Mediagazer: Gannett drops its $683M bid for rival Tronc; source says deal collapsed after bankers pulled out (Paul Barbagallo/Bloomberg)

7:10 PM ET, November 1, 2016

Top News:

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Source: CNN Chief Jeff Zucker blasts Donna Brazile in Tuesday editorial call, describing her interactions with Clinton campaign as “unethical” and “disgusting” — Network boss has “no tolerance” for tipping off a campaign with debate questions.

Discussion: Politico, The New York Observer, Washington Post, FishbowlDC, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, The Wrap, @lexalexander, @alexparkerdc, Hot Air, TheBlaze, New York Magazine and TVNewser

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

CNN still needs to audit its relationship with political commentators, who flood its payroll, crowding out honesty and journalism — As a matter of course, CNN is careful about providing details on the bios of its guests and its paid political commentators.

Discussion: Washington Post, The Daily Caller, New Urban Legends and iMediaEthics

Hadas Gold / Politico:
Donna Brazile resigns from CNN, after leaked emails show she shared questions with Clinton campaign before a debate and town hall during Democratic primary

Paul Barbagallo / Bloomberg:

Gannett drops its $683M bid for rival Tronc; source says deal collapsed after bankers pulled out — Handshake agreement said to collapse with lack of financing — Few other publicly traded newspaper companies available — Gannett Co. dropped its bid for rival Tronc Inc. …

Brian Flood / The Wrap:

Tronc misses with Q3 revenue of $378M, down from $406M in Q3 2015; CEO Justin Dearborn says it's “unfortunate” Gannett's lenders withdrew from deal — Tronc unveiled its third-quarter 2016 earnings on Tuesday with revenues of $378 million, down 6.9 percent compared to $406 million in the third quarter of 2015.

Discussion: tronc, inc. and Bloomberg

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

ProPublica adopts Politwoops and four other Sunlight Labs projects using open government data; several other Sunlight projects are headed to other organizations — Politwoops, the service that preserves politicians' deleted tweets for posterity and to hold them to account, has a new parent …

Discussion: ProPublica, Sunlight Foundation Blog and Politico

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Hulu signs deals with Disney and 21st Century Fox for its new streaming service, which is set to debut early 2017, adding more than 35 networks including ESPN — Hulu officially announced new deals with two of its parents — 21st Century Fox and the Walt Disney Company …

Discussion: Variety, Hulu, Forbes, TechCrunch, Fortune, Fast Company, The Wrap, Recode and 9to5Mac

Stefan Nicola / Bloomberg:

YouTube strikes deal with German royalty-collection group Gema, ending seven years of legal battles and unblocking thousands of music videos in the country — @StefanNicolaBBG More stories by Stefan Nicola — Video service to pay licensing fees for clips shown in Germany

Discussion: YouTube Blog, New York Times, PR Newswire, The Independent, TorrentFreak, Billboard, DW.COM, Yahoo, VentureBeat and Music Ally

Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:

Pinterest makes Instapaper's premium features free, previously $3/month; features include full text search on all articles, speed reading, text-to-speech, more — Nearly three months after being acquired by Pinterest, Instapaper is making some changes that will impact its users.

Discussion: Instapaper, TechCrunch, AppAdvice.com Latest and SocialTimes

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Discovery Communications and MLB's BAMTech form streaming video technology provider, BAMTech Europe, to cater to the continent's broadcasters and OTT providers — Discovery Communications has linked arms with Major League Baseball's BAMTech in a pact under which they are forming BAMTech Europe …

Discussion: TechCrunch

David Lieberman / Deadline:
Discovery reports Q3 earnings with net income of $219M, down 21.5% YoY, on revenues of $1.56B and EPS of $0.36, falling below Wall Street expectations

Discussion: Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Engelwood Daily and StreetInsider.com

Lauren Johnson / Adweek:

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti says Tasty reaches more people than BuzzFeed site alone, claims BuzzFeed would be much bigger if comScore tracked its mobile stats — Ten years ago, BuzzFeed pioneered viral news and branded content with popular listicles and quizzes.

Joe Pompeo / Politico:

Morale is low at WSJ as next week's Q1 earnings are expected to show plummeting ad revenues, management memos talk of “restructuring”, and staff fear more cuts — Big cuts and big change loom for a paper that seemed, not long ago, almost immune

Discussion: @ericboehlert, @stevekovach, @mathewi, @joepompeo, @mathewi and @moorehn

Jessica Toonkel / Reuters:

Thomson Reuters plans to cut 2K jobs, or 4% of workforce but none from newsrooms, as it beats targets with Q3 net income of $286M, down from $293M in Q3 2015 — Thomson Reuters Corp (TRI.N) (TRI.TO) third-quarter earnings beat analyst expectations on Tuesday and the company said it would cut jobs worldwide …

Discussion: Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, @rafat, USA Today, Investor's Business Daily and Fast Company

Joseph Lichterman / Nieman Lab:

The AP is experimenting with machine learning to automate the process of converting print stories to broadcast format — The experiment is part of a larger effort by the news agency to incorporate automation into its journalism. — On average, when an AP sportswriter covers a game …

Discussion: @johnny_hansel

Debra Kamin / Variety:

HBO declines to comment on whether documentary by Ari Shavit, Israeli journalist accused of sexual assault, will go forward but says it's in post-production — HBO is staying tight-lipped on the status of a documentary project from “My Promised Land” author Ari Shavit …

Joshua Mitnick / Los Angeles Times:
Israeli newspaper columnist and TV commentator Ari Shavit resigns from Haaretz and Channel 10 after sexual harassment accusations

Discussion: New York Times, @ali_gharib, jewishjournal.com, Guardian and Haaretz

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Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
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Jack Marshall / Wall Street Journal:
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Emily Nussbaum / New Yorker:
New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum, who donated $250 to Clinton's campaign, reflects on Fox News' allure during the current election season

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Business Wire:
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New York Times:
Slate and The New Yorker remove Outbrain and Taboola from their websites as publishers rethink the way content ads affect their brands

Discussion: Poynter, Fortune, @mccollumashley, @diemkay, @rasmus_kleis and Nieman Lab, Thanks:@amontalenti

From Techmeme:

Tripp Mickle / New York Times:
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Ireland's DPC opens an investigation into how personal data in public X posts was used to train xAI's Grok, which could stoke tensions between the EU and the US

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Microsoft rolls out Recall in preview to Copilot+ PCs, after delaying the feature twice, from June 2024 and October 2024, over security and privacy concerns

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