Top News:
Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:
Journalistic basics resulted in strong stories from two newspapers after weak cable news punditry followed President Trump's Congress speech — Call it the revenge of the reporters over the pundits. — Tuesday night was a low point for “the media” — if such a multi-headed beast …
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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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Wall Street Journal:
Snap closes first day of trading at $24.51 per share, 44% above original price of $17, valuing the company at around $34B — Popular disappearing-message app ends day valued at $34 billion, higher than Marriott, Target
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Wall Street Journal, @kantrowitz, Reuters, Ad Age, The Wrap, Fortune, Forbes, TIME, TechCrunch, CNBC, The Wrap, VentureBeat, Recode, Bloomberg, Bloomberg, CNBC, NPR, Dealbreaker, New York Times, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Recode, Softpedia News, AOL, Forbes, Gizmodo, The Information, @danprimack, Fortune, The Daily Caller, Daring Fireball, @scottmaustin, Digiday, Axios, VentureBeat, HYPEBEAST, CNNMoney, BuzzFeed and The Verge
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.
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
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 …
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@spotify, Fast Company, Softpedia News, Variety, CNET, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, Mashable, Tech Narratives, Engadget, Axios and hypebot
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 …
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Washington Post, @basquiatball and @kkaplan
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) …
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@indexcensorship, @jodieginsberg, @indexcensorship, @londoninsider, @rorypecktrust, @shift_mindsets, @rcfp, @tigerbeat, @poynter, @fqadi, @journalismfest, @trevortimm, @benmullin and @mathewi
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.
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Nieman Lab, Adweek, Business Wire, Publishers Weekly and @jackshafer
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.
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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