University Press improperly laid off 13 people in 2024, ordering the company to resolve the issue by November or face an additional order.
Shortly after signing an initial contract in 2024 covering U.S. book editors and other academic publishing workers, OUP fired staff and transferred their work to the United Kingdom, breaching a key contract term that the News Media Guild had negotiated.
“The Employer breached Article 1…when it laid off the 13 bargaining unit employees because of the assignment or reassignment of the protected work to non-unit employees,” ruled Arbitrator Jacquelin F. Drucker. “The evidence supporting this finding is extensive,” she said of the Guild’s presentation made in January.
OUP is a division of Oxford University in England.
The ruling is historic, said Tony Winton, the Guild’s executive director, because it vindicates language in many News Guild contacts negotiated to limit offshoring and use of non-bargaining unit personnel.
Read more here.
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Americans give their take on press freedom. You should worry
By Jon Greenberg
Poynter
Fresh off the presses from a Pew Research Center and Knight Foundation collaboration, a new report shows solid support for a free press. Just about three-quarters of the public say a free press is extremely or very important to society.
But under some circumstances that would make many journalists bristle, large shares of Americans think it’s OK to limit the press.
Over half say the government should have the power to order a news organization to take down a story if it poses a risk to national security. That includes half of Democrats and Democratic leaners and over 70% of Republicans and Republican leaners. True, how people think about the question depends on how they interpret the term “national security.” Is it a real risk, or is it a White House trying to crush bad press?
One strength of the study is that it blends survey data with focus group snippets in which you can hear people wrestling with those options. A man in his 30s said, “We don’t know whose lives could be at danger for this. I think there’s a reason why it’s classified. It shouldn’t be distributed.”
Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac.
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NY Times Hires Media Columnist Who Once Predicted It ‘Could Plausibly Go Out of Business’
By Sarah Rumpf
Mediaite
Michael Hirschorn was wrong, and he’s absolutely “thrilled” about it.
The New York Times announced Tuesday in a column from executive editor Joe Kahn and managing editor Carolyn Ryan that Hirschorn was The Gray Lady’s new media columnist — along with an intriguing reference to “revisiting his past reporting.”
The Times report on Hirschorn’s hiring includes a reference to an article he wrote for the January/February 2009 issue of The Atlantic headlined, “End Times.”
“Can America’s paper of record survive the death of newsprint? Can journalism?” the subheading asked.
In the article, Hirschorn looked at The New York Times Company’s earning reports at the time and commented that “drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default” on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. The Times was also facing dwindling cash reserves, debt in excess of $1 billion, and “no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status); “the paper’s future doesn’t look good,” he concluded.
Of course, Hirschorn could not predict the Wordle effect and other developments that have helped the Times grow digital subscriber numbers and increase revenues.
Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac.
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Keeping Journalism in Russia’s Orbit
By Ivan L. Nagy
Columbia Journalism review
This weekend, Russia will hold its first parliamentary elections since its forces invaded Ukraine, in February of 2022. For President Vladimir Putin, the stakes are low: the country’s sole pro-peace party was banned from running for seats in a chamber that holds no effective power anyway. Yet the election comes at an uncomfortable moment for the Kremlin. This year, Ukraine executed precision drone strikes on oil depots, bringing the war closer to Russian civilians. “People stopped consuming news. They tried to escape into their private lives,” Ivan Kolpakov, the editor in chief of Meduza, a Riga-based exiled news outlet, told me. “But now people are interested in the war coverage again.” To deliver it, Russian media, operating almost entirely from abroad, face a twofold challenge: getting information out of Russia safely, then getting it back in.
Since Putin’s ascent to power, in 1999, independent news outlets in Russia have been an endangered species. After Russia annexed Crimea, in 2014, Moscow empowered prosecutors to shut down entities it deemed a threat to the constitutional order, a category that included all major media organizations. The government also forced outlets that received funding from abroad to register as foreign agents, opening them up to public audits. Following the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow effectively shut down independent online news, along with most social media. “At least twenty-nine journalists are in prison,” Fiona O’Brien, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ regional director for Europe and Central Asia, told me. “The fact that those prosecutions are still happening tells you that independent voices are still being shut down.”
Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac.
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Amazon Prime Video takes on TikTok with short-form news clips
By Sarah Perez
TechCrunch
Amazon Prime Video is coming after TikTok with the addition of short-form news clips. The company said on Monday that it’s expanding its news coverage to include on-demand news clips offering both local and national stories. These will be available on TVs and other living room devices, but will soon roll out to the web and Prime Video’s mobile apps, the company said.
The clips will be available in the News destination within the Prime Video app in its Trending Topics and the Local News carousels. They join Prime Video’s existing local, national, and world news coverage from a number of major providers, which are available to everyone in the U.S. regardless of whether they have a Prime subscription.
Amazon could not yet confirm whether the clips on mobile would be oriented for vertical video or not, only that they would be considered short-form content on iOS and Android.
Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac.
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Is science journalism dying? Comparing a “science crash” 40 years ago to today
By Bruce Lewenstein and Chris Mooney
Nieman Lab
When two popular science magazines — out of about 17 in circulation — ceased publication in the same year, one commentator said, “The science magazines didn’t shake out. They fell apart.” The general manager of one of the failed magazines said, “There was a perception that they were irrelevant.” One of the publishers remembered being in a “state of shock” as the failures emerged.
The year? 1986. What just a few years earlier had been called a “science boom” in the media industry was now dubbed a “science crash.” Cries of despair came from the science and science journalism communities, worried that interest in science “was a fad.”
The same worries have now reappeared 40 years later, as publishers have cut the science and environmental reporting staff at many newspapers and magazines. Perhaps the biggest shock came in late June 2026, when Scientific American was sold to new owners, who immediately laid off 15 staff members and cut salaries of many others. But it followed layoffs of science and environment writers at The Washington Post (where one of us, Chris Mooney, worked for nearly 10 years), The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and CBS News.
One longtime science writer recently worried he was writing a eulogy for science journalism. Another said, “We’re in a greatly diminished journalistic enterprise in this country.” On Bluesky, one commenter said, “The media mass extinction rolls ever onward.”
Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac.
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