New York Times

Tensions at The New York Times over an investigative report on Hamas’ use of sexual violence in the Oct. 7 attacks have erupted into the open over the past week with fresh conflict surfacing nearly every day. The Times crisis reflects a series of cultural divides – between the conventional newsroom and the paper’s ascendant audio division; between management and many of the rank-and-file; between factions with differing reactions to the war in Israel and Gaza; and between the two sides of yawning industry chasm over whether to handle dissent internally or air it in public.

At the end of the year, The Times had 10.36 million subscribers, 9.7 million of them digital-only.

The publication is hiring engineers and editors for a new team that will experiment with uses for generative AI, but says journalists will still write, edit and report the news.

The artificial intelligence start-up said that it collaborated with news organizations and that The Times, which accused it of copyright infringement, was not telling the full story.

OpenAI is firing back at The New York Times after the company was sued for copyright infringement over the use of the publisher’s articles to train its artificial intelligence chatbot. In a blog post, the Sam Altman-led firm said that the Times is “not telling the full story” and claimed it “intentionally manipulated” prompts to make it appears as if ChatGPT generates near word-for-word excerpts of articles.

In what will be a closely watched legal salvo, the publisher claims the generative artificial intelligence giant was using its writing “without permission to develop their models and tools.”

A founding editor of Quarta, he will build a small team in the newsroom to experiment with generative AI tools and prototype ideas. He will help design training programs for curious journalists and will partner with colleagues across the company to determine where to incorporate generative AI tools into our publishing tools and digital products.

The company reported an adjusted operating profit of $89.8 million in its latest quarter, up from $69 million a year earlier.

The unexplained decision removes the only symbol distinguishing the news organization from impostors and comes amid a flood of false information related to the Israel-Gaza war, some of which Musk has personally endorsed.

The NewsGuild is seeking to compel a journalist to give up his communications with his sources, as well as his correspondence with a former New York Times columnist. The move is part of an ongoing legal battle between the guild, the largest journalism union in the country, and Mike Elk, a former member and independent labor reporter.

For weeks, The Times and the maker of ChatGPT have been locked in tense negotiations over reaching a licensing deal in which OpenAI would pay The Times for incorporating its stories in the tech company’s AI tools, but the discussions have become so contentious that the paper is now considering legal action.

The New York Times has decided not to join a group of media companies attempting to jointly negotiate with the major tech companies over use of their content to power artificial intelligence. The move is a major blow to efforts to Barry Diller’s efforts to establish an industry united front against Google and Microsoft.

The New York Times is disbanding its sports department and will rely on coverage from The Athletic, a website it acquired last year for $550 million. The decision affects more than 35 people in the sports department, according to The New York Times. Journalists on the sports desk will move to other roles within the newsroom and no layoffs are planned.

Fox News is opposing a renewed effort by the Associated Press, the New York Times and NPR to unseal documents related to its recently settled defamation lawsuit, saying it would do nothing but “gratify private spite or promote public scandal.”

A New York judge on Wednesday dismissed former President Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times and several of its reporters over a 2018 article on the former president’s “dubious tax schemes.” Justice Robert Reed dismissed the claims against the Times and its reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russ Buettner and ordered Trump to pay all attorneys’ fees and other costs associated with the lawsuit.

The New York Times and a consortium of media organizations are asking a judge to rule whether Fox News improperly redacted portions of texts and email exchanges that were introduced as evidence in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the network. Dominion and Fox settled the case last month for $787.5 million, in what is believed to be the largest out-of-court payout in a defamation case. But left unaddressed was a legal challenge filed by The Times in January that sought to unseal some of what Fox and Dominion had marked as confidential in their legal filings.

The New York Times asked a judge on Wednesday to unseal some legal filings that contain previously undisclosed evidence in a defamation suit brought against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, a company targeted with conspiracy theories about rigged machines and stolen votes in the 2020 election. Most of the evidence in the case — including text messages and emails taken from the personal phones of Fox executives, on-air personalities and producers in the weeks after the election — has remained under seal at the request of lawyers for the network.

A 24-hour strike at The New York Times, a historic demonstration in which more than 1,100 employees are expected to participate, began Thursday at midnight, after management and the union representing staffers failed to reach an agreement for a new contract.

More than 1,100 unionized New York Times staffers are intending to embark on a 24-hour strike today, leaving editors at the newspaper scrambling to put out a credible digital report for the day and print editions for the days following. A protest featuring some of the paper’s most celebrated names is scheduled outside the Times’ midtown Manhattan headquarters for 1 p.m. ET. Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones is among those expected to speak.

Revenue from digital advertising fell slightly in the second quarter, but subscription revenue continued to rise sharply, the company said.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff made the assertion in a written decision as he rejected post-trial claims from Palin’s lawyers against the newspaper.

Perry Bacon Jr.: “Two of America’s most important news outlets, CNN and the New York Times, are signaling that they will continue and even increase some of the both sides-ism, false equivalence and centrist bias that has long impaired coverage of U.S. politics and therefore our democracy itself. I hope they reconsider.”

Joseph F. Kahn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning China correspondent who rose to lead the international desk of The New York Times, and then as managing editor helped steer the newspaper into the digital era, has been selected to be The Times’s next executive editor, the top newsroom job. (Photo: Celeste Sloman for The New York Times)

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff made the ruling with a jury still deliberating at a New York City trial where the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate testified last week. The judge said Palin had failed to show that The Times had acted out of malice, something required in libel lawsuits involving public figures.

Sarah Palin once seemed headed to a seat of power. On Thursday, she testified in a trial that could prove more consequential.

The Washington Post is powering up its coverage of the online world by hiring Taylor Lorenz, The New York Times tech reporter whose stories on influencer culture and social media trends helped usher the Gray Lady into the 21st century. The star reporter with a massive online following thinks the Post gets the internet in ways other outlets don’t.

The trial comes at a time when those who argue that news outlets should pay a steeper price for getting something wrong are more emboldened than they’ve been in decades.