Nieman Lab daily digest

The Daily Digest: October 22, 2026 The Ringer bets on Substack’s network over its own website Once synonymous with independent writers, Substack is increasingly home to established publishers. By Sarah Scire. Publishers pressure Meta to nix new terms that would let the company scrape their websites In the AI age, publishers who understand what readers want will do best, a new report argues What we’re reading 40% The portion of chatbots’ answers to election-related questions that contained at least one factual inaccuracy, according to a forthcoming report from the startup Forum AI. For instance, “when Forum’s researchers asked one widely used model when they needed to request a mail-in ballot to vote in the midterms in Pennsylvania, the chatbot said November 3. The actual deadline is a week earlier.” (The Atlantic / Will Oremus) ⁂ Second Rough Draft / Dick Tofel Two cheers for recent looks at newsrooms, three for looking even harder → “Funders almost never do what real venturers must: look closely at why they came up short when they have, trying to learn and to fare better next time… So I was especially pleased, earlier this month, to learn of a set of studies released by the Center for News, Technology & Innovation that included one of the most successful nonprofit newsrooms, the Salt Lake Tribune, and perhaps our field’s biggest recent disaster, Houston Landing.” Status / Brett LoGiurato CBS News’ election coverage will be brought to you by DraftKings → Staffers don’t love it: “People need to be able to trust the polling and results we’re reporting are real numbers and not betting odds.” The New York Times / Ruth Graham Christianity Today is in turmoil; about half of its 79 staffers have left over the last 14 months → “Bonnie Kristian, Christianity Today’s deputy editor until last week, described its new leaders as being driven ‘by fear, by the kind of anxiety about reputational and financial loss that makes bold, interesting, principled journalism very difficult.'” Employees who have left Christianity Today in recent months fear those in charge are “abandoning the publication’s longtime commitment to independent journalism, a record that includes investigating accounts of misconduct by high-profile evangelicals.” Wired / Isabella Ward Meta’s ad sales are suffering now that Europeans can pick less personalization → Meta’s advertising revenue in Europe is decelerating. “Though Meta did not explicitly blame the introduction of the Less-Personalized Ads model [in earnings] on Wednesday, chief financial officer Susan Li had previously warned ‘we’re seeing the impact of less personalized ads offering in Europe now that it’s fully rolled out.'” The New York Times The Athletic launches a new daily puzzle, Strands: Sports Edition → You don’t need a subscription to play. Current / Tyler Falk NPR is moving its public editor partnership from Poynter to the University of Maryland → Kelly McBride, who has served as the network’s public editor since 2020, will leave the role at the end of the year, she announced in her column Thursday. She said that NPR CEO Katherine Maher decided to move the partnership to [the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at UMD’s College Park campus].” The Guardian / Jeremy Barr Judge orders Trump to sit for deposition in $10 billion lawsuit against BBC → Otherwise, “he could be subject to sanctions, including the possible dismissal” of the lawsuit. CNN / T.M. Brown The anti-AI writing police are everywhere. What are they looking for? → “Pangram isn’t able to tell users the truth about someone’s writing, but it is able to introduce something much more complicated: doubt…once an accusation is made, there’s no consensus about what evidence would be sufficient to clear an author’s name.” ⁂ “AI transparency can apparently also lead to AI abstinence.” → —Anika Collier Navaroli, director of Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia Journalism School. She n