I'm a product leader, entrepreneur and journalist who lives in Seattle.
Tibo Sottiaux runs the Codex team at OpenAI, and he previously worked at Google DeepMind. He posted quite the comment on X about his former employer's head start with generative AI: I was part of that team. Basically ChatGPT one year before it came out.… Google was too nervous to release it, and DeepMind was blocked from shipping products that could disrupt Google. I think about this a lot. — Tibo
Read more →I've talked with a lot of people who experiment with AI, get poor results and conclude that it's not good enough. Deeply skeptical, they keep AI at arm's length and resist learning how to work with it. AI still gets a lot of things wrong, but the better mindset is to hold yourself accountable for the result. Treat errors as data points, not verdicts. Did I provide enough information for the model
Read more →A big motivation for relaunching this blog is to knit together my work over the years so AI can find it. Writing up the projects page, I paused on the Breaking News entry. There's a part of that story I never published. Breaking News was a free consumer product inside NBC News. A few months before NBC shut us down, we discovered that companies would pay serious money to subscribe to it. It started
Read more →Over the years, I've published on just about every blog platform known to mankind. When I first launched Lost Remote, blog platforms didn't exist. Similarly, this new personal blog lacks a CMS, and I'm updating it directly from Claude Code (mostly from my phone). Once a Tumblr custom site, it's now hosted on GitHub with Astro on the front end. Claude did a great job porting over my old Tumblr post
Read more →As we say at Factal, facts save lives. From severe weather and wildfires to shootings and regional conflicts, it’s critical that first responders, security professionals and anyone in harm’s way have access to fast, accurate information. But the quality of real-time information is deteriorating. Social media is becoming increasingly polluted with noise, misinformation and AI-generated deception. R
Read more →Filter bubbles are the greatest enemy of facts in the US. Once just a safe harbor of like-minded opinions, some filter bubbles have become alternative universes. If you only watch Fox News primetime and hang out in “Trump’s Army” Facebook group, you’re isolated amid alternative facts, conspiracy theories and misinformation. These filter bubbles have become more impervious over time, cementing opin
Read more →The world has changed. Let’s count the ways. 1. Opinions already permeate the internet, and there is no barrier to entry to publish one yourself. Smart opinions are curated on platforms like Medium and Substack covering just about any subject and perspective you can imagine. You can directly follow the people you trust. 2. As news organizations shrink or disappear altogether, news coverage is on a
Read more →Factal has been covering the coronavirus outbreak since our first report on Dec. 30th, publishing thousands of verified updates spanning dozens of countries. We’re offering free access to our breaking news platform to both NGOs as well as fact-checkers working on the COVID-19 outbreak. World Central Kitchen is one of more than 30 non-profits relying on Factal’s coverage for no charge, a program we
Read more →The NPR podcast Radio Ambulante may be the most popular Spanish-language news podcast in the world, fueled in part by listening clubs in 19 countries. After doing some research, producers made a key discovery about how some listeners wereusing the podcast. “When we started doing audience surveys at Radio Ambulante, we discovered something interesting: 20% of our listeners were using our stories to
Read more →In our dangerous and disorienting world, facts save lives When BreakingNews.com and the Breaking News app were shut down at the end of 2016, we were inundated with email urging us to bring it back as a new company. There were many personal stories from Breaking News users who were caught in global tragedies — terror attacks, devastating wildfires and mass shootings — relying on our unique real-tim
Read more →Harper knew they wouldn’t be there much longer. The veteran of several Middle East conflicts, she knew the arc of media attention was nearing its usual conclusion. It was only a matter of weeks before New York pulled her out, along with all the other journalists holed up in the safe zone. The country and its millions of starving residents would fall off the world’s radar. A wispy blonde in her ear
Read more →Now that Breaking News belongs to the ages — our modest operation was shut down by NBC at the end of the year — I thought I’d share our largest innovations in a single list, linking the original blog posts and news stories about them. To date there is no real alternative, not just for Breaking News, but for nearly all of these innovations so far: 1. Virtual real-time coverage Breaking News was the
Read more →(Updated) As the Breaking News shutdown date approaches, we’ve been inundated with thousands of shocked and supportive messages from loyal users of all political persuasions and many nationalities around the globe. Some are even in mourning, writing “I cry every day,” “Breaking News is an old friend” and “It feels like I’m losing a family member.” But given our unique focus on public safety over t
Read more →This is breaking news we hoped we’d never have to report. Our parent company, NBC News, decided to shut down the Breaking News service at the end of the year. BreakingNews.com and the Breaking News app stopped providing updates and alerts on Dec. 31. We thank everyone for your many notes of support. Breaking News invented a new way to discover, fact-check and deliver relevant breaking stories fast
