iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 14/07/2026

Some newsrooms already do this! This is pretty much the reason we were able to get @themarshallproject.org on @standard.site so quickly, among many other CMS improvements. More technologists in newsrooms! You don’t have to let external developers make every product decision for you.

Mamdani’s PIT Crew sounds a lot like how a product team should work: directed groups of experts rapidly prototyping solutions to concretely defined problems anchored in real people’s needs. By doing it internally, he can make sure these solutions are built exactly the way the city needs, build institutional capacity and knowledge, and, theoretically at least, do it far more cheaply in the long run.
As these sorts of civic measures succeed, I think (or, perhaps, I hope) we’ll see more newsrooms translate those outcomes to their own businesses and begin to understand that they need to prioritize technical capacity too. All the same reasons apply here.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 05/07/2026

Also love the chart legend is in... the footer

green = spent to help a candidate, rust = spent to attack

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 05/07/2026

But it says this in the footer, what could go wrong

Screenshot of text that says "Non-partisan"

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 06/06/2026

You can really see the left-leaning effect of the mail-in ballots now. Pratt's most successful release was via the in-person early vote count. Every mail-in ballot count has been significantly in favor of Bass and Raman.

A line chart showing the percentage of votes received by candidate in each vote release. Pratt's performance has tapered off since election day, with both Bass and Raman doing much better with mail-in ballots. Raman even outperformed Bass today.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 06/06/2026

Friday's ballot count update puts Raman only 3.3% behind Pratt. Raman gained more votes than Bass this release, who sits at 35%. With half a million votes left to process I think Raman could claim second place by Monday if this trend continues. observablehq.com/@rdmurphy/la...

Bass has 35% of the vote, Pratt has 28.2% and Raman has 24.9% as of June 5, 2026.

A line chart showing percentage of the vote from Election Day to today, June 5. Bass has mostly stabilized at 35% of the vote, but there is a sign that Raman gaining on Pratt at an increasing pace.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 05/06/2026

As expected mail-in ballots are skewing to the left. Bass and Raman have outpaced Pratt in both mail-in only counts so far.

A set of bar charts showing the number of votes received in each count release by the county. On June 3 and June 4 both Bass and Raman picked up more votes than Pratt.

A line chart showing the percentage of votes received in each update released by the county. Raman's percentage of the vote has significantly jumped now that we're down to counting only the remaining mail-in ballots, with Pratt's falling.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 05/06/2026

Today's ballot update further closes the gap between Pratt and Raman. Down to 5.9% from 7.1%. Remains to be seen if there's enough juice (AKA votes) left to fully get there. observablehq.com/@rdmurphy/la...

Line chart showing the change in vote percentage since June 2. Pratt's line has dropped by a few percentage points since election day, while Raman's is slowly rising.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 03/06/2026

Who confirmed what exactly (because it was not any of the editors of this piece)

Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton will face each other in the November general election to choose a successor to the term-limited California governor Gavin Newsom. Due to the state’s extremely deliberate vote-counting system, it took a bit of time to confirm the winners of Tuesday’s top-two gubernatorial primary. But Becerra and Hilton managed to hold off Democrat Tom Steyer, who spent over $200 million of his own money in the state’s most expensive campaign to date. Becerra will go into the general election as the heavy favorite thanks to the Golden State’s deep-blue political complexion, especially given the national pro-Democratic midterm breeze blowing across the nation.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 03/06/2026

NYTimes reaching for the word "tranche" way too early in the evening, they need to pace themselves or they'll run out of election cliches

Still, the early data seemed enough to compel two lower-performing Democrats, the former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, to concede shortly after the first tranches of results were posted.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 03/06/2026

LA County's schedule for tonight's vote releases. We'll get: 1) all the mail-in ballots processed before today; 2) all the vote center ballots cast before today; 3) gradual updates until a semi-final is released with all election day ballots www.lavote.gov/home/voting-...

