Journalism Today. 29 July 2025

By Gretel Kahn and Marina Adami

🗞️ 3 top news stories

1. Chatbots bypassing paywalls. ChatGPT and other AI chatbots are now quietly and systematically bypassing paywalls by using real-time web searches to reconstruct articles from major publications, new research from Digital Digging reveals. Instead of accessing subscriber-only content directly, these systems gather fragments from public sources such as social media excerpts, archived pages, and secondary write-ups, and stitch them together to recreate full articles they’ve never actually seen, effectively sidestepping paywalls without breaking them. | Read

• Our research. According to our latest Digital News Report, AI chatbots are emerging as a source of news, according to our Digital News Report 2025. The proportion of people using chatbots for news is still relatively small overall (7%). However, this figure is higher among those under 35 (12%). ChatGPT remains the most mentioned AI service for news, followed by Google’s Gemini and Meta AI, though the numbers could be even higher, as it may not always be clear to consumers when they are using generative AI. | Read our research

2. Growth of The Kyiv Independent. In a piece by Sarah Scire from Nieman Lab, we learn how The Kyiv Independent gained more than 20,000 paying members after a month-long multi-country campaign, which represents about 70% of the outlet’s revenue is from readers. The Kyiv Independent does not have a paywall and has promised not to raise one during the war. | Read

• A quote. “We understand that in this unique moment of time — especially with Trump being the [U.S.] president — Kyiv Independent’s mission expands. We see a lot of the story [being about] defending democracy, and Kyiv Independent, in a way, represents that,” Kyiv Independent COO Zakhar Protsiuk said. “It’s a larger story than just Ukraine. We see that, for example, people come and meet on our channels about North Korea, Russia, and Syria. We represent these values that we are trying to defend. We started looking for publishers that also represent those values. We want to build an informal alliance with them, and this campaign was also a way to do that.”

3. Systematic threats to community journalism in Guatemala. Eight press freedom and human rights organizations published a report documenting systemic threats to community journalism in Guatemala. It identified a pattern of serious and persistent threats, including legal harassment; violence; intimidation; gender-based attacks; structural racism, particularly against indigenous women journalists; and surveillance by both local authorities and private actors, among other threats. | Read

📚 From our archive. In 2023, we documented the crackdown on journalism by the hands of the government, with elPeriódico newspaper shutting down due to relentless government pressure. A piece by Gretel Kahn features some of the journalists defying government harassment in the country: Nelton Rivera González from Prensa Comunitaria, Alejandra Gutiérrez Valdizán from AGENCIA OCOTE, and Francisco Rodríguez from Plaza Pública. | Read

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📊 From our DNR 2025

📊 Too little harmful content removed from platforms. In general, audiences surveyed for our Digital News Report 2025 said too little harmful but legal content is being removed from social and video networks. However, there are some differences at the country level, with respondents from the UK and Germany much more likely to support this statement than respondents from the US, and audiences in Greece leaning the other way, with the largest proportion of respondents maintaining that too much content is being removed. | Read

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📺 Did you miss our Digital News Report 2025 global launch? Our colleagues Marina Adami and Gretel Kahn wrote a summary. | Read the summary ⋅ Watch the launch

• Watch our online regional launches: Africa | Asia | India | USA

⏯️ Watch and listen to our opening Digital News Report podcast. Lead author Nic Newman and co-author Richard Fletcher break down all the findings with our Director, Mitali Mukherjee. | YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Transcript

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☕ Coffee break

Freelancers in southern Europe are facing dire financial conditions, with some paid as little as €50 per article. | Voxeurop

Google AI overviews appear less frequently for searches using keywords that usually lead to news sites, a new analysis found. AI overviews seem to target specific, focused queries rather than broader-coverage topics. | Generative AI in the Newsroom

Podcaster Steven Bartlett is cloning his voice to create an AI host for his "100 CEOs" podcast. | Business Insider

The Washington Post’s factchecker has accepted a buyout and is leaving the newspaper amid an ongoing exodus of high-profile journalists. Glenn Kessler, who has been in the job since 2011, said he’s unsure if his role will be filled again. | The Wrap

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📚 One piece from our archive

How climate reporters protect their mental health. 63% of climate journalists report mental health is not taken seriously by their newsrooms, psychiatrist Dr Anthony Feinstein found in a recent research project. Almost half reported moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety and depression. What does this look like in practice, and how do these journalists address the mental health impacts of their work? Our own Greg Cochrane spoke to six members of our Oxford Climate Journalism Network to bring to light the human side of this issue. | Read

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