Insecurity
/The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel -Steven Furtick
10 Webinars this week about AI, Journalism & Media
/Mon, July 6 - AI and Human Dignity
What: Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical (about AI) and the broader questions it raises about AI ethics, education, and our shared digital future.
Who: Wesley Fryer, a middle school STEM and media literacy middle school teacher at Providence Day School in Charlotte, North Carolina and educational technology early adopter.
When: 7 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Media Education Lab
Tue, July 7 - Reporting on Rape
What: This webinar will cover: Common myths and harmful narratives to avoid; How language choices influence public attitudes to sexual violence; Practical tips for ethical and accurate journalism – built on strong working practice; Best practice for working with survivors sharing their stories; Opportunities to ask questions and raise any challenges you face in reporting on this issue.
Who: Sophie Wilkinson, a freelance journalist with over 15 years’ experience working for a range of consumer titles; Alessia Tranchese, Associate Professor of Language, Feminism and Digital Media.
When: 9 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: End Violence Against Women Coalition
Tue, July 7 - The Data Investigator’s Toolkit: Lessons from 2026’s Sigma Award Winners
What: Each winning team will have five minutes to showcase the approaches and breakthroughs that helped them uncover complex stories. The session will offer perspectives on the trends and practices redefining data journalism today.
Who: Moderated by Brant Houston, GIJN co-founder and Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting at the University of Illinois.
When: 9 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Global Investigative Journalism Network
Tue, July 7 - Codex for Everyday Use
What: We'll explore ways people are using Codex to support everyday projects and tasks—from organizing information and planning activities to creating simple tools that make life a little easier. We'll focus on practical examples and leave some time for questions and ideas from the audience.
Who: Angela Bunn, AI Deployment Manager, OpenAI.
When: 11 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: OpenAI Academy
Tue, July 7 - AI Impact Hour for Nonprofits
What: A practical, interactive conversation designed for executive directors, staff, board members, and volunteers who want to understand what AI can realistically do in a nonprofit setting. You’ll see simple demonstrations and real examples, and you'll have a chance to share your experiences, challenges, and insights with the group.
Who: Aretha Simons, M.Ed., Webinar Producer, Nonprofit & Al Consultant.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: TechSoup
Thu, July 9 - Uncover the Hidden AI Risks in Your Applications
What: In this webinar, we’ll discuss: The benefits of leveraging AI models to accelerate innovation; How to identify the models, license obligations, and risks in your applications; Ways to prevent vulnerable AI-generated code from impacting your business; How to customize your SBOMs to include AI models and fit your specific needs.
Who: Steven Zimmerman, DevOps Security Solutions Manager, Black Duck.
When: 5 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Blackduck
Thu, July 9 - Health care affordability isn’t inflation, and AI may not serve us: What journalists need to understand
What: This practical session will provide reporters with data sources, story ideas and reporting frameworks for covering one of the most important economic issues facing American households.
Who: Marty Steffens, SABEW chair of business and financial reporting at the Missouri School of Journalism; Larry Levitt, Executive Vice President for Health Policy at KFF.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Society for Advancing Business Editing & Writing
Thu, July 9 - How Rural Districts Are Using AI to Meet Real Needs: Lessons from the Rural AI Strategy Lab
What: You’ll hear from the three team leads from the Rural AI Strategy Lab, a cohort-based initiative where 13 rural school district teams are working through a human-centered design process to identify real problems and build AI-enabled solutions that fit their contexts. They walk through their experience from the inside. They’ll share the user-centered problems they identified, the AI tools they selected and why, what they learned when they started prototyping, and how they’re planning their pilots for fall 2026.
Who: David Huggins, an educator and United States Army veteran with more than a decade of experience in education; Jessica Gillespie, the Director of Instructional Improvement–Innovation at Griswold Public Schools; Ted W. Paton, a forward-thinking educator and innovator dedicated to bridging the digital divide for the next generation of rural leaders; Megan Benay, a Partner on the Practice and Implementation team at FullScale; Adam A. Phyall, III, a former high school science teacher.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: FullScale
Thu, July 9 - How to Improve AI Visibility With Press Releases & Syndicated Articles
What: We’ll show you how to turn press releases and syndicated content into powerful drivers of AI visibility. Today’s AI search engines don’t rank content, they cite trusted sources. If your PR strategy isn’t built for that, you’re missing critical opportunities to get surfaced where your audience is searching.
