The Federal government has released the draft regulations for the Online News Act, which received Royal Assent at the end of June.

            Among other things, the regulations spell out how the criteria that digital platforms must follow to determine if the act applies to them and provide details as to what criteria must be considered if an agreement between the tech giants and news organization satisfies the requirement of the act.

             The regulations will be open for 30 days for public consultation. The act will come into force in December of this year.

            The regulations are available here.

 

Here’s an interesting read from a US-based writer about the impact of the recent changes at X, formerly Twitter, has had on her earning power.

            The writer had built a sizeable following on Twitter over the last ten years, but after Elon Musk’s takeover “I am struggling to reach more than a few dozen people at a time— across Twitter and a handful of other social platforms—as I live-blog another historic Texas legislative event: the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.”

 The Canadian Society of Decorative Arts has awarded Kitchener-Waterloo Métis artist, Cheyenne Mapplebeck, the first-ever John Fleming Award in Decorative Arts Writing. Created in 2022, the monetary prize honours the late Canadian scholar and writer, John Fleming, and his lasting contribution to decorative arts education.

 

Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communications has established the Shireen Abu Akleh Emerging Reporter Award in Social Justice Journalism. This award seeks to perpetuate her dedication to truth-telling and support the next generation of reporters committed to the cause, according to the school.

            Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in May 2022 at the age of 51 while reporting for Al Jazeera at the entrance to Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank.

 

A vending machine containing an array of books published by Penguin Books has been installed at British train station. This has now been achieved following a collaboration between Penguin Books, Great Western Railway, Graddons Vending, and Bookbag. Sir Allen Lane who founded Penguin Books believed that high quality, engaging, and reasonably priced books should be available to everyone, anywhere. The idea for a book vending machine is based on Penguin’s Books origins. Titles available in the vending machine include 1984 by George Orwell, ‎The Thursday Murder Club and ‎The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman, Grown Ups by Marian Keyes,

 

John Warnock, founder of Adobe Systems and inventor of the PDF died earlier this month at 82 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

 

            He developed protocols, embedded in printers, that accurately output a file that a computer sent. The protocol was PostScript. It was followed in 1993 by Acrobat, which rendered and read files in a Portable Document Format, or PDF. Both developments forever altered publishing and printing.

            He also championed InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator.

 

 The CRTC is moving to implement the Online News Act. It will set up a framework of negotiations between news organizations in Canada and the online platforms that distribute news content. The CRTC will then oversee the mandatory bargaining process once it is in place. A public consultation to gather the views of Canadians and interested parties will also take place.

 

From marketing site Digiday comes a story on how reporters are using generative AI in newsrooms and in their reporting process. The report is based on presentations at the Online New Association conference in late August.

 

            A computational journalist at The Marshall Project, for example, tried to use ChatGPT to generate summaries of banned book policies in various states based on reporters’ notes. The process saved time so his team could focus on fact checking on formatting the data.