Reporting Results on Election Night

First Results
8:30 PM – 8:45 PM
Vote by Mail ballots returned and processed before Election Day.

Second Results
8:45 PM – 9:00 PM
Ballots cast at Vote Centers before Election Day.
Ongoing Results Throughout the Night

Results will continue to be updated throughout the evening as ballots cast on Election Day are transported, processed, and counted.

After Vote Centers close at 8:00 PM, Election Workers complete closing procedures and secure election materials. Ballots are then transported from Vote Centers to designated Check-in Centers, where they are transferred to Sheriff's Deputies for delivery to the Ballot Processing Center.

Once received, ballots are processed, verified, and added to the tally. Results will be updated throughout the night, and Semi-Final Election Night Results will be released after all Election Day Vote Center ballots received by the Ballot Processing Center have been counted and reported.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 03/06/2026

It fills me with joy to know I'm not the only person who remembers this, thank you @lamaterial.bsky.social lamaterial.com/p/how-to-par...

Take Los Angeles’ last June mayoral primary: On the morning after Election Day, the Los Angeles Times’ print headline trumpeted Rick Caruso’s narrow lead over then-candidate Karen Bass; Bass ultimately finished more than seven points ahead of Caruso once all the votes had been tabulated.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 19/05/2026

"NIMBYism is more important to us than curing cancer" is a hell of a stance to take laist.com/brief/news/h...

“It's not to do with housing, per se,” said Frank Gruber with the Santa Monica Great Park Coalition. “Somebody could say to me, we need 20 acres to build a laboratory that will guarantee that we will cure cancer — we'd still be opposed to it.

“This land, every square foot, we think of as precious for the park,” he said.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 11/05/2026

Haven’t had a reason to be in Pershing Square Station in a long time, thank you new D line Good to see the neon again

The neon lights of Pershing Square Station in Los Angeles

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 08/04/2026

Taking a lunch break with my @marshallprojectguild.org co-workers in support of @propublicaguild.org strike! (This was a bad ham and cheese croissant but I already ate it, oops)

The crumbs of a very subpar ham and cheese croissant on an IKEA wood cutting board for some reason.

While you're here — ProPublica's management should actually engage in good faith with the its unit. They're better than this.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 03/04/2026

Not only stealing, but getting *paid* (well, maybe not anymore) by the very clients they were stealing from

Some of the copied material came from outlets owned by Nota’s own clients. Nexstar, for example, had a $600,000 deal with Nota, according to Nota’s website. (Information about the deal was removed this week.) Poynter found three stories that included reporting from two Nexstar stations.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 01/04/2026

Ended up getting the "better luck next time" email, at least I'm auto-entered in future draws, womp

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 19/03/2026

I have never wanted to watch something less than I do this video

A link to a YouTube video titled "A Scientist's View of War"/Neil deGrasse Tyson finding any opportunity to inject himself into current events

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 23/01/2026

to this day you can still buy a replica of Wilson (the volleyball in Cast Away) directly from Wilson (the sporting goods company) www.wilson.com/en-us/produc...

Screen shot of Wilson the “Cast Away Volleyball” for sale on Wilson’s site, for $21.95

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 15/12/2025

"All of our small, cash-strapped news organizations should do a tremendous amount of collaborative technical work, provide access to it for free to the AI companies, and maybe then they will finally take us seriously"

"I propose that news organizations — especially the vast ecosystem of journalism left out of the moguls’ money grabs — create APIs (application programming interfaces) for news. That is, create the keys that would make their news accessible for AI so they can open discussions with the technology companies about the responsible use of their content, branding, links, and, yes, possibly payment.

The big AI companies aren’t going to negotiate with thousands of small outlets, so I suggest that local, independent, and academic publishers gather together to create joint APIs — not to cut off AI, but instead to make it easier to come to meaningful arrangements at scale. Here is an opportunity for small and independent media to leapfrog the moguls, providing news and information to AI’s users and getting attention, branding, and links while the moguls are still blocking, suing, and lobbying."

