Neal Notes

The AdFection investigation brings an ordinary part of web browsing into the discussion of newsroom security.

The CMA is investigating proposed terms while Meta’s rollout is paused. No finding of illegality has been made.

The revised ethics code makes verification of reporting tools explicit. An AI disclosure cannot establish whether an event happened.

How a public radio station and a one-person newsletter took apart the largest fake local-news network yet.

The OpenAI deal funds thirteen real newsrooms. The price is the archive, and the terms are secret.

A public media company is spending money to own a square instead of renting one.

Black Box, from Mississippi Today and Deep South Today, turns a public-finance paper trail into narrative audio. Three portable techniques for making document-driven accountability worth listening to.

In Kashmir and Zambia, two journalists sit in custody under routine-looking procedures. How statutes, forms, and time do the work of silencing reporters.

When answers arrive without the reporting attached, human judgment about whom and what to trust becomes more valuable—not less.

Social platforms and AI chatbots now stand between reporting and its readers. The 2026 Digital News Report makes the case that distribution is no longer a traffic problem — it is an editorial one.

At WAN-IFRA's congress in Marseille, NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger condemned AI's “brazen theft of intellectual property” and backed the SPUR coalition.

Casey Newton is steering Platformer toward original reporting; Sharon Goldman launched Ground Level AI. Two more journalists betting that the durable moat isn't the platform — it's the work.

France's Alice Froussard was deported by Israel amid a broader lockdown on West Bank press access; CPJ reports a four-year sentence for Tunisian journalist Khaoula Boukrim.

Neal Conan Prize Committee member Gretel Ehrlich reports from three days at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia — on the people who still do this work.