Mediagazer: Private equity firm Blackstone buys 55% stake in Thomson Reuters financial and risk division, valuing the unit at $20B including debt (Chad Bray/New York Times)

11:35 PM ET, January 30, 2018

Top News:

Kurt Wagner / Recode:

Facebook says it's banning all ads for cryptocurrencies, ICOs, and binary options to avoid “misleading or deceptive promotional practices” — It's an “intentionally broad” policy aimed at stopping scammers. — Facebook is banning all ads that promote cryptocurrencies …

Chad Bray / New York Times:

Private equity firm Blackstone buys 55% stake in Thomson Reuters financial and risk division, valuing the unit at $20B including debt — LONDON — What is now Thomson Reuters came to life a decade ago in a $17 billion merger of the Thomson financial information business and the Reuters news service.

Discussion: Reuters, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, Reuters, Financial Times, Financial Times and Agence France-Presse

Jon Levine / The Wrap:

Vice Media has fired Chief Digital Officer Mike Germano following two separate allegations of sexual misconduct against him — Vice Media has fired its chief digital officer, Mike Germano, after at least two women accused him of sexual misconduct, TheWrap has learned.

Discussion: Digiday, New York Times, Mediawire, Variety, Ad Age, Adweek, Business Insider, Associated Press, @moorehn, @emilysteel, Fast Company and @emilysteel

Kathy E. Gill / WiredPen:

Creators of FactStream app for iOS tested curation of live fact checks of State of the Union speech, sourced from Washington Post, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org — On January 9, 2018, less than year after being sworn in as president of the United States, Donald Trump told his 2,000th lie.

Discussion: Duke Reporters' Lab, @billadairduke, @dukesanford, @rebeccaiannucci, Washington Post and American Press Institute

Damien Cave / New York Times:

Journalists who receive anything deemed classified by the government could face up to five years in prison under Australia's proposed espionage laws — SYDNEY, Australia — When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia recently proposed new espionage laws, he stressed the need for disclosure …

Discussion: @hannahhrlc, @petergreste, @farrellpf, @emmaels, @caugustelliott, Human Rights Watch and @billcode

Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed:

Study: Twitter cuts into Facebook's lead on traffic sent to publishers; this month FB sent 2.5 visitors for each one Twitter sent, down from 4.7:1 in Oct. 2017 — Publishers are freaking out about Facebook's plan to show 20% less news in the News Feed. But over the past four months …

more at Techmeme »

Sam Charles / Chicago Sun Times:

Chicago Sun-Times EIC Chris Fusco says Times will not publish anything by Richard Roeper as it investigates allegations he paid to boost his Twitter followers — The Chicago Sun-Times will not publish columns or reviews authored by Richard Roeper as the newspaper investigates the legitimacy of Roeper's sizable Twitter following.

Hadas Gold / CNNMoney:

Subsidiary of Canada's The Katz Group has bought a majority stake in Laura Ingraham's LifeZette; Ingraham maintains a minority stake — Canadian billionaire Daryl Katz's company is the new owner of LifeZette, the site co-founded by Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

Discussion: @calamusandsinew and @bruce_arthur

Steve Gunn / Virginian-Pilot:

Virginian-Pilot announces it will outsource much of its newsroom print design to Pagemasters North America starting this spring, leading to six layoffs — The Virginian-Pilot announced Tuesday that it will outsource much of its newsroom print page design to an outside vendor.

Discussion: Forbes, @briannaschroer and @mike_hixenbaugh

Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:

Hyundai pulls planned Super Bowl ad that promoted women's empowerment after response to similar Audi ad last year and poor results with male focus group — Television ads for the big game are emerging from months of work in Madison Avenue war rooms — In early August, creative teams …

BBC:

PwC review of BBC pay structure found no gender bias in decision making, but identified anomalies, recommends clear pay framework, narrower pay ranges — Today the BBC has published a review of on-air pay carried out by PwC, and set out a five-point plan to help create a fairer and more equal BBC.

Discussion: allmediascotland, Press Gazette, Variety, National Union of Journalists, Press Gazette, @scottygb, @bbcscotlandnews, Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, BBC, @rachel_hump, @newsfrommichiel, Press Gazette and Westmonster

BBC:
BBC Women, a group representing female BBC journalists and producers, say employees experienced “veiled threats” when raising subject of equal pay

Discussion: The Guardian, National Union of Journalists, HuffPost UK and Press Gazette

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Sources: Amazon and Facebook are interested in bidding for streaming rights to WWE's “Raw” and “Smackdown” franchises, as tech firms compete with TV giants — The year is 2034. The Olympics that have been a fixture on channels owned by NBCUniversal since 2002 have disappeared from TV altogether.

Discussion: @jimandrews_esp

Pew Research Center:

Pew: analysis of 9.7M tweets shows 75% of tweets about immigration contained links to news sites, with NYT and The Hill as the two most-tweeted sites — An analysis of 9.7 million tweets reveals that news organizations played the largest role in which content was linked to compared with other information providers

Discussion: @asmitch, Nieman Lab, @pewmethods, @conradhackett, @michaelbarthel and @pewresearch