Tootfinder

The Washington Post could soon allow non-professional writers to submit opinion columns using an AI writing coach known as Ember,
according to a report from The New York Times.
The move is reportedly part of a broader initiative to open the paper to outside opinion pieces, including from other publications, Substack writers, and amateur columnists.
Sources tell the Times that Ember “could automate several functions normally provided by human editors,”
including by offe…

The Washington Post is planning to let amateur writers submit columns — with the help of AI
The Washington Post is planning a new initiative that will allow non-professional writers to submit opinion pieces using an AI-powered writing coach, called Ember, according to The New York Times.

Tech bros: “Why does everyone hate us?”
Also tech bros: https://caneandable.social/@WeirdWriter/114782913349454383

dbpedia_writer: DBpedia writer network (2014)
A bipartite network of writers and the written works they created, as extracted from Wikipedia by the DBpedia project.
This network has 135569 nodes and 144340 edges.
Tags: Economic, Production, Unweighted
https://networks.skewed.de/net/dbpedia

“‘It’s very difficult to not take corporate money … we’ve hired grant writers who have asked, “Well, how about Bank of America, how about Apple?” How about no,’ laughed Sullivan, who explained, ‘Even if a sponsor never asks you to edit any of your work, you are going to be censoring yourself, like, “If we say this, maybe they won’t give us money next year.”’”

I just wrote a letter demanding a fair contract for @Writers Guild of America East members at Vox Media! Write one here: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/help-union-members-at-vox-media-win-a-fair-contract

Congratulations to all the "Elon's reign of terror is over" article writers from last week, great jorb
https://www.wired.com/story/big-balls-young-doge-converted-into-full-time-government-employees/

‘Big Balls’ Is Officially a Full-Time Government Employee
The first wave of DOGE staffers was supposed to be gone after 130 days. Instead, core members of the team have signed on for the long haul.

#Goals
https://caneandable.social/@WeirdWriter/114782913349454383

Watching films and reading books I find myself at odds with myself. I don't want writers to try to placate me but on the other hand the two of them love each other and should end up together.

I'm nervous but looking forward to it. (For non-Australians, this small town writing festival is one of the bigger ones in Australia). Should be a lot of fun. We're kicking it off on the main stage. #permaculture #writing

Ed Yong is one of, if not the top science writers in the world today. Here’s his latest blog entry. https://buttondown.com/edyong209/archive/the-eds-up-unbreaking/
Recommended.

The Ed's Up - Unbreaking
My face all the time I hope you’re all hanging in there. In the earliest months of the COVID-19 pandemic, people knew that the coronavirus that reached the...

WGA East, which represents CBS News writers, says the Paramount settlement is a "transparent attempt to curry favors" with Trump to get Skydance merger approved (Brian Steinberg/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/param

Paramount's Trump Agreement Worries CBS News, Stirs '60 Minutes' Fears
Paramount Global's decision to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump against '60 Minutes' and CBS News, worries staffers

"#ResearchSoftware Is an Important Research Output. Let’s Act Like It." https://katinamagazine.org/content/art

JUST IN: The Onion writers launch plagiarism lawsuit against God

❓ A question for screenwriters/writers!
👉 When I say "screenwriting conventions" or "writing conventions," do you have negative associations with the term "convention"? As in, "convention" is bad. If not, what associations do you have? Also, if you could let me know if you're a paid screenwriter, too!
Thank you! 🙂

A former leader of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights during the Obama and Biden administrations
called the Trump administration’s targeting of undefined diversity, equity and inclusion legally spurious
and urged colleges and universities to stand up for their values.
At a panel last week at the annual Education Writers Association conference here,
Catherine Lhamon said it’s “enormously frustrating to me to see the federal government use its voice to sa…

Biden Civil Rights Chief: Trump Anti-DEI Orders Aren’t Law
Catherine Lhamon joined the American Council on Education’s president and a student in criticizing the current federal administration’s targeting of universities over diversity, equity and inclusion.

To assist grant writers of all kinds, PEN America has compiled a list of words and phrases banned as WOKE by the US government. Use of these words can result in automatic denial of your grant applications.
https://pen.org/banned-words-list/

Federal Government's Growing Banned Words List Is Chilling Act of Censorship - PEN America
Banned words list 2025: The federal government is banning a growing number of words to comply with executive orders from President Trump.

I‘m afraid I won’t be able to make it to this year’s #CSSDay. 😔 And, looking at the stellar lineup and all the lovely people who will be there, FOMO is already huge! 🥲
Watching the talks remotely might help a bit, but just can’t replace the onsite experience …
ht…

CSS Day 2025, 5th & 6th of June, Amsterdam
CSS Day is the conference for CSS designers, developers, spec writers, and browser vendors.

