Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · 13d

It’ll help.

Yet it still leaves a gap in a journalist’s knowledge when they are telling a story - how much does the audience know already - or to put it another way - what do I need to tell them in order for them to be truly informed without me boring them by telling them stuff they already know.

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · 13d

But, if conversational news takes on (by which I mean an audience member asks a series of questions and the news organisation provides answers question-by-question) then we will know what people want to know.

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · 13d

Others’ predictions that the AI era brings on the end of the article and the beginning of “conversational news” has made me reflect on one of the challenges journalists faced over the last 20 years. I called it “assumed knowledge”. We didn’t know how much people already knew when we told a story.

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · 13d

“The comma always has to be in the right spot, where we put quotation marks, we [don’t] use Americans and the type of spelling, it’s all British… [it’s like] trying to teach an American to speak British English - very difficult. It’s not good enough… 80%works, 20% doesn’t or it introduces mistakes.”

Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · 13d

Lots of people suggest using GenAI as a copy editor and but @econoscribe.bsky.social told @nikitaroy.bsky.social that his experiment to build a GenAI Economist style guide found the results “were just not good enough”.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/n...

Ludwig Siegele: Inside The Economist’s AI Playbook

Podcast Episode · Newsroom Robots · 23/09/2025 · 41m

podcasts.apple.com

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · 13d

PSA: I have to transcribe an audio clip for work and uploaded it onto ChatGPT (I have a pro account). It was 31 seconds long so it said it couldn't transcribe over 30 seconds. So I uploaded it to Google Pinpoint (free account for journalists).

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · 20d

2/3 Economist isn’t going to sue - as it’s too costly.
3/3 they are working with Cloudflare to block AI scrapers and working with Tollbit to monitor and manage AI visitors.

Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · 20d

Interesting to hear the reasoning behind one publisher’s strategy for licensing their content at a time when there appear to be a confusing number of options.
1/3 Economist didn’t strike a deal with OpenAI - they see them as a competitor publishing platform.
pressgazette.co.uk/news-leaders...

Why The Economist isn't doing AI deals but has launched on Substack

The Economist president Luke Bradley-Jones shares his three Ds: differentiation, direct relationships, discoverability.

pressgazette.co.uk

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Reposted by Clare Spencer

Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 21d

What can we learn from the news industry's missteps with GenAI? Clare Spencer recaps some of the most visible fails in the industry for GAIN: generative-ai-newsroom.com/the-news-ind...

The News Industry’s GenAI Cautionary Tales

Generative AI failures have shown, among other things, the value of scrutinizing outsourced work.

generative-ai-newsroom.com

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · 22d

Here’s my thought process reading that - oh no, now I know Lisa Cook did something or something was done to her but I don’t know what and I need to get on with my day so I guess I will never find out.

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Reposted by Clare Spencer

Zach Seward @zachseward.com · 22d

The new version of notification summaries for news apps in iOS 26 solves the problem of introducing errors by being as boring as possible.

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Reposted by Clare Spencer

Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · Sep 5

There's an opening on the News Apps team at ProPublica! If you're a journalist who knows how to code and build things, apply below
👇👇
grnh.se/k5crh6ph6us

News Applications Developer

Remote, United States

grnh.se

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Reposted by Clare Spencer

Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · Sep 4

New on the GAIN blog today from @clarespencer.bsky.social . Local journalists are finding value in using GenAI tools to monitor public meetings and find important stories. More here: generative-ai-newsroom.com/how-genai-to...

How GenAI Tools are Helping Journalists Monitor Public Meetings

From a school board selling off land to a suburb running out of water, journalists are using GenAI to find stories from local meetings

generative-ai-newsroom.com

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Reposted by Clare Spencer

Galen Reich @galen.reich.me.uk · Aug 29

My latest Bellingcat tool is out!

It lets you search what was said in council meetings across the UK and Ireland, and takes you directly to the right part of the video session to verify.

Check it out and let me know what you think! 👇

council-search.bellingcat.com

Bellingcat Council Meeting Transcript Search

Find verbatim quotes from council meetings in the UK and Ireland using this free open source research tool by Bellingcat.

council-search.bellingcat.com

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

I am writing an article about journalists using generative AI public meeting monitors to help them put together news stories. Because of the pandemic, a lot more governments started putting their meetings online - that's the start of the story. Which made me think about JACKIE WEAVER.

Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

Yeah, thinking about it, maybe the point I was trying to make was that the root of this problem isn’t AI but that there is a motive and possibility to lie. AI facilitates this.

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

Of course there’s a typo in my very first post. It should say that he shared a pitch ABOUT London chicken shop wars.

Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

I feel it would be better (for the amount of truth in our information ecosystem) if editors built up trusting relationships with their freelancers and had a pool of a few that they got to know personally. For that they would probably need to pay a living wage promptly.

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

The lying writer Wilson Kaharua found the editor Paul after Paul put out a call for pitches. This seems a flawed process when so much of the relationship between a journalist and an editor is about trust that the journalist is acting with integrity (unless you want to fact check every single thing)

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

The reason wasn’t only because of the low pay, it was also because in my experience years before I found that news organisations sometimes just didn’t pay - even large “reputable” ones. I didn’t want to spend a significant amount of my time chasing payments.

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

When I left the BBC after 17+ years I initially was quite excited about the prospect of being a freelance journalist. Previously my pitches were restricted to the topics and formats within the BBC, I had so many ideas I had wanted to pursue. I decided not to become a freelance journalist.

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

Secondly, I feel like the freelancing industry is getting what it deserves. The pay is too low. Currently in the US it is standard to pay $1 a word. After research and back and forths that can easily come under minimum wage, if you are going to do a good job. So it’s logical some do a bad job.

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

So I have thoughts about this. First of all, the freelancer who sent the pitch was lying. This could have happened before AI. The only difference is that AI helps you lie faster.

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Clare Spencer @clarespencer.bsky.social · Aug 28

CityAM Life&Style editor @steeveeteevee.bsky.social shares a pitch London chicken shop wars which turns out to be complete lies written under a pseudonym by a Kenyan freelancer who lost work when the SEO copywriting company he worked for replaced him with AI.

www.cityam.com/mass-halluci...

Mass hallucinations: In search of the rogue AI reporters

How a pitch about warring London chicken shops led Steve Dinneen on a journey from Chicago to Kenya in search of a rogue AI reporter

www.cityam.com

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Reposted by Clare Spencer

klaudia jaźwińska @klaudia.bsky.social · Aug 26

NEW in @columjournreview.bsky.social: Why AI models are bad at fact-checking photos www.cjr.org/tow_center/w...

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