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 15/12/2025

In an industry built on trust and the belief we stand fully behind our work how in the world was anyone convinced a "this could be entirely wrong, not our problem" caveat is good enough to justify providing AI slop to readers www.semafor.com/article/12/1...

"The podcast tool’s prognosis was poor, the review concluded: “Further small prompt changes are unlikely to meaningfully improve outcomes without introducing more risk.”

Still, the company’s product review team recommended moving forward with the release, saying it would continue to “iterate through the remaining issues” with the newsroom and would label the tool as a work-in-progress that could generate errors."

I have highlighted the this section: "would label the tool as a work-in-progress that could generate errors"

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 05/11/2025

Journalists I beg of you — please do not again fall into the trap of thinking any social media site is representative of a majority of Americans or the American electorate Most of them were *never* on Twitter, and even less of them are here (chart via www.pewresearch.org/journalism/f...)

Screenshot of a chart from Pew Research Center's latest Social Media and News Fact Sheet, which shows that only 12% of U.S. adults said the regularly get news on Twitter in 2025. Only 2% said they get it from Bluesky.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 17/08/2025

I’ve only yelled at two grown men so far, CicLAvia going great

Picture of the Venice sign hanging over the street, people on bikes everywhere

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 10/04/2025

Ah, I see what the problem is

Journalism ethics and dental floss have a lot in common…

Everyone agrees both are healthy.
Many of us lie about using them.
Neither is sexy or a hot dinnertime topic.

As SPJ’s ethics chair, one of my solemn duties is promoting Ethics Week. I’m probably not supposed to say this, but no one cares. Not even me.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 10/01/2025

I guess you gotta tell everyone it was a mistake somehow, but two in a row is a real treat 🫠

LACOOEM: Disregard last EVACUATION WARNING. It was for Kenneth Fire Only.
AlertLA.org for more information

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 14/10/2024

Generative AI art was a mistake

“Come Laugh With Us” it says, with three horrific looking AI generated cartoon humans in mock laughter

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 17/09/2024

whoa I was over here way earlier than I remember kind of wild to think about this place only having 15 thousand people using it at one point

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was 15,851!

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 01/09/2024

Booked a Spirit flight yesterday and I still cannot get over this All it took was getting a little unprofitable and they started to COOK

The four package options presented by Spirit Airlines when booking a flight — there is a new option called "Go Comfy," that comes with the following: "Middle seat blocked, Group 2 boarding, bags, a drink and snack"

A screenshot of the seat selection when you pick the Comfy package, which shows a set of seats where the middle seat is blocked out

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 30/07/2024

Always mixing these two up

A section on Wikipedia about the seven rings given to the dwarves in Lord of the Rings. It humorously includes a redirect for the Ariana Grande song 7 Rings.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 19/07/2024

A lot of weaselly headlines getting published this evening about Biden possibly dropping out this weekend, but my favorite has to be Axios use of "aura of inevitability" like he's making a luck saving throw in D&D

Screenshot that says: Democrats see "aura of inevitability" around Biden withdrawal

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 30/05/2024

How can you write these two sentences and think they make any sense (from the WSJ "we're pivoting to being more ambiguous about what we cover, sorry you lost your jobs as a result" letter)

Text from the WSJ layoff note: "These changes mean that U.S. News will no longer be a standalone coverage area and that we are closing the East Coast, Mid-U.S. and West Coast regional bureaus. But it does not mean we are pulling back from the United States."

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 22/05/2024

know I'm late to this and definitely not the first person to put these two images next to each other but it's one of my things to relentlessly point out that any expectation that The Washington Post should be profitable is completely arbitrary

Tweet from Max Tani that says:

Washington Post CEO Will Lewis is introing the paper’s new “Build It” plan today. In a meeting with staff, he noted that the paper lost $77 million over the past year, and saw a 50% drop off in audience since 2020: “To be direct, we are in a hole, and we have been for some time."