Read more →For decades newsrooms have reacted the same way to the first word of breaking news: they send crews to cover it. But what happens when there are 5, 10 or even 20 videos of a story — some of them live — that already exist on the platforms before the crews get out the door? Not as an isolated incident, but a daily — even hourly — occurrence? Today platform video supports traditional newsgathering, b
Read more →You may not buy into the argument that the news media failed in our coverage of the election, but one thing is certain: news organizations are suffering a credibility crisis. Several pre-election surveys have detailed deep mistrust in the media across all political persuasions — at record low numbers — and the election-night polling debacle is only going to make things worse. The vast majority of
Read more →(Written on the day of my mom’s death, one year ago today.) So much of my mom’s legacy is she taught me how to give. She gave everything away. When I packed her things today, all that really remained is a ring, watch and a well-worn bible. In her younger years she was a nurse. As she aged, she traveled and donated her time and money to the poor. Giving is a sacrifice, but done joyfully. I wasn’t e
Read more →I’ve been to a dozen NABs. You know, TV’s biggest annual conference in Las Vegas. I loved to walk the endless halls and lose myself in new technology. But I’m not going to NAB this week. I went to Facebook’s F8 instead. I could go to NAB to find a $30,000 TV camera with a few more features. Or a $150,000 live truck with better gas mileage. Or I could go to F8 and witness the world’s largest, most
Read more →The Apple Watch is not just a smaller screen with shorter content. The best Watch apps are connected to the world around you. You can discover when it’s about to rain, find the nearest public transit, call an Uber and open the door to your hotel room. After a few days of wearing the Watch, NY Times’ Farhad Manjoo said it’s “like a natural extension of my body — a direct link, in a way that I’ve ne
Read more →We set a rather audacious goal at Breaking News to solve a hard problem, and it’s best explained with an example. Let’s say you just traveled to a foreign country and checked into your hotel. Moments later, a loud explosion shakes the building. You look out the window and see a column of smoke of few blocks away. Was it an accident? Or an attack of some kind? You have an intense need to know what
Read more →(Updated 7/29) - Whenever I talk to journalists about the mobile shift, they’re quick to defend the web over mobile apps. After all, the web is what the news industry knows best after years of playing digital catch up. This bias has played out in product development. Many news organizations (even some new startups) have opted to invest more resources into responsive web design over creating and ma
Read more →If you ask your friends and neighbors about the state of journalism these days, they’ll inevitably start complaining about breaking news. You’ll hear about the endless “breaking” coverage of the missing plane and mindless Justin Bieber alerts. How local TV news breathlessly rushes from one “breaking” crime story to the next. They’ll explain that breaking news is just an annoying marketing tactic d
Read more →Speaking at the Mobile World Congress, Financial Times’ CTO John O’Donovan said the term mobile first has become meaningless. “Focusing too much on one thing can lead to being obsessed with the things mobile can do” instead of seeing the bigger picture, he warned. The FT uses a “universal publishing” approach. Similarly, others have argued that the best, most holistic strategy is “platform appropr
Read more →It seems that every app has push notifications these days. New apps are adding them. Older apps are doing more of them. When Justin Bieber was arrested, even the iHeartRadio app sent a breaking news alert. CNN’s app sent three of them. When Nelson Mandela died, Twitter’s app sent a push, and ESPN Sportscenter’s app sent several of its own. All these news alerts join a growing chorus of push notifi
Read more →Journalists like to talk about mobile web vs. apps like it’s a cage match. Which is better? Where should we place our bets? Which will win? The answer is both. Prioritize both. News organizations like to hope that the web will win. That’s because the web is familiar, and apps are extremely costly. But the cruel truth is apps are dominating the mobile web in time spent by a 85% to 15% margin (Comsc
Read more →I was introduced to “Seattle nice” when I moved here from California (gasp!) in the late 90s. I was driving downtown, and the Range Rover in front of me stopped cold in the middle of the street to ask a parking enforcement officer a question. I honked. Several times. The officer promptly marched right up to my car, and I preemptively asked, “What did I do wrong?” She proclaimed, “You’re NOT BEING
Read more →One of the things I keep hearing in media circles is that mobile is purely additive and doesn’t come at the expense of the core digital business. However, two new reports illustrate how mobile is eating the desktop in both traffic and revenue, fueling a new disruption for media companies that have yet to figure out how to monetize their mobile audiences. The first report is a year-end traffic anal
Read more →Breaking news used to be a term reserved for stories that were unequivocally a big deal. That’s because there were only a few huge news outlets, and everyone paid attention to them. Think about 9/11: on that day, the Associated Press wire issued two rare “flash” alerts, one when each tower fell. Now it seems like just about everything is breaking news. It’s everywhere, amplified by social media an
Read more →The vast majority of Facebook and Twitter users are accessing their feeds on mobile devices, according to surprising new numbers. Facebook revealed that 78% of its daily active users in the US are visiting via mobile devices. For Twitter, 76% of its US users will visit the service on mobile this year, according to new estimates from eMarketer. And here’s a mind-boggling stat: if you calculate how
