Mediagazer: Spotify confirms it is testing an in-app voice control feature; user demo shows fairly accurate speech recognition (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)

6:35 PM ET, March 15, 2018

Top News:

Shannon Liao / The Verge:

Snap apologizes for approving 3rd-party ad with “would you rather” options for slapping Rihanna, punching Chris Brown; Rihanna rejects apology — 'I'd love to call it ignorance, but I know you ain't that dumb!' — Rihanna posted an Instagram Story today to denounce Snapchat …

CNN:

Trump administration announces new Russia sanctions on 5 entities, including IRA, and 19 individuals, in response to US election interference and cyberattacks — Putin's ‘chef,’ the man behind the troll factory — Washington (CNN)The Trump administration announced Thursday it is enacting …

Discussion: U.S. Department …, U.S. Department …, Mediaite, ABC News, CBS Pittsburgh, VICE News, @bobbychesney, KTLA, BetaNews, @markwarner, ZDNet, @repgallagher, Mother Jones, BloombergQuint and Washington Post, more at Techmeme »

James Andrew Miller / Hollywood Reporter:

Interview with former ESPN President John Skipper, who resigned in December citing substance addiction; he says someone tried to extort him for buying cocaine — The former network chief goes public in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about the real reason behind his abrupt departure …

Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:

Leaked docs: by early 2017, Amazon's US audience for all Prime Video programming was ~26M, its top TV shows drew 5M+ people worldwide to Prime membership — (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's top television shows drew more than 5 million people worldwide to its Prime shopping club by early 2017 …

The Guardian:

Guardian report on gender pay gap: men paid 11.3% more, top-paid workers are 65% male; outlet aims for 50/50 gender balance in top half of organization by 2023 — Difference between men and women in editorial is 7.4% … The gender pay gap at Guardian News & Media is 11.3% …

Discussion: Forbes

Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:

Q&A with WikiTribune editor Peter Bane on registered user growth from 1.7K to 8K in five months, how News Agenda decisions are made, transparency efforts, more — “It is a product for people of good will — which I know sounds ridiculously naive, but so far it's working quite well."

Discussion: @wikitribune

Peter Kafka / Recode:

theSkimm raises $12M led by GV to build more subscription services, says it has 7M readers who open its newsletter at least once a month — The startup has a newsletter with seven million subscribers, but it wants more revenue sources. — TheSkimm started out as a newsletter aimed at millennial women …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Fast Company, @z911empire, @theskimm, @mdudas, @mgsiegler, @dheerja and @gvteam

Ezra Klein / Vox:

Trump's nomination of CNBC's Larry Kudlow is another instance of the feedback loop between the president and cable news — In Kudlow, the cable news president has found a cable news economist. — If appointing CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow to run the National Economic Council …

Discussion: Mediaite, New York Times, New York Magazine, The Federalist, @gercohen, @mattyglesias, @sndurlauf, @bleedrake, @katrinanation, @simonwdc, Fortune, The Guardian, BloombergQuint, Los Angeles Times, KTLA and Mother Jones

New York Times:

Harper Lee's estate sues over Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird for Broadway, saying it deviates too much from the novel — One of the year's most anticipated Broadway plays — the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Harper Lee's novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” …

Discussion: NPR, KTLA, Slate, @kevinddaly, The Guardian, @ditzkoff, Bookseller News, The A.V. Club, Vanity Fair, Variety, The Wrap, Deadline, TVWeek.com and Jezebel

Josh Gerstein / Politico:

BuzzFeed uses Cohen libel suit over Russia dossier to demand Stormy Daniels keep Trump and Cohen records; move may lead to her testimony about Trump despite NDA — BuzzFeed may have found a legal opening to allow the porn actress Stormy Daniels to discuss her alleged relationship …

Discussion: BuzzFeed, NBC News, Techdirt, @blakehounshell, The Daily Beast, Davis Wright Tremaine, @persuasivepr, @nicoleperlroth, @emptywheel, @harrisj, @jteedc, @jlownlaw and @markberman

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Spotify confirms it is testing an in-app voice control feature; user demo shows fairly accurate speech recognition — Now Spotify listens to you instead of the other way around. Spotify has a new voice search interface that lets you say “Play my Discover Weekly,” “Show Calvin Harris” or “Play some upbeat pop” to pull up music.

Discussion: AppleInsider, CNET, Android Police, Voicebot, The Verge, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, Engadget, Pocket-lint, hypebot and MacStories, more at Techmeme »

Sam Jones / The Guardian:

Amnesty International says increased prosecutions under Spanish anti-terror law restrict freedom of expression, cites lyrics, satire, jokes on social media — Charity urges repeal of article 578, which they say has restricted freedom of expression … Amnesty International has warned that an …

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, @kenroth and @amnestyuk

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More News:

Lisa de Moraes / Deadline:
Shep Smith signs multiyear deal with Fox News, renewing his status as the channel's chief news anchor and managing editor of breaking news

Discussion: Variety, Mediaite and TVNewser

Shan Wang / Nieman Lab:
The New York Times ends MyAlerts, email alerts that users could customize via keywords, after it found less than half a percent of readers used the service

Discussion: @james_dasilva and @rafat

Laura Snapes / The Guardian:
British music magazine NME printed its last edition 3/9 after 66 years due to increasing production costs, a tough print ad market, and declining circulation

Discussion: @alexneedham74, @laurasnapes and Boing Boing

Siddhartha Deb / Columbia Journalism Review:
Police in India charge 37-year-old man for involvement in last year's fatal shooting of Gauri Lankesh, the editor and publisher of a Bangalore-based weekly

Earlier Picks:

Radoslav Tomek / Bloomberg:
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico offers to resign after the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak sparked the biggest protests since the fall of communism

Discussion: The Guardian, NPR, Bloomberg, DW.COM, @dabeard, The Guardian, BBC and DW.COM

Jessica Toonkel / Reuters:
NBC News planning online streaming service this year to attract younger viewers; company says it has no plans to bring any of its content back to Facebook

Discussion: Multichannel News, FierceCable, @turnernovak, @digitalshields, Business Insider and The Hill

Denver Business Journal:
Digital First Media's Denver Post plans to cut its newsroom staff of ~90 by ~30%, after cutting 10 positions in December and more earlier

Discussion: Denver Westword, @lionpubs, @mattdelong, @byrosenberg, @davidsirota, The Hill, @kevinmhamm, DFM Workers, @kdoctor, @kevinmhamm and @noelle_phillips

Stuart Winchester / Viacom:
All Viacom networks and platforms suspended scheduled programming for 17 minutes early Wednesday to coincide with the National School Walkout

Discussion: Forbes, NPR, Washingtonian, The Federalist, Moms Demand Action …, People.com, The Verge, Vox, The Wrap, TIME, Washington Post, Mediaite, The Daily Beast, New York Times, Refinery29, Vanity Fair, TVWeek.com and WPIX 11 New York

From Techmeme:

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Meta details Llama 3: 8B- and 70B-parameter models, a focus on reducing false refusals, and an upcoming model trained on 15T+ tokens that has 400B+ parameters

David Pierce / The Verge:
Google announces a new Platforms and Devices team overseeing Pixel, Android, Chrome, Photos, and more, to integrate AI across its products, led by Rick Osterloh

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Europol and 19 countries make 37 arrests and disrupt phishing-as-a-service platform LabHost in a year-long operation with help from Microsoft, Intel, and others

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