October 23, 2026

Being local — community, context and connections — is a superpower

As Big Tech platforms and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to disrupt the news media industry, newspapers possess a competitive advantage that tech giants simply cannot replicate: their deep roots in the communities they serve. New research suggests that local newspapers continue to earn readers’ trust across generations, including Millennials.

In this op-ed published yesterday in E&P Magazine, Dean Ridings, president and CEO of America's Newspapers, explains why being local is journalism’s superpower and offers practical advice for publishers looking to strengthen community connections, build trust and remind audiences and advertisers of their unique value.

Industry news

Meta quietly delays controversial update that critics say will allow website scraping

Earlier this month, Meta Platforms announced controversial new commercial terms of use for business accounts that critics said would give the social media giant broad authority to crawl and scrape web content associated with those accounts.

The new commercial terms — met by strong outrage from news publishers that produce online content and rely on Meta’s platforms for distribution — were set to go into effect on Friday, Oct. 30.

Now, without any notice, Meta has pushed back the date of the change by three weeks to Friday, Nov. 20.

The Chronicle-Telegram and Medina Gazette acquired by MediaNews Group

After nearly a century of family ownership, Lorain County Printing and Publishing has reached an agreement to sell The Chronicle-Telegram and The Medina Gazette to MediaNews Group, the nation’s largest private operator of newspapers, according to John Cribb, Cribb & Associates, who represented the Hudnutt family, owners of LCPP.

Houston Chronicle launches ‘Change of State’ video series on trends reshaping Texas politics and culture

This week, the Houston Chronicle launched “Change of State,” a YouTube series that follows statewide columnist Chris Tomlinson from the Houston suburbs to Brownsville, San Antonio, Fort Worth and beyond. In it, Tomlinson documents the undeniable demographic changes reshaping the Lone Star State’s politics, economy and culture.

What we're reading ...

Tow-Knight Center releases new report on journalism’s future in an AI age

As artificial intelligence reshapes how people find and consume news, a new report from the Tow-Knight Center for Journalism Futures at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY examines what it will take to ensure the public has access to reliable, relevant information.

The Three-Layer Cake: Public-Interest Information in an AI-Intermediated Age draws on a year of convenings and conversations with journalists, technologists, funders, investors and other experts. It considers how journalism must evolve as AI systems increasingly stand between information providers and the people they serve.

“Our goal with this report was to set out one vision of the coming infrastructure of the information age and offer suggestions for how we — the journalism industry and other public-spirited organizations — could shape it to serve people, and the information commons, better,” said Gina Chua, executive director of the Tow-Knight Center. “What’s clear is that we must work quickly if we want to have a positive impact.”

The report outlines three connected layers: the products that identify what people want to know, the systems that synthesize answers, and the organizations that produce the underlying reporting. Each layer, the report argues, requires attention and distinct strategies to serve the public interest.

How chatbots can help reporters pull back the corporate curtain

Chatbots have arrived on major ecommerce platforms, but they’re not just useful for consumers looking for sales or products.

For reporters, these chatbots represent a potential wealth of information about major online retailers, according to the authors of “Made in America, Hidden by AI,” a recent investigative report from the Center for Law and Economy at Columbia Law School.

“Our investigation found that both Walmart and Amazon’s artificial intelligence shopping chatbots can detect obvious ‘Made in U.S.A.’ claims and country of origin mismatches and can go further to research the legitimacy of origin claims based on manufacturing details of the firms and products in question,” write authors Erie Meyer and Zachary Harris. “Despite having such capabilities, however, the companies choose not to police this fraud — and in many cases allow these deceptive claims to persist.”

I recently talked with Meyer, who previously served as chief technologist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, about this investigation — and how reporters can use corporate chatbots to gain insights about the firms that made them.

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2027

April 19-21 - Mega-Conference 2027 in Orlando at the Signia by Hilton Bonnet Creek at Disney World

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