What a week! Recap it with the second edition of the Nieman Lab News-About-News Quiz, your weekly incentive to keep up with the latest happenings in the world of digital journalism. All questions are based on the week’s Nieman Lab stories or articles elsewhere that we’ve linked to in What We’re Reading. The quiz will appear here through November as a trial run; if people seem to like it, we’ll keep it going in 2027. Good luck!
0 of 10 answered
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1 of 10
Salon, one of the first digital-native news outlets, closed this week after 31 years. Which one of these journalists did not work at Salon at some point?
- Rebecca Traister
- Steve Kornacki
- Glenn Greenwald
- Jake Tapper
- Jonathan Chait
“Salon was never just a website. It was an idea about what journalism could be, born at a moment when the internet was still a largely unexplored frontier,” the site wrote anonymously at its passing. Its last owner describes its core business as “Leading Performance Marketing in Crypto.”
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2 of 10
The AI lab Anthropic — the makers of Claude — recently signed its first licensing deal with a news publisher. Which publisher?
- The Wall Street Journal
- Bloomberg News
- The New York Times
- Associated Press
- Le Monde
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3 of 10
Harassment by the Kremlin has forced Russia’s last major independent newspaper to close. Its editor won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. What is the newspaper’s name?
- Meduza
- Kommersant
- Novaya Gazeta
- The Moscow Times
- Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov in Moscow, Oct. 8, 2021. (AP/Alexander Zemlianichenko)“On November 9, we will turn off the lights in the home where we have lived for 30 years, shut down our servers, and leave,” the paper said. “The newspaper no longer exists. The Russian authorities and the Russian security services have forced our editorial team to cease its operations.”
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4 of 10
The New York Times brought back one of its most famous data visualizations, which debuted in 2016. What’s its name?
- The Syringe
- The Needle
- The Dart
- The Lance
- The Thorn
The Needle scarred a generation of politics junkies with its constant jittering — and by giving Hillary Clinton an 82% chance of victory well into 2016’s election night.
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5 of 10
If all goes according to plan, which important American vegetable crop could soon be reflected in the name of a college football game?
- tomato
- soybeans
- sugar cane
- onion
- corn
The satirical outlet The Onion has its eye on a bowl sponsorship deal — or at least on using it as a clever way to push subscriptions to its monthly print edition.
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6 of 10
A major TV network had disappointing ratings on Election Night, averaging only 2.8 million viewers in prime time. Which one?
- CBS
- NBC
- MS NOW
- ABC
- CNN
CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan, March 22, 2026. (Anthony Behar/Sipa)The Bari Weiss-led network news operation finished well behind competitors NBC (6.7 million), ABC (5.2 million), Fox News (4.3 million), CNN (4.1 million), and MS NOW (3.7 million).
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7 of 10
Which of these words does Wikipedia warn editors to watch out for, because its presence suggests an article might have been written by AI?
- mosaic
- wavelength
- catalyst
- symphony
- tapestry
“Tapestry” was especially popular with GPT-4o. More recent AI models are more likely to use “quietly,” “leverage,” “challenge,” and “multifaceted.”
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8 of 10
People Inc. — the media conglomerate that includes magazines like People, Food & Wine, and Entertainment Weekly — has lost what percentage of its Google search traffic over the past two years?
- 12%
- 40%
- 70%
- 85%
- 91%
“We have already lost 70% of our referrals, and AI is on 90% of searches,” CEO Neil Vogel said on an earnings call.
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9 of 10
Charging plugs in Essen, Germany, November 3, 2026. (Christoph Reichwein/AP)What do owners of electric vehicles consume about 21% less of than the average American?
- tobacco products
- AM/FM radio
- drive-thru fast food
- The Atlantic
- tofu
EV drivers spend roughly twice as much time with podcasts as other drivers, as well as more time with satellite radio and streaming music services.
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10 of 10
A woman walks past News Corp headquarters, April 19, 2017. (AP/Mary Altaffer)Fox News’ ratings have declined in recent months. What two-word phrase did CEO Lachlan Murdoch offer as a reason for the drop?
- “viewer fatigue”
- “news avoidance”
- “audience fragmentation”
- “outrage exhaustion”
- “Jesse Watters”
Murdoch argued on an earnings call that Fox News viewers “are not going to any other news channel. They’re not switching to MS NOW or to CNN. They’re just, you know, fatigued and watching…slightly less television overall.”