Who: Melissa James, Senior Sales Director, Notified; Jeff Heisler, Senior Sales Director, Notified.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Public Relations Society of America
Fri, July 10 - Strengthening Stories Workshop: Ledes, Nut Grafs, and Self Editing
What: Participants will learn: Practical tips to punch up languid ledes; Ways to quickly identify and focus nut grafs; Approaches to story structure to rethink — or reshape — the narrative A new framework for self-editing that will improve or tighten your copy, guaranteed; Additional tips for effective storytelling.
Who: Beth Francesco, Executive Director at NPCJI Elliot C. Williams, Training Manager at NPCJI.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: EventBrite
Cost: $20 members, $25 nonmembers
Sponsor: National Press Club
Two Faces
/No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. -Nathaniel Hawthorne (Born July 4, 1804)
Patriotism & Nationalism
/Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism when hate of people other than your own comes first. -Charles de Gaulle
AI Bias in Academic Publishing
/A new study finds “academic publication reviewers continue to penalise authors from countries where English is less widely spoken, even after ChatGPT became widely available. Write naturally and risk being flagged as a non-native speaker; write with AI assistance and risk being flagged as an AI user. The problem was never purely linguistic but structural, and AI tools are not designed to address structural bias.” -London School of Economics
21 Articles about AI Fakes
/Now we’re getting AI fake news complaining about how AI fake news is the death of real news – Harvard’s Nieman Lab
WIRED talks to author who included quotes made up by AI — in his book on AI. – WIRED
AI-generated video of Vermont congressional race tests new state disclosure law – WCAX
One fake web page can be enough to trick AI shopping recommendations – Fast Company
Anyone can fake a scientific image with AI, tricking even academic journals – and undermining trust in science – The Conversation
Medical students are using a popular research tool (aided by AI) to pump out misleading studies – Science.org
In Age of AI, World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes - The New York Times
An explosion of AI deepfakes is redefining American elections - Axios
AI Supercharges Deepfake Nudes—Unleashing a New Form of Bullying Among Kids – Wall Street Journal
Cybercriminals Use Fake AI Guides and Dev Tools to Spread AsyncRAT Malware – InfoSecurity Magazine
Concern for study looking into whether conversations with AI could change viewpoints – Retraction Watch
Google Says Chinese Cybercrime Group Used Its A.I. in Scams - The New York Times
Telegraph, Sun and Mirror hoaxed by AI picture of Thai police in drag – Press Gazette
A.I. Is Making Scams Hard to Spot. Here’s How to Protect Yourself. - The New York Times
Fake academic journals are publishing AI-generated papers under real professors’ names – NBC News
Two New AI-Driven Impersonation Scams to Avoid – Writer Beware
Scammers using AI to create convincing fake delivery texts, emails | How to protect yourself – ABC7 Chicago
Cop Accused of Using AI to Fake Evidence – Futurism
Judge rules both sides in lawsuit misused AI, disqualifies lawyers – Reuters
AI-Generated Fake Receipts Now Make Up 71% of Expense Fraud – Pymnts
In Texas, AI-generated political ads are blurring the line between real and fake- Poynter
The Only Cure for Suffering
/The only cure for suffering is to face it head on, grasp it around the neck and use it. –British Journalist and writer Mary Craig (Born July 2, 1928)
AI Definitions: AI Trainer
/AI Trainer (or AI tutor) – This is the job of helping an AI find and digest the best, most useful data and then teaching it to respond accurately and in constructive ways. When AI companies were first launching, they often relied on workers in low-income countries to perform tedious data labeling, but now there's demand for more specialized knowledge. Some companies pay significant hourly rates for highly skilled experts to share their expertise with AI for training. This includes those working in computer science, real estate, law, medicine, writing, etc.
Unintended Consequences
/Any idiot can build a system. Any amateur can make it perform. Professionals think about how a system will fail. It’s very common for people to think about how a system will work if it is used the way they imagine. But they don’t think about how that system might work if it were used by a bad actor or a perfectly ordinary person who is just a little different from what the person designing it is like.
