Good Morning,
Two numbers today, and they belong together. Traffic to the ten biggest US news sites is down by a third in two years (Press Gazette). More than a third of web pages published since ChatGPT launched show signs of machine authorship (TechCrunch). The open web is filling with writing nobody asked for and emptying of the readers who used to justify the rest.
Here’s what that does downstream: a hoax claiming the Tang Dynasty never existed is picking up genuine believers on the Chinese internet (CNN). Three centuries of poetry, apparently now up for a vote.
The counterexample is in theaters. Hadestown — a show built in front of live audiences for more than a decade before it got near a screen — just broke Hamilton‘s box office records (IndieWire). Nobody found it through a feed. That’s the point.
The bill still arrives: ICA San Diego laid off nearly half its staff (San Diego Union-Tribune), and a new study puts the Paramount-Warner merger’s cost to Los Angeles at 4,500 film and TV jobs (TheWrap).
Meanwhile, America’s first jellyfish museum has opened in Pompano Beach, built by a Ukrainian couple who left their Kyiv one behind in 2022 (AP).
All of our stories below.