The good news for Tucsonans is you don’t have to worry about an individual billionaire controlling your daily newspaper anymore, at least for the time being.
USA Today Co., the company that owns the Arizona Republic and owned a piece of the Arizona Daily Star, just acquired the entirety of the Star from Lee Enterprises.
That means billionaire David Hoffmann’s vanity-fueled reign over the Star lasted just a few short months. Hoffmann is still in control of Lee and the dozens of newspapers the chain operates, but not the Star.
The bad news for Tucsonans is there are more billionaires waiting in the wings.
Unfortunately, none of them are MacKenzie Scott swooping in to use her ex-husband Jeff Bezos’ billions to turn the Star into a nonprofit for the good of the community.
Nope. USA Today Co. is owned by the same collection of private equity firms, hedge funds and investment bankers that seem to own pretty much everything these days, like Apollo Global Management and BlackRock.
This gif from Hoffmann’s vanity pieces in the Star brought us so much joy that we had to include it one last time.
That’s bad enough, but what gives us chills is the fact that USA Today Co. signed an agreement with Palantir last month to analyze the habits of newspaper readers — AKA, you — at the chain’s 200 newspapers.
For those who haven’t been following along, Palantir is a data analysis company founded by billionaire Peter Thiel that works with ICE, the U.S. military, the Israeli military and other government agencies.
Basically, Palantir would be the Big Bad Corporation in any 1980s action flick or 1990s spy thriller. We’d all cheer when the ragtag group of plucky outsiders finally wins, and the CEO is led out of the company headquarters in handcuffs.
But those are just movies. In reality, Palantir is going to mine your data in a really creepy way. Check out how USA Today Co. CEO Mike Reed described what the company plans to do:
“Every visit, every session, and every moment of attention creates a signal, and when we connect those signals, they become actionable intelligence that allows us to engage users more effectively and monetize those relationships faster and at much greater value,” Reed said.
We understand that the news business is, in fact, a business that needs to make money. But for the love of all that’s holy, why can’t people just read a newspaper (or newsletter!) in the morning without becoming part of some weird surveillance web?
The USA Today Co. website is loaded with what looks like generic clip art, which is fitting for a company that wants to be all things to all people.
The main reason the bigwigs at USA Today Co. say they need Palantir is because search traffic has fallen off a cliff.
The drop in traffic was the completely foreseeable result of search engines like Google creating AI-generated responses to your searches. Fewer people are clicking on the news websites that Google’s AI tools use to generate those responses, so news websites aren’t getting the ad revenue anymore.
The solution? USA Today Co. executives think Palantir’s AI-powered tools will save them from Google’s AI-powered tools.
Although Thiel doesn’t own any shares in USA Today Co. (at least as far as we know), Thiel has a worrisome agenda of his own when it comes to the news business.
He famously helped bankrupt Gawker a decade ago and launched an AI-powered system to rank journalists that really is just a way for rich people to dump on reporters.
Closer to home, Thiel’s Founders Fund led a $70 million investment in State Affairs, the company converting the Arizona Capitol Times into a node of an AI-powered network of newspapers, as we reported in the Arizona Agenda last month.
Look, we’re not trying to ruin your day with this type of news. But we love journalism, and we can feel the noose tightening around our collective necks.
What we really want to do here is remind you that none of this is inevitable. It only looks inevitable.
The fact that the Tucson Agenda is still growing after three years (and the Arizona Agenda is still going strong after five years) shows what can happen when trained journalists get support from readers willing to pay for news.
We can’t promise you that we’ll save the news business.
But we can promise that we won’t sit idly by while private equity dissolves journalism into a simmering pool of AI slop.
Thanks, but I still have questions: After a week of attending community meetings between Tucson Unified School District officials and parents worried their kids’ schools might close, the Arizona Luminaria’s Shannon Conner came away with a few key observations, including that parents were grateful for the chance to be heard, while still wondering what kind of data is backing up the district’s plan to close schools in the first place.
Yeah, I have questions, too: Sahuarita residents also got a dose of information from local officials, although on an entirely different topic, Chanse Hall reports for the Green Valley News. The heads of five local water companies did their best to assure residents that data centers and mines aren’t going to suck up all the water, including an interesting description of the underground aquifer the town depends on.
"All this stuff is interesting and very informational, but I think what the residents want to know, what I want to know, is let’s say the data center is running full force, the mine is running full force, we’re not getting (Central Arizona Project) water, what’s that going to do to us as residents?" Sahuarita Town Council member Deborah Morales asked. "What’s that going to do to me if I’m taking a shower and my water just turns off? What are the consequences? Where do we go from there?”
Opinions are like … toes: Pima County Attorney Laura Conover penned an oped for the Daily Star that started out defending the integrity of elections — then took a weird turn into defending her office from criticism that she’s soft on crime. She argued that the Trump administration is attempting to gin up fears about the upcoming election, then pivoted to comparing that to “some local media outlets that feast upon Crime of the Day reporting.”
It’s a bird, it’s a plane…: It’s a military drone flying over border towns in Southern Arizona like Nogales and San Luis, per the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy. He spotted an aircraft that likely is an MQ-1 drone, also known as a Predator, that the Trump administration rolled out for use on the U.S.-Mexico border. The drone has a ton of advanced cameras and sensors, but military officials claim “our personnel do not record, photograph, or surveil U.S. citizens.”
Well, that was predictable: The Goldwater Institute is demanding that the Pima County Board of Supervisors immediate repeal the 120-day data center moratorium it passed last week, or face a potential lawsuit. The three-page demand letter states the county failed to prove “a clear and imminent danger to the health and safety of the public,” and Goldwater threatened legal action if the board doesn’t immediately repeal the moratorium.
“Our moratorium follows the parameters laid out in state statute. Getting a letter from the Goldwater Institute is often a signal to me that we must be doing something right,” Supervisor Jennifer Allen, the chair of the board, texted us last night.
Beyond the Ballot AZ is a weekly show about legendary Arizonans, notable — and sometimes notorious — political events, and the social movements still shaping the arguments we’re having today.
A resource of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, hosted by Executive Director Tom Collins and Director of Voter Education Gina Roberts, who break down what’s happening and how you can actually get involved in it. Same state you’ve been reading about all morning, with a lot more context.
It’s been a week since Republican state Rep. Rachel Keshel went on Twitter to complain about her latest conspiracy — that “powerful lobbies” are trying to make Legislative District 17 purple.
Well, a different shade of purple, since Democratic state Rep. Kevin Volk is already her seat mate.
Keshel doesn’t name names, she said these secret cabals are pushing for a Volk + (Republican) John Winchester ticket.
We talked to all the usual suspects, which included a statement from the Pima County Democratic Party insisting publicly it is committed to all of the Democrats on the ballot.
And since Keshel and Winchester are asking locals to “Vote Republican,” we’re not sure who is filling her head with these rumors.