Muck around and find out

The Muck Rack Weekly newsletter includes some of the most talked about stories in the journalism and public relations communities over the past week, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of Muck Rack.

Media statistic of the week

It’s only June, the 2024 presidential election is still five months away, and many Americans are already sick of hearing about it. 

Does this come as a surprise to you?

Kirsten Eddy has the details on data from a new Pew Research Center survey on the topic. 

The good news is, the majority of Americans are paying attention to politics: More than half of Americans (58%) say they are following news about candidates for the 2024 presidential election very or fairly closely.

The bad news is, fatigue has already set in for some: About six-in-ten U.S. adults (62%) already say they are worn out by so much coverage of the campaign and candidates, while 35% say they like seeing a lot of this coverage.

Explore all the data here. 

This past week in the media industry

This will improve journalists’ lives 

Exciting news for journalists coming out of Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference on Monday: “Recordings, transcriptions, and Apple Intelligence-powered summaries are also coming to the Phone app.”

Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton breaks down what this means for journalists:

“You’ll soon be able to use your iPhone to record interviews over the phone. And after you hang up, your phone will transcribe those recordings for you. This is a process that used to take up, conservatively, 172% of journalists’ time and even today requires third-party apps, most of which require a subscription.”

The feature is slated to be released in September at the earliest. 

“It is impossible to overstate how much this will improve journalists' lives,” tweets Peter Sterne.

The Verge’s Chris Welch details the other new features set to come out with iOS 18. Among them:

• More control over your iPhone home screen.
• The ability to use any emoji in a Message “tapback response.”  Also in Messaging, the ability to schedule text messages. 
• Revamp of the Photos app. 

Muck around and find out

NBC News is calling it a “right wing media reckoning.”

“Right-wing media that became purveyors of misinformation and amplified false claims as Donald Trump undermined the results of the 2020 election are finding themselves on the losing end of legal challenges — or facing new ones.

In just a few months, a handful of high-profile fringe media operations have been hit with courtroom losses,” reports Erik Ortiz. 

“Muck around and find out. Some propagandists find out that toxic lies can be expensive,” Marty Schladen writes on X. 

This headline…

“This headline …” tweets Vincent Ni about Michael M. Grynbaum’s buzzy New York Times piece this week: “The British Aren’t Coming. They’re Here.”

Grynbaum’s thesis? He says several of America’s largest and most powerful newsrooms are now being led by English journalists. He sets out to figure out why. 

Here’s a snippet:

“Theories abound as to the enduring appeal of British editors to American proprietors. The accent has its own worldly allure. But hard-nosed, scrappy journalism is a cherished tradition in Britain, where broadsheets and tabloids have battled it out for decades, often on budgets dwarfed by American rivals.

“British journalists tend to be lower paid than their American counterparts, an advantage for many news organizations already facing cutbacks. And while Fleet Street has a reputation for fuzzy ethics, that goes hand in hand with a reader-pleasing willingness to scorch sacred cows.”

“In which Anna Wintour and Tina Brown are somehow portrayed as cautious with budgets… 😹” writes Clara Jeffery. 

The reporter should never become the story

We reported last week on the leadership shakeup at The Washington Post and the turmoil that ensued after Will Lewis became The Post’s new CEO and publisher.

POLITICO’s Jack Shafer writes about how Lewis has violated the old journalism axiom that the reporter should never become the story.

Shafer writes: “The maelstrom seems certain to impede Lewis’ plan to remake the money-losing Washington Post, a plan that includes bringing in two outsiders — one, a fellow Brit, has no U.S. newspaper experience — which has ruffled some on the staff. Depending on how the current crisis unwinds, Lewis’ conduct and response may undo him. He can’t very well put out the business fire that is consuming the Washington Post (it has lost $77 million in the past year) if his own pants are aflame. Will Post owner Jeff Bezos want to keep a publisher who is beset with a fast-growing credibility crisis?” 

“A fine piece of journalism from an independent and truth-seeking newsroom,” tweets Michael Scherer about this article from The Washington Post’s own media reporters Elahe Izadi and Sarah Ellison.

“The Post at a crossroads: Existential questions in a dire season for news” is the headline of Izadi and Ellison’s excellent piece offering a detailed inside look at what’s happening at The Post.

A few more

• A partnership that’s a perfect pair: “Shoppers can now order ingredients for New York Times Cooking recipes thanks to a new two-year partnership with grocery delivery platform Instacart,” reports Kathryn Lundstrom for Adweek. 
• Personalized ads on planes? The Wall Street Journal’s Patience Haggin explores United Airlines’ foray into more targeted ads on the in-screen flight entertainment on the back of your seat. Check out the deets.  
• Semafor’s Max Tani details the clash between the NewsGuild of New York and unionized journalists at the New York Times, Reuters and other newsrooms. 
• In a video on LinkedIn, The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson explains why they signed a deal with OpenAI. Sarah Scire from Nieman Lab has the details. “Thompson says the OpenAI partnership will ‘surface’ Atlantic journalism in OpenAI products and that the technology may eventually help readers discover stories in their app or yield ‘other cool things’ for The Atlantic.” 
• LinkedIn is testing an AI assistant for Premium members, Axios’ Sara Fischer reports. “The product leverages Microsoft's AI technology to prompt users to chat with an AI assistant to learn more about a particular company or topic,” she writes. 
• Kinda meta: “If we want journalism to survive we need to move away from the model where dozens of humans write the same exact blog about an errant Elon Musk tweet in hopes of appeasing an algorithm that is actively changing to kill this exact business model,” tweets Jason Koebler about his piece for 404 Media “Elon Musk Tweeted a Thing.” 

From the Muck Rack team

Last week, Muck Rack released the State of PR 2024 report, offering an in-depth look at the current landscape of public relations. 

Based on a survey of more than 1,000 PR professionals, the report provides valuable insights into social media trends, budget and resource challenges, AI and more. 

Get a copy of the report here.