Poynter Slashes Staff Pay at Newspaper in Florida
Poynter: The Tampa Bay Times said it will outsource its printing and cut pay for full-time staffers by 10% for the next six months. Last April, faced with plummeting advertising revenues because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Times temporarily eliminated five days...
News Corp, New York Times Differ on ‘Trump Mob’
Fast Company: News media outlets are wrestling with what to call Trumpists who invaded the Capitol — Protesters? Rioters? Maybe even terrorists? It depends on who is doing the reporting. The Wall Street Journal chose to call them "rioters." The Los Angeles Times, the...
Gannett Reminds Staffers to Avoid Political Stance
@benyt: Gannett sent a memo to remind USA Today staffers and other employees not to "take a political position" on social media after the events in Washington, DC on Wednesday. "Refrain from celebrating or mourning a particular candidate on your social channels....
McClatchy Joins Newspapers Calling to Oust Trump
Miami Herald: "This president is incapacitated. This president is a deranged and dangerous man. He must be removed." Washington Post: "His continued tenure in office poses a grave threat to US democracy. He should be removed." New York Times: "The president needs to...
G/O Media Hopeful of Ad Revival After Trump Exits
Digiday: Some news publishers think the arrival of a more brand-safe president will bring more advertisers back to news as a category. "We do anticipate a more aggressive ad spending marketplace,” said Brian Kelly, chief revenue officer of G/O...
Apple Appoints Former Newspaper Editor to Board
Mac Rumors: Apple announced that Monica Lozano, president and CEO of College Futures Foundation, has been elected to the company's board of directors. Lozano previously spent 30 years in media as editor and publisher of La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language...
Facebook to Reinstate Political Ad Ban in Georgia
CNBC: Facebook said it plans to reinstate its ban on political ads in Georgia following the state's Senate runoff elections on Tuesday. The company has blocked political ads from running in the US after polls closed on Nov. 3, following the 2020 presidential election,...
Google’s YouTube U-Turns After Gripe by Murdoch
iNews: Rupert Murdoch personally intervened in a dispute with YouTube after his UK station TalkRadio was banned from the platform without explanation. Murdoch's News UK accused YouTube of setting a "dangerous precedent" when it removed the channel Tuesday. It was...
AT&T Downplays Talent Drain Risk at WarnerMedia
Hollywood Reporter: "We got a long history of working with the talent, and we'll continue to work with them," said AT&T CFO John Stephens, when asked about WarnerMedia's controversial 2021 film release strategy. Talent knows that "this is a unique situation" and...
Disney Surpasses Media Rivals in TV-Show Piracy
World Screen: "The Mandalorian," a Disney+ exclusive, has ranked as 2020's most-pirated TV show on the internet through BitTorrent, according to TorrentFreak, beating out HBO's "Game of Thrones," which dominated the chart for years. Amazon Prime Video's "The Boys"...
ViacomCBS Resets After Delay of Grammy Awards
CBS News: The 63rd Annual Grammy Awards have been postponed due to the "deteriorating Covid situation in Los Angeles." The awards show, originally set to take place on January 31, will now be broadcast March 14 on CBS. "Nothing is more important than the health and...
Comcast’s NBC News Sees Big Growth on YouTube
Fast Company: NBC's popular nightly newscasts like "Nightly News with Lester Holt" have seen explosive growth on YouTube. The flagship news program is up 769% on YouTube over 2019. Since the pandemic began in earnest in the US in March, the show has garnered an...
FuboTV Recovers After Souring Analyst Sentiment
Bloomberg: FuboTV shares soared after the "sports first" streaming-video platform announced preliminary fourth-quarter revenue that came in ahead of its prior guidance, helping to end a precipitous multi-day sell-off. The weakness in Fubo shares came amid a souring of...
Cameo Hires Media, Tech Expats After Banner Year
Axios: Cameo, the app that lets fans pay for personalized videos from celebrities, has hired a slew of new C-suite executives from media and tech companies, with plans to continue rapidly growing its employee base. The company, which last year brought in roughly $100...
