More than two hundred fake local newsrooms went dark this month, taken apart by a public radio station and a one-person newsletter. Also this issue: USA Today Co. sells what it knows about its readers, Axios sells its archive to OpenAI, Chicago Public Media builds a square it owns instead of renting one, and a Kazakh court bars an editor from the profession.
The 2026 Digital News Report names platforms and AI chatbots as journalism's new gatekeepers. Also this issue: a Mississippi podcast makes a $400 million paper trail audible, and two journalists sit in custody under quiet bureaucratic procedure.
