Last week, Nieman Lab revealed that USA Today‘s parent company USA Today Co (formerly Gannett) was partnering with AI surveillance firm Palantir to monetize “actionable intelligence” on its audience.
According to USA Today CEO Mike Reed, the goal is to “build a common intelligence layer” on reader data to “monetize those relationships faster and at much greater value.”
The largest newspaper’s new partnership with the Peter Thiel-cofounded company, which has long been mired in controversy — from collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and being linked to US airstrikes that killed over 120 schoolchildren in Iran to its mercurial CEO, who has a long history of strange outbursts — has raised plenty of eyebrows.
Workers represented by The News Guild, the country’s largest communications and media labor union, including journalists at USA Today, were “shocked” by the news, according to a new statement, and are calling for the company to “immediately end its partnership with Palantir.”