Companies need to be thinking about how each product could actually be used in the real world. If you build a product that works great for men and is going to lead to harassment of women, you have a problem. If you build a product that makes everyone’s address books 5% more efficient and then gets three people killed because it gave their personal information to their stalkers, that’s a problem.
What you need is a very diverse working group that can recognize a wide range of problems, that knows which questions to ask and has support inside the company and in the broader community to surface these issues and make sure they are taken seriously. If they’re in there from day one, it makes a huge difference.
Former Google engineer Yonatan Zunger in an interview with NPR
19 Articles about AI & Politics
/How A.I. Is Changing the Way Politicians Run for Office - New York Times
China Has Matched Anthropic in Cybersecurity, Resetting AI Race -Wall Street Journal
Silicon Valley backed Trump to kill AI regulation, now the industry is begging for rules - The Next Web
The semiconductor industry that has become a major choke point in the global contest for artificial intelligence leadership – New York Times
Feds controlling ChatGPT access misreads AI threats – Washington Post
Inside the White House's AI power center – Axios
Concern for study looking into whether conversations with AI could change viewpoints – Retraction Watch
Are ChatGPT and other AI chatbots politically biased? We tested them. – Washington Post
How does A.I. benefit the public? – New York Times
An explosion of AI deepfakes is redefining American elections – Axios
Big Subsidies for Google, Limited Water for Locals: The Dilemma of AI in India – Wall Street Journal
China Wants A.I. to Flourish, but Not at the Expense of Jobs – New York Times
In the AI propaganda war, Iran is winning – The Economist
AI license plate cameras tore this town apart and led to a state of emergency – Washington Post
Why China Is So Much Less Scared of A.I. – New York Times
AI models are being used to predict conflict – The Economist
AI is making it very easy for the government to spy on you. Some lawmakers are worried. – NBC News
In turf battle over AI, U.S. spy agencies vie for more sway than Commerce – Washington Post
Congress Is Doing Little to Prepare for Potential A.I. Job Losses – New York Times
China's Colleges React to AI
/Chinese Universities are dropping programs in translation and foreign languages while adding degrees in embodied intelligence, AI, and robotics. In April, China’s Ministry of Education approved nine universities to begin enrolling students in “embodied intelligence” — the Chinese term for physical AI technologies such as autonomous machines and humanoid robots. -Rest of World
People Lie
/The reason people lie is to avoid the pain of challenge and its consequences.
17 Articles from June about AI & Data Science
/Neural Networks, Explained for Beginners: Start Here If They’ve Confused You
Here’s What Everyone Gets Wrong About Agentic AI
The Five Eyes intelligence alliance has issued a rare joint warning about frontier AI
How AI Agents Decide What to Do Next
Can AI Predict Satellite Failures Before They Happen? The US Air Force Wants to Find Out
1.5M people use GenAI.mil, the Defense Department’s enterprise generative AI platform
Optimizing AI Agent Planning with Operations Research and Data Science
The Ultimate Beginners’ Guide to Building an AI Agent in Python
10 Common RAG Mistakes We Keep Seeing in Production
The infrastructure behind making local LLM agents useful
How Innovative Is China’s Space Industry?
The 10 data science AI skills that really matter in 2026
Code is cheap. Engineering judgement is now the scarce resource
76 Media Job & Internship Sites
/Asian American Journalists Association (members only)
Associated Press (jobs & internships)
Assoc for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
BEA (The Broadcast Education Association)
COMM internships (Twitter/X)
Dayforce Job & Internship Board
See the rest of the list here
Deciding What to Build
/Everyone got excited they can suddenly code, and completely missed the point. Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: deciding what to build has always been a bottleneck. It is a genuine waste of your one professional life to spend it building things nobody wants and nobody buys, in a system that won't let you get near the problem. Chase impact, not the salary ceiling. And if your job consistently has you shipping into the void, leave." - Kasper Junge
The Quest for Truth
/The quest for truth, at least the truth about the most important things, cannot be divorced from the quest to become the kind of person we need to become. -C. Stephen Evans
8 Webinars this week about AI, Journalism & Media
/Tue, June 30 - Uncovering AI’s Human Cost: A Non Technical Toolkit for Investigative Reporters
What: Participants will be introduced to a framework that breaks down each development stage of AI into an area of coverage and learn about how they can find and report stories within each one. Students will walk away with methods and approaches on how to tackle their own AI accountability stories and learn from low-tech examples that yielded high impacts.
