Mediagazer: Facebook hires MTV executive Mina Lefevre as head of development, overseeing scripted and unscripted content (Andrew Liptak/The Verge)

7:25 PM ET, February 9, 2017

Top News:

Eliana Johnson / Politico:

Sources: at least two candidates have turned down WH communications director job, a position that has remained vacant since Jason Miller resigned in December — At least two candidates have turned down the job of White House communications director. — Controlling the message coming …

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

Fox News cements its standing as Trump TV as Kellyanne Conway plugs Ivanka Trump's products without any opposition from Fox & Friends anchors — What's less surprising: that a top aide to President Trump would go on a Fox News program and plug the line of clothing and accessories of Ivanka Trump …

Discussion: Fox News Insider, LawNewz, TheBlaze, Politico, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, New York Times, The Hill, The Wrap, Hit & Run, Occupy Democrats, AOL, Forbes, IJR, Variety, The Guardian, @erikwemple, Racked, Vanity Fair, @sopandeb, Refinery29 and @erikwemple

Benjamin Mullin / Poynter:

Flush with donations, ProPublica is planning to add 15-25 journalists to its newsrooms in New York and Illinois as it reorients itself to cover Trump — Bleak about the future of journalism? Here are some encouraging statistics: — In 2015, ProPublica ended the year with $450,000 in small donations …

Discussion: @charlesornstein and @laur_katz

Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:

Pew study: US adult news consumers can only recall the source of a news link 56% of the time, and 10% name Facebook as a news source — “The online news experience is a mix of deliberateness and serendipity,” a new report from Pew finds, noting that no one particular path to finding online news is dominant among users.

Discussion: Pew Research Center, Washington Post, Quartz, Adweek, Fortune, @niemanlab, USA Today, Broadcasting & Cable, @pewresearch, @pewresearch, @niemanlab, Columbia Journalism Review, @hl_bowen and @ylichterman

Adam Klasfeld / Courthouse News Service:

NFL writer Bart Hubbuch sues Murdoch's New York Post, claiming wrongful termination for his tweet critical of Trump on inauguration day — MANHATTAN (CN) — Mocking his raunchy tabloid's desire for a “safe space,” a sports writer wants damages after the New York Post fired him for a tweet …

Discussion: ProFootballTalk, Adweek, ProFootballTalk, Kansas City Star, The Hill, Bleacher Report, Awful Announcing, @richarddeitsch and The Big Lead

Lara O'Reilly / Business Insider:

Twitter reports Q4 revenue of $717M, missing estimates, but beats on earnings as MAUs grew 2M from Q3 2016, reaching 319M — Twitter missed analysts' expectations for its fourth-quarter revenue — reporting $717 million versus estimates of $740 million — as advertising spend lagged behind …

Discussion: Jack Dorsey, Adweek, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, PR Newswire, Reuters, Vanity Fair, Fortune, The Guardian, Recode, GeekWire, Forbes, ZDNet, Mashable, Bloomberg, Variety, INSIDER, @mathewi, The Guardian, Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check, @bcappelbaum, Axios, @verge, Axios, @stevekovach, @businessinsider, @recode, @raju, Recode and VentureBeat

Brett Molina / USA Today:
Twitter shares fall over 10% on Q4 revenue miss, flat growth, and a 5% YoY drop in US ad revenue

Discussion: TechCrunch, Forbes, @techcrunch, BBC, @edmundlee, VentureBeat and @cnbc

Andrew Liptak / The Verge:

Facebook hires MTV executive Mina Lefevre as head of development, overseeing scripted and unscripted content — Mina Lefevre had been the head of scripted for MTV — Facebook has been working to make video a central part of how its users experience the site, first with Facebook Live …

Discussion: Deadline, Mina Lefevre, Engadget, Tubefilter, Forbes, @andrewliptak, Business Insider, Fast Company, Mashable and The Wrap

Stephen Witt / Billboard:

Interview with Jeff Bezos and Steve Boom, VP of Amazon Music, about the music industry, Echo and Alexa's place in it, more — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would make almost any list of the world's most powerful people. In retail, he's clearly on top, and in tech, he's close to it.