Read more →Just last summer, Mark Zuckerberg was hammered with questions about mobile monetization – which was zero – and he promised to improve Facebook’s crappy mobile app. Then the company’s IPO fell flat. Fast forward to this summer, and Facebook’s new mobile numbers should make your head spin: - 41% of total ad revenue is mobile, up 30% from last quarter. - 70% of monthly active users visit via mobile,
Read more →The most important measure of a journalist’s work is impact, right? Isn’t that’s why we became journalists in the first place? It certainly wasn’t for the money. But this new survey discovered that journalists believe unique users is the overwhelming measure of success. Page views, social followers and sharing followed as other important metrics. Sure, we can’t measure impact. At least yet. That’s
Read more →When I first heard of the video app Vine, I wondered what would’ve happened if someone who worked at a media company had pitched the same idea internally. After all, it only records six seconds of video? Even outside a media company, the idea wasn’t embraced by everyone. “What a stupid idea,” thought entrepreneur Dustin Curtis when he saw an early glimpse of Vine last year. “I couldn’t see it ever
Read more →We all know mobile is growing at an unprecedented rate, but most news organizations are struggling to measure it. For many newsrooms, that data is buried in desktop-centric analytics services, not tagged appropriately (if at all) or owned by third-party providers. The end result is a mobile blind spot, making it difficult react to new demands and opportunities in a critical time in the business. E
Read more →Earlier this week, a thread on Branch asked journalists what they’d like to see at this year’s Online News Association’s conference, the biggest annual meeting of digital journalists. Many of the responses focused on making things, which is a refreshing new addition for an industry that traditionally just focused on telling stories. But very few of the responses mentioned business innovation and u
Read more →Last month I made the case that mobile will disrupt journalism like the Internet did a decade ago. Many of you have asked, “Now what?" Here are a few suggestions to start shifting your mindset to mobile. 1. Force yourself to live mobile at home If your readers are shifting to phones and tablets, so should you. As a journalist, I’d always start my day with a computer on my lap. My default state was
Read more →(Updated) Facebook is now a mobile company, not just in culture, but in audience. During its Q4 earnings announcement, Facebook said its mobile active users surpassed the desktop for the first time in its history – 680 million users (+57% YOY) out of 1.06 billion overall. But perhaps the most surprising data point is the skyrocketing number of mobile-only users. “In only a year, just under 100 mil
Read more →I watched the live stream of the Media Impact Forum today – an event held at Stanford – which highlighted how innovative companies are measuring the “social impact” of their work. I couldn’t help but think about how the same approach could be adapted to journalism. “You put [the story] out there, but does anyone care?” asked Neal Baer, best known for his role as producer and writer of ER. A doctor
Read more →I’ve been on my mobile soapbox lately, urging news organizations to adopt a “mobile first” mindset. Meanwhile, Business Insider’s Henry Blodget says the smarter strategy is “mobile, too.” “The reality is that we live in a multi-screen world, not a ‘mobile world’ that operates parallel to a ‘desktop world,’” he writes. “For some services, such as news and information, the laptop/desktop screen is s
Read more →Most newsrooms know that mobile is growing fast. Everyone can see mobile usage (phones and tablets) creeping up on their desktop numbers. For example, The Guardian recently said mobile visits hit 35%, outpacing desktop at certain hours of the day. A growing handful of media brands – including where I work at Breaking News – have watched mobile soar over desktop in audience. And we’ve all seen the
Read more →If there’s any advice that’s repeated the most when you’re young, it has to be the simple phrase, “Life is short." At that stage in your life, it’s a ridiculous statement, since life is just beginning. Even when you’re in your 30s and 40s, it makes intuitive sense – you can respect it – but it lacks the bite to have any real application. We’re often told that the best response to "life is short” i
Read more →My wife Kate Bergman and I co-founded a network of Seattle neighborhood news sites in late 2007 called Next Door Media. Today, the 10 sites along with our regional guide bring in 230,000 unduplicated unique users a month with a combined social media following of nearly 40,000 fans and followers – at a much lower cost per audience than the Patch model. One of our key learnings from creating the net
Read more →I spent a month at Ground Zero covering the aftermath of the attacks. I arrived from Seattle on the night of September 13th — called up by NBC News to help reinforce coverage in New York — so I missed the peak of the tragedy. Day after day, night after night, I watched from my live shot position (above) as crews worked tirelessly among the rubble, hoping above hope to find life inside the twisted
Read more →I started a blog called LostRemote.com 12 years ago – one of the first on the web – and it’s taken me this long to create a personal space where I can freely write about random (and they’re random) things that cross my mind. This will be a strange fusion of stuff: I’m a journalist MBA who dreams in disruptive ideas and tries to scrape together enough time to create as many as I can. Occasionally,
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