In the face of declining trust in media, communities are part of the solution.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Notable links: July 10, 2026
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Writing at the intersection of technology, journalism, and community.
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Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Communities will build trust and loyalty for local public media. Chicago Public Media is taking a big leap forward.
Chicago Public Media is launching a region-wide social platform as a way to bolster its journalism. I believe it represents a path to the future.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
As social networks fill up with AI slop, trusted relationships and communities will win.
Long-form LinkedIn posts are 41% slop. Other social networks are not far behind.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
IndieWeb Fiction Carnival: May 2026 Roundup
Three short fiction pieces
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Startups track business metrics. Newsrooms should learn from them.
I've rarely seen newsroom business teams discuss metrics like LTV, CAC, and even ARR outside fundraising or finance. They should be commonly known.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
CNN and CNBC promote gambling to make a cheap buck
Some newsrooms are making money from deals with prediction markets. It will only serve to further destroy the public's trust in news.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Governance can prevent AI from being used to undermine democracy. But only if it has teeth.
The apparatus to cement centralized, undemocratic power has already been built. Regulations have a part to play, but they can't just be recommendations.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Happy 250th birthday, America
Let's keep building.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Notable links: July 3, 2026
AI, surveillance, open tech, and news as a business.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
A new media spinout provides streaming apps for public service broadcasters. I just wish it was open.
We need to see more technical collaborations between public service media organizations. It's also really important that they're based on open technology that doesn't lock them in.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Newsrooms need to get comfortable expressing their business value - and raising money on it.
Newsrooms like to spend their time on the journalistic process and assume that the value of their work will speak for itself. They need to start selling themselves.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
OpenAI wants to give us 5% of its success. It's a bad bargain.
A wealth fund that shares 5% of AI success with government and voters is either based on hype or not nearly enough to cover the damage. Either way, the incentives are perverse.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
I have a theory about AI fake news site The Editorial
I was taken in by a fake AI news site. I think it may be an attempt to poison LLMs with propaganda.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
AI's costs are going through the roof - so businesses are telling LLMs to talk like cavemen
Me think this hilarious sign of times.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
They tell us surveillance makes us safer. It undermines our democratic rights.
Civil society actors in nearly every region of the world now operate under the assumption that they are being surveilled. The result is a less democratic world for everyone.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
A concrete tool to help newsrooms cover emergencies
A new site to help newsrooms cover disasters is refreshing in its concrete practicality. Wouldn't it be great if these existed for every aspect of running a newsroom?
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Community Survey 2026
How can I serve you over the coming year?
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
A right-wing media chain tried to replace 47 newspapers with AI. They all died.
A right-wing media chain bought local papers, replaced their journalists with AI, and died. Now their communities are left to plug the gaps.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Two posts about writing
Ideas that spoke to me
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Are frontier models really too dangerous?
To an increasingly authoritarian regime, the opportunity to shape how models describe the world may be too good to pass up on.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Notable links: June 26, 2026
To meet your community where it's at, you need to empower your people.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
All you need to poison an LLM is 13 words.
"It really is just that simple. The way that you can attack these systems is usually so much dumber than you think it is, or than you think it needs to be."
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
To build resilient organizations, you need to empower your team to make decisions.
"That is not leadership. That is control. And it creates dependency, not growth."
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Journalism is rearranging the deckchairs. It needs to reinvent itself.
"In philosophy, we have a term for this: a logical fallacy. And right now, journalism is full of them."
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines
The unusually long sentences criminalize being an anti-fascist activist, reading the wrong zines, and using the wrong communication apps. They're incredibly dangerous.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Notable links: June 19, 2026
Preparing for the fastest period of technical change in decades.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
The European Commission falls for openness theater by working with W Social
The European Commission has moved its profiles to W Social. That's a terrible decision.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
More people get their news from social media than anywhere else - globally. The platforms we use matter.
"For the first time, social media and video networks are, on average across the markets covered, more popular than both TV and owned news websites and apps as sources of news."
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
By the pricking of my corpus, something wicked answers for us
For years, people have used social media to seed disinformation in order to swing elections. Now, the answers our search engines and expert systems produce have become more vulnerable.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
The honest truth about leaders who want to replace their workers with AI
"The problem tends to show up when a CEO is handed an agentic tool like Claude Code, and has it create something, which will work just fine, and thinks “oh, wait, why do we need so many people, when I can just sit here and make things work?” This is a bad CEO."