In this issue: WGA good news/NYT implementing GenAI/podcast ad fraud?/ByteDance racism allegations?/Google SEO becoming more AI friendly?/When Amazon unpersons you/Roblox acquisition/Visa power/New CW programming/Upping your video call game/Upping your public relations game.
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
AI Prompt: Dragons drinking coffee (Neal Ungerleider/Substack AI) This newsletter is a little late this week. Because I’ve been busy. And in need of coffee. Lots of lots of coffee.
Anyway, I was OOO on Monday for Yom Kippur which makes this even later. While I love my bacon cheeseburgers and tattoos, I also think there’s something for a holiday that stresses repentance, atonement, dwelling on your shortcomings, who you have treated badly, and mandatory inner reflection. Especially for someone like me who is allergic to spending time not working and views having free time almost as a sign that I’m doing something very, very wrong. So there’s that.
Also, I started working as a mentor at Techstars Los Angeles , helping startups learn the ropes of marketing and public relations.
The new legal podcast I am hosting for Kaplan, AccelPro IP Law , launched as well. Beautiful!
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Anyway, on to the links.
” The tentative labor agreement between Hollywood studios, streamers and writers opens the door for actors to negotiate their own accord, and is raising hopes in the industry that film and TV production will resume before long. After a nearly five-month strike, the writers came away with several hard-fought victories in the three-year deal, including increased royalties, mandatory staffing for television “writing rooms” and protections regarding the use of artificial intelligence, people familiar with the pact said. ”
“ The New York Times is seeking a senior editor to lead the newsroom’s efforts to ambitiously and responsibly make use of generative artificial intelligence. This editor will be responsible for ensuring that The Times is a leader in GenAI innovation and its applications for journalism. They will lead our efforts to use GenAI tools in reader-facing ways as well as internally in the newsroom. To do so, they will shape the vision for how we approach this technology and will serve as the newsroom's leading voice on its opportunity as well as its limits and risks. ”
“Whitney Cummings, Theo Von, and multiple creators say the podcast network founded by Colin Thomson owes them six or seven figures for ads sold on their podcasts. ”
“ TikTok’s parent company was accused of racism and retaliation by Black former employees in a complaint to US civil rights enforcers alleging ByteDance Ltd. terminated them because they spoke up against discrimination. A woman who worked in sales for the company says she was forced to pursue low-quality leads rather than the more promising ones she had developed herself, and that several supervisors including a vice president referred to her as a “black snake.” A man who was on TikTok’s advertising team said he was wrongly assigned a lower level and salary than White co-workers with equivalent credentials, and denied credit for his own accomplishments and ideas. ”
“ Morgan Overholt saw half of her website's traffic disappear overnight. "This is a joke," another person wrote on a forum for website owners. "I've got long-form content, well written, well researched, filled with original image content LOSING to 500 word AI generated crap…Google is apparently forcing publishers to generate AI spam or die." Those are just two voices in a chorus complaining that Google's latest "helpful content" update – which is meant to improve the quality of search results – has sent their websites tumbling down the rankings. ”
“Jackson soon discovered that Amazon suspended his account because a Black delivery driver who’d come to his house the previous day had reported hearing racist remarks from his video doorbell. In a brief email sent to Jackson at 3 a.m., the company explained how it unilaterally placed all of his linked devices and services on hold as it commenced an internal investigation. The accusations baffled Jackson. He and his family are Black. ”
“ In a lot of ways, the CW’s schedule feels like an island of misfit toys, less a coherent vision and more an attempt to figure out what a linear television network should be in the streaming era from the perspective of a company that does not have much in the way of a streaming platform. ”
“Two years after announcing voice chat was coming to Roblox, the gaming company has acquired a voice tech startup, Speechly, offering voice chat moderation, real-time transcription and Voice API that lets companies add AI voice technology and voice interfaces to their products and experiences. The Helsinki, Finland-based startup Speechly was founded in 2016 with the mission of enabling better computer voice interactions and communication between people online. ”
“ Visa is the publicly-traded U.S. corporation behind the worldwide VisaNet payments network that processed an estimated 193 billion credit and debit card transactions with a volume of $11.6 trillion in 2022. Visa is by far the market leader in credit cards in the U.S., where it is responsible for 52.8% of cards in circulation. Globally, an estimated 40% of card transactions take place using its products. ”
Spending all day on video call setup tips from Alex Miller .
” Lulu Cheng Meservey gives a masterclass on non-boring corporate communications, Korean pop culture, and religious fanaticism. Lulu shares what she’s learned running comms for startups, decoding cultural erogenous zones, and crafting impactful messages in 280 characters or less. ”