Journalism Today. 10 Jan 2025

By Matthew Leake and Gretel Kahn

🗞️ 3 top news stories

1. Cecilia Sala returns from Iranian captivity. Italian journalist Cecilia Sala has returned to Rome after spending several weeks in prison in Iran. The 29-year-old Chora Media podcaster and reporter for Il Foglio had been held since 19 December but her arrest was only announced eight days later. It is believed she spent her time in solitary confinement in a notorious Tehran prison. Sala was welcomed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni who took personal charge of the case. Before being re-united, Sala’s partner, journalist Daniele Raineri, said: "I spoke to her and she told me 'I'll see you soon', she was emotional and overjoyed." | Read

• In her first podcast appearance since being released Sala explained why she was in Iran: "This story begins with the fact that Iran is the country I most wanted to return to, where there are the people I've grown most fond of. You try to have a shield from the suffering of others that you accumulate and sometimes sources you meet for work become friends, people you want to know how they are and Iran is one of these places".

Who is Cecilia Sala? In 2022 our colleague Marina Adami interviewed Sala about her successful daily podcast, Stories, which explores human interest angles of hard news stories from around the world. “The idea is always to start with a scene, a detail or a character, famous or unknown, that is symbolic in some way and is an instrument to tell a larger, more universal story,” Sala told Adami. | Read

2. Fact-checking Zuckerberg. As the dust settles from Meta’s decision to drastically change its approaches to content moderation, experts continue to weigh in about what this could mean for users of its platforms. Founding Director of the International Fact-Checking Network Alexios Mantzarlis fact-checked Zuckerberg’s announcement itself in a piece for Nieman Lab where he calls into question the Meta CEO’s various claims including his assertion that fact-checkers are “too politically biased”. Mantzarlis states that codes used by fact-checkers around what constitutes “false news” have actually been widely accepted across the political spectrum and that much of the content flagged by fact-checkers is not “political” but “low-quality spammy clickbait”. | Read

• Alexios also addressed Meta’s decision to imitate X’s Community Notes feature instead: “He should probably read the research that suggests Community Notes users are motivated by partisanship and tend to over-rate their political adversaries. He should also probably be aware that as many as 90% of Community Notes never get displayed on X.”

3. A new Google experiment. Google is testing a new AI audio feature that summarises news and information about users’ interests into a 5-minute daily podcast-style episode. The Daily Listen feature appears in the Google App for US users of Search Labs, a testing ground for the company’s early-stage experiments. The feature includes a transcript and links to stories that the episode is based on. | Read

• Daily Listen shares similarities with Google’s NotebookLM AI podcast generator which creates episodes based on a website or document that users ‘train’ it on. Yesterday we shared an episode based on our newly published Trends and Predictions 2025 report. | Listen

📊 Chart of the day

📉Declining referral traffic. In our latest Trends and Predictions report, we outlined how referral traffic to publishers from social media has further declined as platforms are pulling further back from news. Aggregate Facebook traffic to news and media properties has declined by two-thirds (67%) in the last two years and traffic from X is down by a half (50%). While there does not yet appear to be any decline in aggregate traffic from Google Search, publishers are worried that search traffic may be next to fall as the big players integrate AI-generated summaries that could further reduce exposure to news links. | Read the report

_________

☕ Coffee break

The murder of Indian journalist Mukesh Chandrakar has shone a spotlight on the dangers of reporting from some of the country's most volatile regions as an independent reporter. | Read

Instagram, Facebook, and Threads are removing 404 Media stories for “nudity” when reporting on the company’s ‘censorship’.  | Read

When Donald Trump becomes president later this month, some news publishers will have updated tactics and strategies in place to cover his second term, ranging from a focus on softer news stories to more social media monitoring and engagement. | Read

Vox Media cut at least 12 staffers at Vox.com, in the company's second round of layoffs in about a month. | Read

_________

Are you our next Director? The University of Oxford is seeking a new Director of the Reuters Institute. They will have the strategic vision, academic credentials and public engagement skills to ensure the Reuters Institute continues to thrive. Applications close Friday 17 January, 17.00 UK time. | Find out more and how to apply

_________

📚 One piece from our archive

Feminist journalism in India. In 2024 Indian journalist Japleen Pasricha founded Feminism in India, a bilingual feminist media platform. Her goal was to have more Indian feminist digital content written by Indian women for Indian women. Today the site is made by a team of ten people publishing original pieces in both Hindi and English and media guides on how to report on issues such as gender-based violence and abortion. Our contributor Raksha Kumar spoke to Pasricha in an interview that we published last year. | Read

_________

The Reuters Institute has more than 17,000 followers on Bluesky. If you don't follow us yet, please do so by clicking on this link.

_________

📬 Sign up for our newsletter now

Sign up for the Reuters Institute's newsletter to ensure you get everything we do. Original reporting, evidence-based insights, online seminars and readings are sent twice a week. | Sign up now