Twitter Looks Into Adding Subscription Products
Bloomberg: Twitter is building a subscription product as a way to ease its dependence on advertising – a plan the social network has considered for years, and one that has taken on a heightened priority given the pandemic and pressure from activist investors to...
Reddit Valuation Doubles After Round of Funding
Wall Street Journal: Reddit doubled its valuation to $6 billion in a new round of funding that comes as the social-media company has added users through the Covid-19 pandemic and more recently has gained attention for its role in the recent Wall Street trading frenzy....
News Corp Preps Movie on GameStop from WSJ
Deadline: The Wall Street Journal has become one of the latest companies to explore the recent GameStop financial saga. Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens' company is working with the Wall Street Journal Studios on the feature documentary, "This Is Not Financial...
New York Times Writer in Flap Over Tech Biggie
Mediaite: New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz locked her account on Twitter after falsely claiming that tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen used a "slur" during a private chat online. "@PMarca just openly using the r-slur on Clubhouse tonight and not one other person...
Conde Nast Touts New Yorker Print Crosswords
New Yorker: Starting this week, The New Yorker's crossword will appear in every issue of the print magazine. These crosswords will also appear on the website, which will continue to offer the full range of New Yorker puzzles, with crosswords every Monday, Wednesday,...
Penske in Search for New Editor at Rolling Stone
Vanity Fair: Jason Fine, the editor of Rolling Stone since 2018, will be moving out of that role effectively immediately. There will now be a wide search for an editor in chief while two of Fine's erstwhile deputies, Sean Woods and Jerry Portwood, mind the store in...
Roundup: Older White Males Leaving Media Jobs
TheWrap: A new era is unfolding with the imminent departures of a generation of powerful leaders on the American news media landscape. The next cohort of editors who take their place will undoubtedly shape the future of journalism. "These are people I very deeply...
Amazon Scores with New Ad During Super Bowl
Associated Press: Amazon's Michael B. Jordan ad for Alexa and Cadillac's Edward Scissorhands update were hits during this year's Super Bowl, while overcomplicated ads like Michelob Ultra Organic Seltzer missed the mark. Amazon's commercial showed a woman fantasizing...
Netflix at Work on Six New Projects with Obamas
Reuters: Barack and Michelle Obama's production company announced six new projects in development for Netflix, including a love story with a supernatural twist and a young adult thriller. The former president and first lady's Higher Ground Productions will adapt...
Disney Forms Unit to Seek Creative Acquisitions
Deadline: Disney Television Studios is looking to ramp up its search for book and podcast IP that it can develop for the small-screen with a new division led by Elizabeth Newman and Jordan Moblo. The studio has set up a Creative Acquisitions Department to identify and...
ViacomCBS Suffers Super Bowl Streaming Glitch
AdAge: CBS All Access streaming had technical difficulties with its Super Bowl kickoff as some viewers trying to watch online were met with an error message. The issue was resolved for most viewers, but the disruption showed that the internet is not always the most...
Comcast’s NBC Sees Rising Star in ABC Veteran
Daily Mail: Tom Llamas is gearing up to become the new face of NBC News and potentially replace longtime anchor Lester Holt after he was poached from ABC. The 41-year-old news anchor announced he was stepping down after seven years at ABC as he signed off amid reports...
Fox Corp Cancels Lou Dobbs Business TV Show
Los Angeles Times: Fox News has canceled "Lou Dobbs Tonight," the program hosted by television's staunchest supporter of Donald Trump and of his assertions of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Dobbs's program, which airs twice nightly at 5 and 7 p.m. Eastern on the...
News Corp Plans Streaming TV News for Britain
Financial Times: Rupert Murdoch's media empire has unveiled its bet on the future of British news television with the soft launch of streaming services that will aim to bring the boisterous spirit of its media brands to the small screen. Murdoch's News UK is planning...
Analysis: News Industry Needs Streaming Model
CNBC: Simply folding news into entertainment-based streaming products makes little sense because audiences for news aren't very big, said Rich Greenfield, a media analyst at LightShed Partners. "News doesn't have that many viewers, and there's nothing that's going to...
