Top News:
Adrienne LaFrance / The Atlantic:
Even in an age of nearly-real-time news, big stories still often break in the evening because of newspaper print deadlines — It's usually around 8 p.m. when the push notifications start rolling in. On Wednesday night, The New York Times kicked things off at 7:56 p.m. with a major story …
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New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, The Wrap, Observer, USA Today, Rolling Stone, Business Insider, Al Jazeera English, @mattdpearce, AOL, Hit & Run, The Guardian, Above the Law, Mother Jones, IJR, Hot Air, The Week, Infowars, @lizziejohnsonnn, Common Dreams, Vanity Fair, @rationaldoge, The Slot, The Gateway Pundit, www.wnyc.org, Q13 FOX News, FOX2now.com, Miami New Times, The New Civil Rights Movement, Talking New Media, @geniepee, @amyweissmeyer, @ejgold94, @adriennelaf, BGR, @elizabethangell, TheBlaze, Fox News Insider, Politicus USA, New York Magazine, Mediaite, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Washington Monthly, Boing Boing, NPR, The Huffington Post, RT, Refinery29, The Daily Caller, Fast Company, Mashable, The Daily Beast and Axios
Katie Roof / TechCrunch:
Snap closes first day of trading at $24.51 per share, 44% above original price of $17, valuing the company at around $34B — Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, had a great day in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. After pricing the IPO at $17 per share yesterday, the stock opened at $24.
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Reuters, Ad Age, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, CNBC, Bloomberg, Recode, New York Times, Fortune, Dealbreaker, Daring Fireball, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Forbes, Recode, Softpedia News, Gizmodo, The Information, @danprimack, Fortune and VentureBeat
Bloomberg:
Source: Trump has sworn off Morning Joe as he cuts back on MSNBC and CNN; he remains an avid Fox viewer and watches CNBC for business news — President said to binge more on Fox News, avoid CNN, MSNBC — Lobbyist discusses buying ads on Trump's favorite TV shows
David Folkenflik / NPR:
Interview with CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who is emerging as a champion of aggressive journalism as Trump attacks and snubs his network — Attacked on national TV for supposedly serving up “fake news.” Shut out of a White House press briefing in retribution.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Spotify says it has 50M paying subscribers, up from 30M in March 2016 — Spotify continues to cement its place as the leader in music streaming, and today the company announced that it just hit another milestone of 50 million paid subscribers. … It's impressive growth for the company …
Pew Research Center:
Pew survey: 76% of Democrats and 49% of Republicans say freedom of the press to criticize political leaders is very important — 77% say it would be ‘too risky’ to give presidents more power — Large majorities of the public, Republicans and Democrats alike, say open and fair elections …
Discussion:
@basquiatball, @kkaplan and Washington Post
Brian Flood / The Wrap:
The New York Times redesigns its front pages to give readers a more comprehensive overview of what the paper is doing both in print and digital — The New York Times today introduced a reimagined design of the front two pages of its newspaper (known as pages A2 and A3), modeled on the “front of book” pages of magazine layouts.
Discussion:
Nieman Lab, Adweek, Business Wire, @jackshafer and Publishers Weekly
Benjamin Mullin / Poynter:
Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and other organizations team up to launch a site tracking press freedom violations in the US — In the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump has called journalists the “enemy of the American people” (twice) …
Discussion:
@indexcensorship, @jodieginsberg, @indexcensorship, @londoninsider, @rorypecktrust, @shift_mindsets, @rcfp, @tigerbeat, @poynter, @fqadi, @journalismfest, @trevortimm, @benmullin and @mathewi
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Mashable Studios creates a new position, vice president of programming and development, in Los Angeles and hires Polly Auritt, most recently of Fullscreen — Mashable has hired Polly Auritt, formerly VP of programming at Fullscreen, as head of programming and development for Mashable Studios.
Discussion:
Multichannel News
Lauren Coleman-Lochner / Bloomberg:
Barnes & Noble sees its biggest holiday-quarter decline since 2005 as it misses Q3 targets, with Nook sales down 26%; stock falls over 8% — Bookstore chain's same-store sales tumbled 8.3% in the period — Company now expects a decline of 7% for the full year
Discussion:
Investors, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, The Verge, Consumerist and Fortune
Ed Meza / Variety:
Reed Hastings says Netflix has invested $1.75B+ into European productions and currently has 90+ original shows in development across Europe — BERLIN - Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said Wednesday that the company had invested more than $1.75 billion in European productions, including licensed programming …
Discussion:
Fortune, Forbes, @variety and @juanpmoraless
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
In the two years since hiring its first chief digital officer, Condé Nast's digital audience has grown 76% while time spent on sites has increased 132% — Last June, Vanity Fair launched The Hive, its first vertical outside the storied magazine, with a roster of star writers and social-first strategy.
Discussion:
@digiday, @fsantarpia and @leovanderborgh
Rich McCormick / The Verge:
Twitter partners with ESL and Dreamhack to broadcast tournaments and e-sports events live starting March 4, will also broadcast 30-minute weekly e-sports show — After making a move into streaming traditional sports, Twitter will now start streaming e-sports.
Discussion:
Reuters, ESPN, SportTechie, TechCrunch, Engadget, PR Newswire, Variety and GeekWire