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The Daily Beast:
The Atlantic fires columnist Kevin Williamson after first defending some of his earlier commentary, including that women should be hanged for having abortions — The Atlantic on Thursday fired conservative columnist Kevin Williamson after it became apparent that his belief that women …
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Sherisse Pham / CNNMoney:
AMC, owned by Dalian Wanda, wins the first cinema operating license in Saudi Arabia after a 35-year ban on public theaters, will open 30+ cinemas in five years — Hollywood seeks keys to the Kingdom — America's biggest movie theater company is bringing the silver screen to Saudi Arabia.
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Variety, Reuters, The Verge, @theundefeated, CNET, The A.V. Club, MovieWeb News, NPR, Slate, The Daily Caller, Business Insider, IndieWire, Fortune, io9, Fast Company, The FADER and PAPER
Paul Farhi / Washington Post:
Three political candidates vow not to advertise on Sinclair TV stations, and Sen. Richard Durbin asks Sinclair for information about its “must-run” stories — First Sinclair Broadcast Group got lacerated by the public and other news organizations for its controversial promotional campaign.
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NPPA, Vox, BuzzFeed, New York Magazine, The Daily Signal, @dalrymple, @trevortimm, Salon, Los Angeles Times, Mumbrella, Refinery29, Daily Wire, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, Techdirt, Motherboard, DSLreports, The Wrap, FTVLive and CNNMoney
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Sydney Ember / New York Times:
Sinclair CEO David Smith defends his company's “must-run” segments on media bias, likens them to the late-night shows other networks air on local affiliates
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MySanAntonio.com, Talking Points Memo, CBS News, Deadspin, The Daily Beast, Mediaite, Washington Post, TVSpy, @melbournecoal, @nytimesbusiness, @anthonymasoncbs and AOL
Patrick Redford / The Concourse:
The new owners of LA Weekly, Semanal Media, have launched a campaign to push back against an ongoing boycott, saying the weekly is being bullied and harassed — In the four months since a mysterious group of rich people took over the L.A. Weekly, news outlets across the country have continued …
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KCRW, The Outline, Eater LA, @markeortega, @boycottlaweekly, @gwencalavera, @dangibson520, LA Weekly, @drewmillard, @thesarahbennett, Curbed LA and @passionweiss
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Facebook gets accreditation from Media Rating Council for first of three audits it committed to, validating ad impressions on Facebook News Feed and Instagram — The Media Ratings Council (MRC,) which has for decades acted as the de facto watchdog for the media and advertising industries …
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Adweek, Adweek, Media Rating Council, AdExchanger and Ad Age
Ben Sisario / New York Times:
Sony says it sold 17% of its 5.7% stake in Spotify on Tuesday, the day Spotify went public, for $250M+; other big labels are thought to own 4% or less — In the music industry, one of the biggest issues hanging over Spotify's arrival on the New York Stock Exchange has been what the major record companies …
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Digital Music News, Engadget and Wall Street Journal
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Chris Ariens / TVNewser:
CNN brought in $19.9M, Fox News $16.2M, and MSNBC $8.1M in ad spending in the first quarter; many of the same brands advertised across all cable channels — As we shared with you yesterday, all three cable news networks saw very strong first quarters in the ratings, with Fox News and MSNBC the No. 1 and No. 2 channels on all of cable.
Jason Cherkis / HuffPost:
Q&A with Rob Byers, the laid-off son of a coal miner who worked at WVA newspapers for over 26 years, on covering coal and politicians, and uncertainty in media — And Rob Byers is out of a job. — Two days after graduating from West Virginia University in 1991, Rob Byers joined …
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@sulliview, @davidfolkenflik, @robbyerswv, @rachelmolenda, @nickriccardi, @citizencohn, @hberkes, @jacquib and @marinafang
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Cambridge Analytica denies Facebook's claim that it accessed data on 87M Facebook users, claims it “licensed data for no more than 30M people” — Cambridge Analytica is refuting a report by Facebook today that said Cambridge Analytica improperly attained data on up to 87 million users.
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Facebook, Politico, Recode, Slate, Fortune, 9to5Google, @patrickesque, Yourstory.com, Bloomberg and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »
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New York Times:
The Paris Review names a new editor: Emily Nemens, co-editor of The Southern Review, who hopes to strike “a balance between stewardship and innovation” — Emily Nemens, a co-editor of The Southern Review, seems agnostic and omnivorous when it comes to narrative mediums.
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
Twitter says it suspended 274K accounts for promoting terrorism in last six months of 2017, bringing total to 1.2M since August 2015 — It suspended more than 274,000 accounts just in the last six months of 2017. — Twitter suspended more than 1.2 million accounts that were promoting terrorism …
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Twitter, Forbes, TechCrunch, GeekWire, Engadget, ZDNet, Fortune, CNET, Business Insider, Fast Company, The Outline and Los Angeles Times, more at Techmeme »
Todd Spangler / Variety:
MoviePass parent company acquires Moviefone from Oath for $15M; Oath will continue selling Moviefone's digital ad inventory — MoviePass is saying “Hello — and welcome to Moviefone!" — Helios and Matheson Analytics, the majority owner of MoviePass, announced the acquisition of Moviefone from Verizon's Oath subsidiary.
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Adweek, Business Wire, Deadline, /Film, Forbes, Business Insider, Android Police, Fortune, TechCrunch, @tim_stevens, Hollywood Reporter and The Wrap, more at Techmeme »
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