Who: Lam Thuy Vo, Pulitzer Center Grantee
When: 10 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Pulitzer Center
Tue, June 30 - Who Gets to Crawl? Publisher control in the age of AI crawlers and agents
What: In this session, we will share what Cloudflare is seeing across the web, how AI crawler behavior is evolving, and what publishers can learn from the emerging infrastructure layer around bots, agents, protocols, and machine-readable rights.
Who: Sam Else, Senior Director Strategic Partnerships, Cloudflare; Ezra Eeman. Lead, AI in Media, WAN-IFRA; Kevin Anderson, Director of the Digital Revenue Network, WAN-IFRA.
When: 11 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: World Association of News Publishers
Tue, June 30 - Operationalizing AI in Observability: From Debugging to Automated Remediation
What: We will walk through what operationalizing AI in observability actually looks like in practice, with real use case examples across each stage of the journey, from faster investigation to fully autonomous remediation.
Who: Alex Wilhelm, TNS Host; Vignesh Palaniappan, Senior Product Manager for Bits AI.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The New Stack
Tue, June 30 - How AI Makes the Best Leaders More Human (Not Less)
What: This webinar is about how they’re doing it, how you can do it (and support your leaders to do it too). This is a new way to think about AI – one not media-based, but reality and results driven.
Who: Kevin Eikenberry, Chief Potential Officer, The Kevin Eikenberry Group and co-founder of The Remote Leadership Institute.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Training Magazine Network
Tue, June 30 - The ethics and law of creator-style journalism
Who: Lynn Walsh, Trusting News and Jonathan Gaston-Falk, Student Press Law Center.
When: 4 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University & and Trusting News
Wed, July 1 - Design for trust: Data storytelling in the age of AI
What: Learn how to stay in the driving seat as AI becomes part of your data workflow. Explore what it actually takes to build trust through data in an AI-driven world.
Who: Tey Bannerman, AI Strategy & Product Design Leader; Duncan Clark, Flourish CEO, Canva EMEA GM.
When: 11 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Flourish
Wed, July 1 - Beyond the Prompt: Moving from Conversation to Connected Workflows
What: We'll show how AI-assisted work is moving from conversation toward delegation. You’ll learn how to define a useful outcome, provide the right context, set constraints and quality standards, and keep human judgment in the loop.
Who: Juliann Igo, GTM, OpenAI; Diana Stegall, Customer Education, OpenAI.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: OpenAI Academy
Thu, July 2 - Visual Journalism
What: We bring together three practitioners from three of the world's leading editorial environments to explore what this craft looks like from the inside — the process, the decisions, the constraints, and the possibilities.
Who: Irene de la Torre Arenas, Financial Times; Jonas Oesch, NZZ; Marco Hernandez, The New York Times.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: On Data And Design
Embrace Learning
/Embrace learning as a place to meet God.
Deathly Afraid
/A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun. -H. L. Mencken
Job Interviews: 17 Articles
/5 red flags to spot before taking the job - Glass Door
6 Things To Do When You Don’t Know What To Say In A Job Interview - Forbes
10 Impressive Questions to Ask in an Interview - The Cut
50 Most Common Interview Questions - Glass Door
Answers To Illegal Interviews Questions - Business Insider
Don't botch your interview - Axios
How Interviewers Know when to Hire you in 90 Seconds - Undercover Recruiters
How to Handle Inappropriate Interview Questions - LifeHacker
How to Hire the Best? Jeff Bezos Says to Consider 1 Key Trait - Inc
How to Keep a Bad Interviewer from Derailing Your Job Chances - LifeHacker
How to Spot the Boss from Hell - Wall Street Journal ($)
Job Interviews Are Broken - The Atlantic
Why Brainteasers don't belong in job interviews - New Yorker
Why Hiring Managers Use Personality Tests - Wall Street Journal ($)
Your Interview With AI - Inside Higher Ed