☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Top story: New York Times dedicates team to exploring AI
- New from Pew Research Center: Americans’ social media use
- In other news: WSJ plans layoffs, restructuring in D.C. bureau
- Looking ahead: CUNY journalism school to go tuition-free
- Chart of the week: Social media use by age
🔥 Top story
The New York Times announced that it will begin building a team to explore possible ways to use AI in the newsroom, although the company said in a statement that “Times journalism will always be reported, written and edited by our expert journalists.”
A survey from last July asked Americans what impact they think chatbots like ChatGPT will have on a variety of jobs. About half of those who had heard of ChatGPT (52%) said they expect such chatbots to have a major impact on journalists in the next 20 years.
🚨 New from Pew Research Center
A new Pew Research Center survey looks at U.S. adults’ use of social media.
Key findings include:
- YouTube is the most widely used online platform measured in the survey. Roughly eight-in-ten U.S. adults (83%) report ever using YouTube.
- Facebook is also a dominant player in the landscape, with 68% of U.S. adults reporting that they ever use Facebook.
- TikTok’s user base has grown since 2021. A third of Americans (33%) now say they use the platform, compared with 21% who said the same in 2021.
- Adults under 30 are far more likely than their older counterparts to use many of the online platforms, and age gaps are especially large for Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
Also: Read our fact sheet about news consumption on social media in 2023.
📌 In other news
- The Wall Street Journal announces plans for layoffs, restructuring in D.C. bureau
- Nonprofit news operation focusing on criminal justice finds a different way to report on local and national stories
- A look at the challenges that journalists face in Gaza
- Social media chief executives face tough questions at Senate online safety hearing
- Personal data of hundreds of journalists in Mexico leaked in recent hacking of government computers
📅 Looking ahead
The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY is aiming to become tuition-free by raising its endowment to $60 million by 2026.
In a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, a majority of U.S. adults (63%) favored making tuition free at public colleges and universities for all American students. Racial and ethnic minorities and young adults were especially likely to favor this policy, as were Democrats and independents who lean Democratic.
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart comes from our new survey on social media usage.
There are stark age differences in who uses each social media platform. For example, 78% of 18- to 29-year-olds say they use Instagram, far higher than the share among those 65 and older (15%).
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Jacob Liedke, Sarah Naseer, Christopher St. Aubin, Luxuan Wang and Emily Tomasik. It is edited by Katerina Eva Matsa, Michael Lipka and Mark Jurkowitz, and copy edited by David Kent.
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