Went to Threads to check if we're there yet with the federation of the eurotrash portion of the userbase. Found Zuck's currently busy no-commenting to a bunch of angry writers whose books he used to train his AI.

How online fandom communities are advocating against AI, including protesting companies scraping fanfic content for AI training and opposing AI-generated fanfic (Decca Muldowney/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/688640/fanficti…

Fanfiction writers battle AI, one scrape at a time
‘It is a gift. They stole it without my permission.’

Latest ESPN mock draft shows they don't pay attention to their own words about the Cowboys https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/06/30/espn-mocks-keldric-faulk-cowboys…

Hamish McKenzie says WaPo approached Substack about hosting its writers, and there has been a "change in mindset" of traditional media about the platform (Michael Savage/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jun

Podcast: Everything We Saw from Las Vegas Riaders OTA Practice https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-chip-kelly-pete-carroll-dirk-koetter

God's gift to headline writers:
"Pope Dies After Meeting J. D. Vance"
(from @InternetTodayTV on YouTube)

Let's just say this answer surprised me. Happy reading! #writing #writers
I Refuse to Support My Friend’s Crappy Self-Published Novel: Am I the Asshole? ‹ Literary Hub

I Refuse to Support My Friend’s Crappy Self-Published Novel: Am I the Asshole?
That’s right, you know what time it is! We’re back for another wild installment of everyone’s favorite drunken advice column, Am I the Literary Asshole?, the place where your questions and my answe…

When players like Tyrese Haliburton hit buzzer-beaters, it can be a sportswriter's nightmare https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6410716/2025/06/08/tyrese-haliburton-nba-finals-buzzer-beater-sports-writers/

The Atlantic Announces Staff Writers Quinta Jurecic, Toluse Olorunnipa, and Nancy Youssef (The Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/press-releases/archive/2025/06/atlantic-hires-jurecic-olorunnipa-and-youssef/683229/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250619/p64#a250619p64

WGA West report: the number of members reporting earnings fell 9.4% YoY in 2024, while total earnings rose 12.7% to $1.5B in the same period, below 2022's $1.9B (Katie Kilkenny/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

TV and Film Writing Jobs Grew More Scarce, Even If Earnings Were Up Slightly in 2024
The annual tally from the Writers Guild West shows that its members may have made slightly more money overall than during the 148-day strike year of 2023, but there's fewer jobs available.

"What I'm optimizing for isn't growth... reach, or influence. I'm chasing connection[...]spending my days on things that bring me alive."
"It's about...signals that something genuinely MATTERED to one or more humans...private replies saying they've never felt so seen or understood." Rob Hardy
To fellow #writers

AI in the Writing Process: How Purposeful AI Support Fosters Student Writing
Momin N. Siddiqui, Roy Pea, Hari Subramonyam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20595 …

AI in the Writing Process: How Purposeful AI Support Fosters Student Writing
The ubiquity of technologies like ChatGPT has raised concerns about their impact on student writing, particularly regarding reduced learner agency and superficial engagement with content. While standalone chat-based LLMs often produce suboptimal writing outcomes, evidence suggests that purposefully designed AI writing support tools can enhance the writing process. This paper investigates how different AI support approaches affect writers' sense of agency and depth of knowledge transformation. T…

One lingering question for every NFL team as the league's summer break begins https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6458636/2025/06/30/nfl-2025-training-camp-offseason-news/

But I owe a duty to Ireland:
I held her honour in my hand,
This lovely land that always sent
Her writers and artists to banishment
And in a spirit of Irish fun
Betrayed her own leaders, one by one.
James Joyce, Gas From a Burner (1912)
http://www.ricorso.net/rx/library/authors/classic/Joyce_J/Poetry/Gas_Burn.htm

Sonnet 082 - LXXXII
I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;
And therefore art enforced to seek anew
Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
And do so, love; yet when they have devis'd,
What strained touches rh…

One lingering question for every NFL team as the league's summer break begins https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6458636/2025/06/30/nfl-2025-training-camp-offseason-news/

Scores?
Does NBC not require headline writers to have basic English literacy?

Gerade laufen die Nebula-Award-Ceremonies. Aktuell spricht die diesjährige SFWA Grandmaster Nicola Griffith: https://nebulas.sfwa.org/grand-masters/nicola-griffith/

babe ur not like those other thinkpiece writers u cook ur shit by eating stale chinese takeout at one in the morning while crying to joanna newsom

Writers for The Atlantic like to open Twitter and frown at it. Imagine having to live your life so performatively. Sounds exhausting.

ByteDance's publishing imprint 8th Note Press began informing writers and agents in late May that it was closing and returning publication rights to authors (Alexandra Alter/New York Times)
https://www.