TikTok to Fight Facebook with Push Into Shopping
Financial Times: TikTok is planning an aggressive expansion into e-commerce in the US, where it will go head-to-head with Facebook. The Chinese-owned viral-video app has briefed advertisers on a number of new features for 2021. The app is said to be rolling out...
Reddit Runs a Five-Second Ad During Super Bowl
The Verge: You could have been forgiven for missing Reddit's Super Bowl ad last night — it was only five seconds long. The ad mostly consisted of a text message that would've been pretty difficult to read in the moment, claiming that the company spent its "entire...
Twitter Bans Founder of Far-Right Gateway Pundit
Forbes: Jim Hoft, founder and editor of the far-right publication The Gateway Pundit, was suspended from Twitter on Saturday evening for violating platform rules. The account, @gatewaypundit, no longer has a presence on Twitter, save for a message that indicates the...
Hachette Pushes Out Pro-Trump Editorial Director
New York Times: Kate Hartson, the editorial director of Hachette Book Group's conservative Center Street imprint, was fired over her politics, she told her colleagues. Hachette has told employees that the company has learned the lessons of the Capitol siege on Jan. 6:...
New York Times Staffers Exit Over Past Behavior
New York Times: Two journalists responsible for some of the New York Times's most high-profile work of the last three years have left the paper after their past behavior was criticized inside and outside the organization. Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science correspondent,...
Tribune Faces Employee Union in New York City
New York Times: Journalists at the Daily News, the 101-year-old New York tabloid that has fallen on hard times after an ownership change, pay cuts and sweeping layoffs, said that they had formed a union. Newsroom employees at the paper, once a significant voice for...
Gannett Sells Newspapers to Family-Owned Firm
Poynter: A newspaper acquisition company announced that the country's largest newspaper chain was three papers smaller, thanks to a sale to a second-generation, family-owned newspaper company. Dirks, Van Essen & April announced that Reid Newspapers bought the...
Washington Post Snubs Media Acquisition Deals
Insider: The Washington Post has eyed targeted acquisitions in the past, including the video-game site Kotaku and the elections reporting service Decision Desk HQ. New Yorker: "Local journalism has to find its own model — and I believe pretty firmly that that model...
Conde Nast at Odds with Workers at New Yorker
Insider: A strike authorization vote is in the works at The New Yorker, an escalation that could lead to the most high-profile showdown between organized labor and a media company since a wave of unionization first swept the industry in 2015. Workers and management...
Penske in Deal for Streaming from Rolling Stone
Wall Street Journal: Rolling Stone magazine will start producing original videos for Twitch, in an arrangement that makes the famed music and pop-culture magazine the first mainstream publication to sign a long-term content deal with Amazon's live-video streaming...
G/O Media Sees Exit of Longtime Editor at Kotaku
Washington Post: Stephen Totilo, editor in chief of gaming news site Kotaku, announced his departure Friday afternoon. "Tomorrow, I will simply be a reader of Kotaku, like so many of you," he tweeted. Under his leadership, the site became a destination for coverage of...
Bustle Digital Plots a Big Business in Newsletters
Digiday: By the end of 2021, Bustle Digital Group wants to attract 10 million subscribers across all of its brands' newsletters and increase the newsletter business from a seven-figure revenue stream to an eight-figure revenue stream year-over-year. In January, the...
Air Mail Newsletter Finds Growth Amid Pandemic
WWD: Graydon Carter said Air Mail performed "exceptionally" in 2020, not losing a single advertiser and growing circulation by around 10 percent per month. And he expects it to do even better after the pandemic, as much of its content was originally planned around...
ViacomCBS Braces for ‘Most Streamed TV Event’
Adweek: There are about to be more ways than ever to stream the Super Bowl, thanks to wider availability and the proliferation of smart TVs. As Sunday approaches, connected TV platforms are preparing for what they anticipate will be "the most streamed TV event to...
AT&T’s WarnerMedia Preps Exit for Head of CNN
New York Times: The long timeline for Jeff Zucker's departure from CNN guarantees that speculation will continue to swirl around other possibilities: that he could lead a buyout of CNN from AT&T, or that he could replace Jason Kilar at the helm of WarnerMedia....