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Since 2016, American Media has made Karen McDougal professional promises and paid $150K in a catch-and-kill arrangement for her story of her affair with Trump — One woman's account of clandestine meetings, financial transactions, and legal pacts designed to hide an extramarital affair.
Discussion:
@maggienyt, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Observer, The Wrap, AOL, Fast Company, Mediaite, Coffee House, Washington Post, Business Insider, The Guardian, Jezebel, Vanity Fair, Refinery29, The Daily Caller, Fortune, Axios, @isaacdovere, @maggienyt, @eisingerj, bookforum.com, Decider, Slate, New York Magazine, Bloomberg, People.com, Hollywood Reporter, thecut, Hollywood Life, @jimwaterson, IndieWire, KTLA, @anthony, The Week, East Bay Times, Variety, Splinter, The Daily Beast, The Big Lead and TV Tattle


Covering Parkland shooting means balancing informing the audience with interviewing traumatized teenagers who may not be able to give informed consent — The morning after the school massacre in Parkland, Fla., NBC's “Today Show” aired a dramatic live interview Thursday.
Discussion:
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, @jbenton, @mack_oxenden, @jennamargaretta, @sulliview, New York Times and CNN
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Reporter's outreach to shooting survivors via Twitter was hindered by accounts falsifying her words and targeting her; Twitter said targeting didn't break rules — In the wake of the Florida high school shooting Wednesday, Twitter users began spreading doctored tweets targeting Miami Herald reporter Alex Harris.
Discussion:
@cwarzel, @mat, @noupside, @emilybell, @derekwillis, @harrisalexc, @harrisalexc, @marxmedia, @hashtaggriswold, Poynter and Media Matters for America


Interview with The Intercept's Research Director Lynn Dombek on researchers, their skill sets, and their role in site's Dakota pipeline and Rob Porter stories — Move over, Woodward and Bernstein. — This era's great journalistic diggers include Julie Tate, Kitty Bennett, Alice Crites, Margot Williams and Sheelagh McNeill.


District court in New York rules that by embedding a tweet with copyrighted content, websites may violate copyright, rejecting years of settled legal precedent — The defendants including Breitbart, Time, Vox and the Boston Globe warned a loss would “cause a tremendous chilling effect on the core functionality of the web.”
Discussion:
The Daily Dot, PC Magazine, Techdirt, The Outline, Electronic Frontier Foundation, @cdgoldstein, Boing Boing, Billboard, TorrentFreak, @felixsalmon, Engadget, @bergmayer, @franklomonte, @theauburner, @jeffjarvis, @medialawprof, @craigcalcaterra, @ericgoldman, @eriqgardner, @petersterne, @andrewdfish, @jeffjohnroberts and @annalecta, more at Techmeme »


New analysis shows 36K tweets from Internet Research Agency linked most often to Breitbart News, then Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle; RT ranked 19th — Russia's disinformation campaign during the 2016 presidential election relied heavily on stories produced by major American news sources …
Discussion:
Wired, Nieman Lab, Jonathan Couser, @wired, Fast Company, @nitashatiku, Jonathan Albright, @ilvestoomas, @profcarroll and @justinhendrix


At the Digital News Initiative Summit on Thursday, Google previewed a “Subscribe with Google” feature in Google Play for publishers who use paywalls — Hey, Google — how do we solve the news industry's various revenue problems? — Google gave a preview of some features it's …
Discussion:
@marcusschwarze, @jeffjarvis and @jeffjarvis
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Digital First Media has acquired the Boston Herald in a bankruptcy auction with an $11.9M bid, beating out GateHouse Media and Revolution Capital — Digital First Media won the Boston Herald in a five-hour bankruptcy auction with an $11.9million bid that all but settles who will carry …
Discussion:
BostonGlobe.com, @nickwoltman and @bobmcgovernjr


Facebook complies with demand of Russia's internet censor to remove Instagram video by opposition activist Alexei Navalny, but the video remains on YouTube — Instagram has blocked posts in Russia relating to corruption claims made by the country's most prominent opposition leader.
Discussion:
CNBC, Fast Company, Gizmodo, @wendysiegelman, BuzzFeed, @paulachertok, TechCrunch, Washington Post, Associated Press and Telegraph, more at Techmeme »


Magna Global: TV ad sales in the US fell 7.8% to $61.8B in 2017, the biggest drop outside a recession in at least 20 years, with no sign of a pickup in 2018 — Sales drop last year was worst outside a recession in 20 years — The peak of the market was two years ago, Magna Global says


Six Turkish journalists, among them Ahmet and Mehmet Altan and Nazli Ilicak, given life sentences for following accusations of involvement in 2016 coup — A court in Istanbul has sentenced six journalists accused of involvement in a 2016 coup attempt to life prison terms, according to Turkey's state-run news agency.


Univision reports $3B revenue and $655M net income, says benefit from new tax law saw its tax rate reduce to ~24% from ~38% — U.S. Spanish-language media giant Univision Communications had both good and bad news to deliver during its fourth-quarter and 2017 year-end earnings report on Thursday.
Discussion:
Radio & Television …, Univision Communications and Broadcasting & Cable