Nieman Lab daily journalism digest

The Daily Digest: October 20, 2026 When hackers become sources: Inside the new craft of reporting on hacked data “You’ve definitely seen the maturity of some hackers in how they approach the media. It’s not just about posting things to Twitter like it might have been before.” By Philip Di Salvo. Two out of five Americans regularly get their news on Facebook What we’re reading The New Yorker / Bob Woodward Bob Woodward on getting too close to a source → “I believe Darman felt that because we were such close friends he could say anything and I would protect him from news where he was the subject. My constitution, however unfortunate, is to report good, verifiable information no matter who you are.” Wired / Adam Rogers How Elizabeth Holmes tricked Wired — and everyone else → “If Theranos’ technology didn’t quite work yet, well, that’s a core tenet of Silicon Valley: Fake it till you make it. And for a long time, Wired helped. The magazine touted big ideas, and sometimes those ideas turned out to be dumb. Sometimes we were too early; sometimes we were wrong. Pitch meetings for stories big and small were a bit of a Thunderdome, actually. Eventually we developed some heuristics to encode skepticism in the process.” Courthouse News Service / James Francis Whitehead British far-right activist goes on trial over threats to journalists → “Prosecutors say the 43-year-old targeted [Mail Online] reporters Andrew Young and Jacob Dirnhuber with social media posts, direct messages and a phone call in August 2024 after the outlet published a report about his holiday in Cyprus.” Media Nation / Dan Kennedy Boston.com shifts to mostly paid as Globe Media CEO Linda Henry says free news no longer works → “Today, after experimenting with a soft paywall for the past year, Boston.com will be converting to a mostly paid outlet. The change is indicative of how digital advertising has lost much of its value and of how the rise of AI search has deprived news organizations of click-throughs.” The Boston Globe / Aidan Ryan WBUR chief executive Margaret Low to retire → Low navigated the pandemic, layoffs, and federal defunding during her seven-year tenure. New York Times / Patrick Healy and Nikole Hannah-Jones What it took for Nikole Hannah-Jones to write about her daughter’s distress → “What I tried to put forth in this essay is a woman who was humbled, right? Is a woman who still believes in the rightness of what I tried, but also said, man, was it hard. And I don’t know that I got it quite right. No, actually, I know I did not get it quite right because my child has told me this.” TheDesk.net / Matthew Keys C-SPAN taps YouTube creators for Election Night coverage → “C-SPAN2 will simulcast election-night coverage from The Young Turks, featuring progressive commentators Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola. C-SPAN3 will carry a separate livestream hosted by conservative commentator Patrick Bet-David, the host of the PBD Podcast and founder of the Valuetainment Streaming Network.” The Guardian / Mark Sweney Condé Nast’s U.K. profits drop by more than a third → “Revenues generated in the U.K. fell 7% from £75.9M to £70.6M, newly filed accounts showed. However, an 18% increase in international revenues, to £29.7M, helped keep the company’s total revenues almost flat, at £100M.” ⁂ “The fear is no longer confined to the work. It enters your everyday life. It affects how you leave home, how you return, the places you go and how closely you have to watch the people around you.” → —Marcos Wesley Pedrosa, founder and editor of Brazilian news outlet Tapajós de Fato (Columbia Journalism Review / Marcos Colón) ⁂ ★ Nieman Reports / Vidya Krishnan India targets journalists in crackdown on growing protest movement → “If the idea is to intimidate protesters into not protesting, the attacks on reporters — rough handling, groping, detention — is a corollary. Both the government and Delhi Police want to work in the shadows, and here,