Nieman Lab weekly news roundup

The Weekly Wrap: October 16, 2026 Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say Starting October 30, business accounts will consent to Meta scraping their websites if they continue using Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp. By Andrew Deck and Hanaa' Tameez. Two creators went to NYU’s business school, then decided to make a show about the news “Our videos are what we wish we could consume more of.” By Hanaa' Tameez. When Slate went back to its 1996 homepage, it learned some web design lessons for 2026 “I am a direct traffic girly and I know I’m not alone.” By Laura Hazard Owen. A new report argues newsrooms need to do more experiments — like, the kind with randomization and results Google’s News AI pilot expands to over 400 publications, including U.S. local news outlets From bad to worse: 2026 is shaping up to be “a super El Niño year for local news” What we’re reading The New York Times / Shawn McCreesh, Tyler Pager, and Hamed Aleaziz Katie Zacharia is out after five days as White House press secretary → “President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, was fired Friday, after less than a week on the job, according to three people familiar with the matter.” The Washington Post / Suheir Hashimeh and Steve Hendrix Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine in West Bank → “Levine, wearing a protective vest clearly marked ‘PRESS’ on front and back, was knocked to the ground, kicked repeatedly and stripped of her cameras and phone. She was treated at hospitals in Ramallah and Israel for lacerations across her body and a broken rib, and will need surgery on one hand after a finger was ripped open, exposing bone.” LatAm Journalism Review / Leonardo Coelho After Brazil bans online betting, sports media faces a financial reckoning → “For many journalists and creators, betting companies became their most reliable source of revenue…The end of such a significant source of advertising would inevitably put pressure on media companies’ budgets, potentially leading to layoffs, and put independent content creators in a difficult position.” BBC News / Katie Razzall and Paul Glynn BBC News channel launches on YouTube for viewers in U.K. and U.S. → Watch here. “Viewers in the U.K., watching the channel live on YouTube, may not realize they still need a TV license to do that. But with no guardrails around who’s watching, no ability — for now anyway — for the BBC to insist you prove you’ve paid the fee before you can access its YouTube channels (or its own streaming channels), it’s going to be hard to enforce.” News Media Help Desk At the News Media Help Desk, local news publishers can chat with (gasp!) real humans → “Local news sustainability isn’t one-size-fits-all. So, we needed to make sure the answers this chat service provides are high-quality and reliable,” said Leah Becerra, product director for the help desk. “We trust humans to do that more so than AI.” The help desk is a free resource to connect local news organizations with digital resources, experts, and “affordable hands-on help through Digital On-Demand Services fractional support.” ⁂ “I’m not going to work for a gambling company and have blood on my hands.” → —Nicole Noren, a decorated ESPN producer, on why she quit the sports network (Columbia Journalism Review / Danny Funt) ⁂ Financial Times / John Paul Rathbone Turkish authorities take over country’s most-watched news channel → “The takeover of Halk TV further narrows the availability of news sources critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government in Turkey, which ranks 163rd out of 180 countries, according to the Reporters Without Borders world press freedom index. Several other major broadcasters, including Habertürk, Bloomberg HT, and Show TV, have been placed under state trusteeship in recent years.” ⁂ 52 The number of articles Cris Tolomia wrote for Quartz’s website on October 8. Almost all of th