Buzzy Publisher Started by TikTok’s Owner Abruptly Shuts Down
8th Note Press informed writers and agents that it is abruptly shutting down and returning publication rights to authors.

What we learned from NFL offseason workouts: One key observation for every team https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6442020/2025/06/23/nfl-offseason-2025-workouts-practice-observations-rookies/

2 Dallas Cowboys predicted to make their first Pro Bowl in 2025 https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/2-dallas-cowboys-stars-predicted-make-first-pro-bowl-2025

Every time I walk past my local police station on the way to the bus stop, I think about others too afraid to do that.
I’m rewatching mid-1990s episodes of Thatcher-era UK copaganda “The Bill”, and noticing how “nobody else gets it” is the overarching theme. Having 3 weekly stories though, has enough writers to see a culture in transition, at the same time as the last ’70s-style detectives leave the cast (with their leather jackets and horseshoe haircuts). DV is finally getting a spo…

Fanfiction in the Age of AI: Community Perspectives on Creativity, Authenticity and Adoption
Roi Alfassi, Angelora Cooper, Zoe Mitchell, Mary Calabro, Orit Shaer, Osnat Mokryn
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18706

Fanfiction in the Age of AI: Community Perspectives on Creativity, Authenticity and Adoption
The integration of Generative AI (GenAI) into creative communities, like fanfiction, is reshaping how stories are created, shared, and valued. This study investigates the perceptions of 157 active fanfiction members, both readers and writers, regarding AI-generated content in fanfiction. Our research explores the impact of GenAI on community dynamics, examining how AI affects the participatory and collaborative nature of these spaces. The findings reveal responses ranging from cautious acceptan…

That a judge makes a comment like this so early in the process gives me hope that there will be a favorable outcome for writers whose work was pirated. Like me.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/05/jud…

Judge on Meta’s AI training: “I just don’t understand how that can be fair use”
Judge downplayed Meta’s “messed up” torrenting in lawsuit over AI training.

dbpedia_writer: DBpedia writer network (2014)
A bipartite network of writers and the written works they created, as extracted from Wikipedia by the DBpedia project.
This network has 135569 nodes and 144340 edges.
Tags: Economic, Production, Unweighted
https://networks.skewed.de/net/dbpedia

On Wednesday,
the Washington Post
named the Economist’s Washington correspondent
Adam O’Neal as its next opinion editor.
In his announcement on Twitter, O’Neal parroted his new boss’ words from last February almost verbatim,
telling Post readers in a chummy front-facing camera announcement that:
[Washington Post opinion page writers and editors are] going to be stalwart advocates of free markets and personal liberties.
We’ll be unapologetically patri…

New Washington Post Opinion editor claims explicitly right-wing revamp isn’t ‘Ideological’
A breakdown of Bezos’ final coup and the bizarre pathology of right-wing ideologues really, really wanting you not to think they’re ideological.

How online fandom communities are advocating against AI, including protesting companies scraping fanfic content for AI training and opposing AI-generated fanfic (Decca Muldowney/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/688640/fanficti…

Fanfiction writers battle AI, one scrape at a time
‘It is a gift. They stole it without my permission.’

Kicking off the festival on the main hall, with David Holmgren and Kirsten Bradley. Hugging myself. https://bellingenwritersfestival.com.au/product/rooted-in-resilience/

What we learned from NFL offseason workouts: One key observation for every team https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6442020/2025/06/23/nfl-offseason-2025-workouts-practice-observations-rookies/

"For Glory's Sake - For Vengeance Sake - War"
The predicate is being laid.
There’s a very easy A to B if, after a day or two or three, you don’t see the violence stop,
you could imagine easily that Trump would use that as a pretext for a much more sweeping assertion of power.
So we are at a very, very dangerous time.
The rhetoric is maximal rhetoric. The deployment is relatively minimal, but I’m worried it’s only a matter of time before the depl…

Opinion | Three Opinion Writers on the L.A. Protests and Trump’s Spectacle of Control
Michelle Cottle, David French and Tressie McMillan Cottom dissect Trump’s reach for power.

Podcast: Final Minicamp Observations Heading to Training Camp https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-pete-carroll-minicamp-michael-mayer-brock-bowers

Pic 6: Quick observations from Day 2 minicamp https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/pic-6-quick-observations-from-day-2-minicamp

Pic 6: Quick observations from Day 2 minicamp https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/pic-6-quick-observations-from-day-2-minicamp

Podcast: Final Observations from Raiders Final Minicamp Practice https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-minicamp-pete-carroll-tommy-mellott-tom-mcmahon

Pic 6: Quick observations from Day 1 minicamp https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/pic-6-quick-observations-from-day-1-minicamp