warning: you’re about to listen to two journalists talk about the news. But the news sucks! you say — so why should we care? Well, this $250 million deal might have just made it worse. Counterintuitive, but Matt Pearce (ex LA Times) has a pretty compelling argument. We talk about this, and AI, and a bunch of other stuff.

Keep in mind that this is a pretty complicated topic, and there are some other viewpoints on this. For example, there’s this opposing stance:

https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/04/the-california-journalism-preservation-act-would-do-more-harm-than-good-heres-how-the-state-might-better-help-news/

And on the other hand, there's Matt summarizing the situation, where he says 'hardly anyone won, except Google':

https://mattdpearce.substack.com/p/a-deep-dive-into-googles-shady-and

And also this:

https://mindandiron.substack.com/p/mind-and-iron-gavin-newsom-may-have

There’s also Matt’s big spreadsheet on astroturfing, which we mention only briefly:

https://mattdpearce.substack.com/p/californias-sb-1327-and-the-big-tech

You can find Matt Pearce at his newsletter, which I highly recommend:

https://mattdpearce.substack.com

Anyway, this is something a lot of people probably won’t even be aware of, because it’s a really boring topic. But I think this is going to be playing out repeatedly, soon. Stay in tune.