Discussion: Mediaite, Daily Mail, @palafo, @ckindel, Business Insider, AppleInsider, GeekWire, RAIN News and Axios

Cynthia Littleton / Variety:

Viacom beats estimates with Q1 net earnings of $396M, with Paramount posting $180M operating loss; CEO Bob Bakish announces Paramount turnaround plan — The new regime at Viacom unveiled a turnaround plan for Paramount Pictures and its cable network group as the conglom surprised Wall Street Thursday …

Discussion: Deadline, Deadline, Los Angeles Times, Broadcasting & Cable, Hollywood Reporter, Viacom, Los Angeles Times, Broadcasting & Cable and Los Angeles Times

Peter Kafka / Recode:

Viacom CEO Bob Bakish says “highly selective” licensing deals for new shows will reinforce the need for pay TV contracts — Viacom's new boss reminds the pay TV guys that he likes doing business with the pay TV guys. — Do you like watching shows from MTV, Comedy Central and other Viacom-owned networks?

Discussion: Forbes and Hollywood Reporter

Richard Sandomir / New York Times:

Bob Costas ends his 24-year run as NBC's prime-time Olympics host, reducing his overall workload at the network as he takes on a role similar to Tom Brokaw's — When NBC televises next year's Winter Olympics from Pyeongchang, South Korea, a familiar face will be gone from the prime-time anchor seat …

Discussion: TODAY.com, TVWeek.com, @nbcolympics, IJR, @ap_sports, @businessinsider, @braddjaffy, @sinow, @bleacherreport, Washington Post, @ennisnyt and The Big Lead

Ben Popper / The Verge:

Sources: Google combines product teams for YouTube Music and Google Play Music, likely paving way for a single music app in the future — Come together, right now, over me — According to several sources familiar with the change, the product teams working on YouTube Music and Google Play Music are being combined into a single unit.

Discussion: Music Industry Blog, RAIN News, hypebot, Gear, The Tech Portal, 9to5Google, Tubefilter, AndroidHeadlines.com and Variety

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More News:

Christine Wang / CNBC:
News Corp meets analyst targets for Q2 with $2.12B in revenue, reports 9% decline year over year in ad revenue for news and information division

Discussion: @christiiineeee, Talking New Media, News Corp, Fox Business and Reuters

Katie Roof / TechCrunch:
Pandora beats with Q4 revenue of $393M, up 17% YoY, vs. $374M expected, predicts Q1 loss of $70-$80M

Discussion: Pandora Media

West Virginia Public Broadcasting:
WV Gov. Jim Justice proposes elimination of all state funding for WV Public Broadcasting in new budget, which would translate into staff layoffs of up to 75%

Discussion: Current, wvpublic.org and @farrahfazal

Jane Martinson / The Guardian:
Sources: Rupert Murdoch was in the room for Trump's Times of London interview with Michael Gove, a sign of his close ties with the president and his family

Discussion: Financial Times, @robertshrimsley, Mirror.co.uk, @jgrovum, @henrymance, @tomgara, @mattgarrahan, @johngapper, @muradahmed, @mlcalderone and Press Gazette

Earlier Picks:

Trey Williams / MarketWatch:
Gannett beats Q4 expectations with revenue at $867M, up from $739M a year earlier, but print advertising revenue is still declining

Discussion: Seeking Alpha, StreetInsider.com and NASDAQ.com

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:
UK mag Private Eye hit highest circulation in 55-year history in second half of 2016, up 9% YoY; its Christmas issue also had biggest sales ever at 287K copies

Discussion: @pressgazette, @claridgealex, @markismith50, @journalism, @malonebarry and @pressgazette

Alexandra Steigrad / WWD:
Condé Nast buys social data and marketing platform CitizenNet to broaden its audience-targeting capabilities beyond its own properties to social platforms

Discussion: Condé Nast and CNNMoney

Gerry Smith / Bloomberg:
The New York Times partners with Spotify, giving readers who buy one-year digital subscriptions unlimited access to the music service's premium tier

Discussion: New York Times, Reynolds Center and Business Wire

From Techmeme:

Bloomberg:
The Trump administration exempts smartphones, laptops, hard drives, processors, memory chips, and machines used to make semiconductors from reciprocal tariffs

Martine Paris / Forbes:
Sam Altman says ChatGPT users had doubled in the past few weeks and that “10% of the world uses our systems”, which would peg the number closer to 800M users

Kate Pickert / Bloomberg:
AI could transform medicine by helping doctors and medical students improve their empathy and bedside manner before they interact with real patients

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