Jeff Bezos (who owns the Washington Post) has an estimated net worth of $200 billion as of May 22, 2024.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 21/05/2024

Met a local celebrity at the garden center yesterday

Photo of a nesting dove who can be seen through the gaps of a stack of wooden trellises for sale

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 16/04/2024

I live in Los Angeles and was recently in Austin so I'm certainly primed to have come across more Cybertrucks than the average person, but knowing this makes the number of them I've seen in the past month even worse, every one is owned by an early trash adopter defector.com/cybertruck-d...

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 12/04/2024

hat tip to the NY Times media reporters for giving that "article" the framing it so desperately craved

NY Times headline that says: "NPR in Turmoil After It Is Accused of Liberal Bias"

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 29/03/2024

If you ever need to cause your blood pressure to briefly spike I got you covered

This red Tesla’s California license plate is AI GRRL

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 14/03/2024

In the 14th district Ysabel Jurado's lead over Kevin De León continues to hold. Miguel Santiago is keeping up but not really gaining on De León. LA RR/CC estimates there are only about 12K ballots left to count. Not a ton left to work with. observablehq.com/@rdmurphy/l-...

Ysabel J. Jurado is in first, Kevin De León is in second and Miguel Santiago is in third

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 13/03/2024

March 13 vote count update from LA RR/CC just landed! Nithya Raman has received a bit more of a bump over the crucial 50% mark in the 4th district race. Might hold on and sidestep the general election entirely. observablehq.com/@rdmurphy/l-...

Nithya Raman now has 50.6% of the vote as of March 13.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 09/03/2024

Kevin De León still has a decent lead in the race for the 14th district. (The top two meet again in November.) His share of the vote has been dipping with each new release but not sure if he's in danger yet. The difference between 2nd and 3rd is only 21(!) votes.

Kevin De León is leading the race for the 14th District City Council race with 25.3% of the vote. Ysabel J. Jurado and Miguel Santiago are in second and third respectively with 21.5% and 21.4% of the vote. They are separated by only 21 votes.

Vote share in the race for the 14th district by day. The first count had De León with almost 30% of the vote, but as of today he's down to just above 25%.

The percentage of votes received by day for the leading four candidates. De León received the majority of votes in all the updates on March 5, but has not done so since. Ysabel J. Jurado had their best day yesterday, receiving just under 35% of the votes reported. De León received just under 20%.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 09/03/2024

A couple LA County races I'm still watching as mail-in ballots continue to be counted: Long Beach's effort to increase minimum wage for hotel workers was just about dead-even in the last count on March 5, but "Yes" has slowly pulled away

YES with 52.1% of the vote in support of Long Beach's Measure RW

Cumulative votes received by Measure RW since Election Day - at the end of March 5 it was bascially 50% YES and 50% NO, but over the past three days YES has pulled a little bit ahead

Vote share received by Measure RW since Election Day - at the end of March 5 it was bascially 50% YES and 50% NO, but over the past three days YES has pulled a little bit ahead

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 06/03/2024

Desperately begging journalists to stop describing California’s vote-counting process as slow and to instead recognize how it is optimized for maximizing for voter access. It’s only “slow” to people (and news organizations) who think elections should be a source of instant gratification.

The outcome of many other races on Tuesday's ballot may not be known for days, or even weeks. California's vote-counting process is slow, largely because most of the state's 22 million registered voters cast mail-in ballots, and they can be postmarked up to the day of the election.

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 19/01/2024

I can think of many better uses of this man’s time, but sure

Twitter live banner that says “President Biden welcomes bipartisan mayo…”

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 20/08/2023

having the time of our lives this weekend in Los Angeles

Screenshot of an earthquake alert I received on my phone

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Ryan Murphy @ryan.fail · 29/06/2023

I've seen at least five people react to this WHO aspartame press release with "bad news for Diet Coke but a big win for Coke Zero" and I'm going to scream

Coke Zero has aspartame in it too, it has the same damn ingredients in it

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