The theft is industrial-scale and shameless. A site called National Today — run by TOP Agency, a PR firm that claims Microsoft and Intel as clients — is churning out roughly 300 AI-generated articles per day by stealing reporting from local newsrooms, national outlets, and independent journalists. The site lifts…
Category: Media
Culture
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Monoculture Began To Decline After 43 Million People Watched This Moment
Bradley Cooper took a selfie at the 2014 Oscars. Ellen DeGeneres posted it. The internet exploded. 43.74 million people watched it happen live — the Academy Awards’ largest audience in 14 years. No one knew it at the time, but monoculture died in 2014 — or at least peaked that…
Culture
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The Documentary That Followed People for 70 Years Is Finally Ending
In 1964, a British TV crew pointed cameras at fourteen seven-year-olds and asked them about their dreams. Tony wanted to be a jockey. Neil wanted to be an astronaut. Bruce wanted to be a missionary. Then they came back seven years later. And seven years after that. And again. And…
Community
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Dave Chappelle Bought a Schoolhouse So a Radio Station Wouldn’t Disappear
Dave Chappelle stood outside a restored 19th-century schoolhouse in Yellow Springs, Ohio, on Thursday—not for a Netflix special, not for a comeback tour, but for a ribbon-cutting ceremony that probably won’t trend on Twitter. The Union Schoolhouse, built in 1872, once served as one of the village’s earliest integrated schools….
Business
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WRTV Fired Its Newsroom Mid-Broadcast. The New Owner Promised “More Local News.”
At 3 p.m. on March 31, the staff at Indianapolis ABC affiliate WRTV was prepping for the 5, 6, and 7 p.m. broadcasts. By the end of the night, most of them were unemployed. Circle City Broadcasting — which already owned two other Indianapolis stations — completed its $83 million…
Geography
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Adams County, PA Sheriff: “We Did Not Arrest Afroman. Check the Map.”
Rapper Afroman — whose real name is Joseph Foreman— won a lawsuit against the Adams County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio after deputies raided his home in 2022, and he turned the footage into music videos titled “Will You Help Me Repair My Door” and “Lemon Pound Cake.” The officers sued…
Culture
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CBS News Radio Dies at 100: What We Just Lost
CBS News Radio is done. Not struggling. Not “pivoting to digital.” Done. After a century—through the Depression, World War II, Kennedy’s assassination, 9/11, every hurricane, every blackout, every moment when the power grid failed and the internet went dark—CBS News Radio kept broadcasting. Until now. David Ellison’s Skydance Media just…
Culture
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France Just Knighted Its Last Newspaper Hawker — And With Him Goes an Entire Era
Ali Akbar has been selling newspapers on the streets of Paris for 50 years. Seven days a week. Ten hours a day. Rain or shine. On a secondhand bicycle, weaving between cafés in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, shouting “Ça y est!” — his signature catchphrase meaning “That’s it!” Last month, French President Emmanuel…
Culture
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The Super Bowl Halftime Show Has a Height Requirement
The news, such as it is, is that there’s a height requirement for people who want to be part of the Super Bowl halftime show. Not the headliner. Not the star whose name goes on the announcement graphic. The field cast. The dancers, performers, and bodies whose job it is…
Journalism
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Tony Dokoupil’s First Night, the Pause, and the Edit That Followed
On Tony Dokoupil’s first night anchoring the CBS Evening News, the show briefly stopped pretending it wasn’t live. The moment came during a transition. Dokoupil moved from one segment to the next and discovered — in real time — that the handoff wasn’t where he expected it to be. The…