Tyler Dukes

The mystery of the unclaimed roadside cameras in a Florida county remains unsolved. Employees set out to remove them from 12 locations where officials said the devices were installed without permits. When crews arrived, the cameras were already gone.

Records obtained through FOIA requests have helped journalists and the public uncover major insights. When FOIA offices lose staff and resources, requests pile up and secrecy gets worse. Tell Congress to protect FOIA today:

Love this story about Ethan Young, the student journalist who joined the @knightcolumbia.org @mfia-clinic.bsky.social lawsuit filed yesterday. "As someone who wants to be a journalist, I see upholding the First Amendment as synonymous with pursuing that profession." www.inquirer.com/education/un...

N.C. State has fired football coach Dave Doeren a day after the Wolfpack's loss at Stanford.

AI-native newsrooms driven by agents are here. There's no real reason they can't have high standards and produce meaningful news content. reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/inside-...

🚨 NEW: Meta has delayed rolling out terms that would allow broad scraping of news sites. New date: November 20. Legal experts are still skeptical. The push comes one week after @andrewdeck.bsky.social and I first reported how the terms would impact news publishers. www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/meta...

We @propublica.org sued the U.S. Department of Education. We got the records. We are sharing them with you. www.propublica.org/article/civi...

Anthropic donates the Agent Skills open standard to the Agentic AI Foundation and says 70+ platforms have integrated it, after donating MCP to the AAIF in 2025 (Anthropic) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

In September, the AI company Anthropic claimed its models were approaching “superhuman capabilities for geolocating outdoor photos”. Bellingcat put that claim to the test by benchmarking the performance of Anthropic and other LLMs. Here’s what we found: www.bellingcat.com/resources/20...

Your next big lesson could be someone else’s breakthrough. 💡 Figured out a new tool, cracked a messy dataset, or learned something the hard way? Teach it at #NICAR27. Still need training? Pitch that too. 📅 Due Oct. 30 🔗 https://bit.ly/4yBEqFr #DataJournalism #IRE

NEW: The Wall Street Journal is using a custom AI tool called "Doppler" to monitor podcasts and social media ahead of the midterms. It uses a database of 25 million TikTok videos and 500,000 podcasts to gauge public opinion trends that traditional polling can miss. www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/the-...

On the gfx team @propublica.org, we try to make all of our maps look good on desktop, mobile, dark mode & light mode, which means 4 total versions of a single map! Here's how I approached one of the maps for today's story about fires and flooding in Ruidoso, NM. www.propublica.org/article/wild...

Vice President JD Vance joked protester was here illegally. He says he was born and raised in NC. Vance joked of an illegal crossing after Victor Quebrado Perez disrupted GOP campaign rally to call for release of Epstein files. (Via Faith Wardwell) www.newsobserver.com/news/politic... #ncpol

Their police jobs ended. They kept using Flock’s vast surveillance network. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Raleigh! AAUP at NC State screens Ghost in the Machine on Thu 29 Oct, 7pm, in G107 Caldwell Hall, as part of its critical AI literacies series for students and faculty. Who builds AI, who benefits, and who bears the cost?

A patch is about to roll out, but the exploit affects more than 40 percent of the internet. www.theverge.com/tech/1015257...

In August, Trump announced the “BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” But is it? The text of the accord — which grants the U.S. sweeping access to Venezuela’s oil reserves — has been one of DC’s most sought-after secrets. ProPublica got to see a copy. 🧵

If you’ve ever considered the Nieman (or another residential journalism fellowship), great opportunity here to learn more!

#earlyvote afternoon update 10/19: at least 10 million people have voted in the 2026 general election 🥳🎉 election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2...