Nexstar’s ‘News Nation’ Retreats as Ratings Sputter
Robert Feder: Just four months after launching "News Nation" as a three-hour primetime newscast, WGN America is cutting the third hour in favor of a nightly talk show hosted by cable news veteran Ashleigh Banfield. Originating from a studio in Connecticut, "Banfield"...
iHeartMedia Enters Pact to Expand in Sports Betting
Betting News: Las Vegas-based sports information network VSiN will make its sports betting audio content subscription-free, thanks to a new partnership with iHeartMedia and especially its iHeartRadio subsidiary. The VSiN network has been a big player in betting audio...
Hachette Publishes New ‘Gatsby’ as Copyrights End
New York Times: The new novel "Nick," by Michael Farris Smith, is something of a prequel to F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic "The Great Gatsby." Showbiz411: Copyrights have expired for 1925 novels like "The Great Gatsby" and "Mrs. Dalloway," as well as films by Buster...
Tribune Union Pushes to Remove Alden from Board
Wall Street Journal: A labor union representing newsroom employees at seven of Tribune Publishing's nine newspapers is demanding the removal from the board of three representatives of Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that has offered to buy the company and take it...
News Corp Names New Top Editor at New York Post
Mediaite: News Corp announced that Keith Poole will take over as editor in chief of the New York Post Group starting in early March. The news comes about one year after Poole was named deputy editor in chief of the UK tabloid The Sun, also owned by Rupert Murdoch's...
Conde Nast Delays Hollywood Issue from Vanity Fair
WWD: This could be the first time in a decade Vanity Fair is unable to hold its swanky Oscar party and fete Hollywood at large. To state the obvious, the party is certainly not happening in February, as usual, since the Oscars itself is not happening then. The 2021...
McClatchy Taps New Regional Editor for California
Sacramento Bee: Colleen McCain Nelson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has been named the Sacramento Bee's new executive editor and will also serve as the regional editor for California, where McClatchy operates five newsrooms. Nelson, 46, is currently the...
Newspapers Tell Journos to Start Delivering Papers
Washington Post: Some small-town newspapers have called on their own reporters and editors to deliver papers amid delivery delays due to cutbacks at the US Postal Service. The Postal Service has been under siege for months as holiday packages and election mail ran up...
Report: Over 500 Journos Have Died from Covid-19
New York Post: Covid-19 claimed the lives of over 500 journalists in 2020, according to the Save Journalism Project. “The news industry suffered not only economic losses, but also the loss of hundreds of reporters’ lives,” said Nick Charles, spokesman for the Save...
Big Media to Face New Pressure for Mergers in 2021
The Information: The pandemic will likely end up having accelerated the long-anticipated shift away from TV advertising to digital. Long term, this shift is likely to speed the disappearance of many old-style TV channels and further consolidation among traditional TV...
Google’s YouTube Forming Closer Ties to Big Media
Los Angeles Times: Kelly Merryman, YouTube VP of content partnerships, has worked tirelessly to change Hollywood's perception of the video site from pariah to partner. She’s persuaded media companies to use the vast reach of YouTube to promote their shows and films....
Netflix Sees Big Hit in Shonda Rhimes’s ‘Bridgerton’
Bloomberg: A period drama from producer Shonda Rhimes has been tapped as one of the biggest hits in Netflix history. "Bridgerton" will be seen by 63 million households in its first four weeks, marking the fifth-largest debut of any show on the service, Netflix...
Apple Stalls New TV Series with Oprah, Prince Harry
The Sun: A much-anticipated Apple TV+ series has hit a snag despite being in the making for more than two years. The mental health documentary series was due to be released last autumn with Prince Harry working alongside Oprah Winfrey. No firm release date has yet...
Google, Snap in Talks to Invest in India’s ShareChat
TechCrunch: ShareChat, an Indian social network that added Twitter as an investor in 2019, may soon receive the backing of two more US firms. The Bangalore-based startup is in advanced stages of talks to raise money from Google and Snap, as well as several existing...
Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan End Healthcare Effort
CNBC: Haven, the joint venture formed by three of America's most powerful companies to lower costs in healthcare, has disbanded after three years. The company began informing employees Monday that it will shut down by the end of next...
Twitter in Deal to Buy Social Podcasting App Breaker
TechCrunch: Twitter has acquired social broadcasting app Breaker, the companies announced. The deal will see Breaker's team joining Twitter to help "improve the health of the public conversation" on the service, as well as work on Twitter's new audio-based networking...