I love the ways media is discussing You Can See Everything without spoiling it. My favs so far: 1. John Carreyrou’s reflection on film www.nytimes.com/2026/10/17/b... 2. Wired interview with Fielder www.wired.com/story/nathan... 3. Daily podcast with film critics podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

A decade ago, Florida stripped a teacher of her license for sexually abusing a 16-year-old. Last year, she opened a private school there with ease. As private schools fueled by taxpayer dollars proliferate, states are choosing not to closely regulate who runs them or what they teach. (Pub. July)

Meta removes ToS language that suggested it could scrape websites "associated with" business accounts, saying it applied only to "ads and business products" (Terrence O'Brien/The Verge) Main Link | Mediagazer Permalink

3 Charlotte Cops Resign After Group Chat Reveals Competition To Arrest the Most Black People The officers could face consequences beyond termination, as prosecutors review whether their past testimony and arrests can still be trusted reason.com/2026/10/15/3...

Preach: “Engagement data can’t tell you what caused audiences to engage, settle a hunch, or isolate your contribution,” the report reads. “Randomization can.”

On X, users have circulated nonconsenual AI videos created by Grok of a woman they think is Jane Doe. They continue to spread her name. People have praised X for staying relevant for AI and tech conversation. But it also is the main vector for a doxing. That is X. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/n...

"Virtually all the new news sources are in urban areas, while rural America is increasingly arid news and information territory. And virtually all the philanthropic support for local news is in metro regions.” buff.ly/NWAaDX3

NEW: Battles over redistricting have long been intertwined with racism and political power, particularly in southern states like Tennessee. Reuters sought to quantify the impact of redistricting on the voters of Tennessee, examining Nashville and Memphis. www.reuters.com/world/us/wha...

🚨🚨🚨dope ass job alert🚨🚨🚨

This is big news, and publishers of all sizes should be paying attention. www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/meta...

BREAKING: The Trump administration is using a grant program from the 1980s to force cities around the US to funnel their ongoing collection of Flock, Axon, and other ALPR data into large federal surveillance centers that fall under the White House’s jurisdiction, 404 Media has learned

Excellent work here from @padejski.bsky.social tracking what news organizations have built with AI over the last several years. cronkite.asu.edu/knightcenter...

Tens of thousands of children ages 10 to 13 in Texas schools have been swept into the justice system after an increase in police officers on campus and amid a crackdown on misbehavior, an analysis by The New York Times and The San Antonio Express-News found.

genuinely think that chartbeat and real-time audience traffic insight dashboards are one of the worst things to happen to the media industry. it found out what people read and wanted and public trust has pretty much only sharply declined since then

Have a new story out in NYT today about the mind-boggling amount of math calculations that it takes to train AI. Here's a paywall free link:

Studies indicate that small language models can successfully perform Text-to-SQL with specialized fine-tuning and retry strategies, enhancing data access in resource-limited environments. The results show up to 97% execution accuracy with these lightweight methods. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17305

It's published! Based on the work of LSE's #JournalismAI since 2018 plus new interviews and cases drawn from around the world. It explores how we got here, what journalists are doing with AI, the best strategies and the ethical and editorial challenges it brings. www.routledge.com/Reimagining-...

"Steven Strogatz, a professor of mathematics at Cornell University, describes the excitement and grief of watching A.I. take on work that gives people a sense of purpose" www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/p...

"What I kept seeing, over and over, is that people are trying to bring this new technology home to their disciplines and crafts, and that the big labs are not really helping them that much. People are building things that work around that." (by @ftrain.com) aboard.com/people-are-r...

Wired (@wired.com) is going to stop paywalling articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. H/T @freedom.press.

Hurricane Isaias left at least four people dead in Florida and Alabama, two died after trees toppled onto their homes. The storm was the first Atlantic hurricane of the season, and the first to strike the mainland U.S. in two years.

USA Today Co has become the latest news publisher to sue OpenAI for the unauthorised use of hundreds of thousands of articles across its 19 publications, seeking $250m in damages pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/ne...

Cutting Local Journalists, McClatchy Embraces AI Content www.techpolicy.press/cutting-loca...

Body cam footage obtained by 404 Media reveals the first Flock camera searches ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, and highlights how the system has turned otherwise mundane traffic stops into interrogations for drivers. @jasonkoebler.bsky.social scopp here: www.404media.co/watch-footag...

Real-time crime-center software is a sometimes overlooked but powerful tool allowing police to aggregate immense amounts of data, significantly expanding their surveillance reach. n.pr/47GwCHc