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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, NPR, Reuters, Fast Company, The A.V. Club, @theundefeated, CNET, Slate, The Daily Caller, The Verge, Fortune, IndieWire, Business Insider, PAPER, io9 and The FADER
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 …
Discussion:
Adweek, Adweek, Ad Age, Media Rating Council and AdExchanger
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, Slate, Recode, Fortune, 9to5Google, @patrickesque, Yourstory.com, BBC, The Ringer, BuzzFeed, Mashable, Mumbrella, 9to5Mac, Bloomberg and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »
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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
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 …
Discussion:
Twitter, Fortune, GeekWire, ZDNet, Engadget, TechCrunch, Forbes, 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.
Discussion:
Adweek, Business Wire, /Film, Deadline, Forbes, Business Insider, @tim_stevens, Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, Android Police, TechCrunch and Fortune, more at Techmeme »
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.
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 — David D. Smith, the chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, says the media is getting his company all wrong.
Discussion:
Talking Points Memo, Vox, The Daily Beast, Washington Post, CBS Dallas, TVSpy, AOL, Mediaite, @buzzfeedben, Center for Public Integrity and CNNMoney
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 …
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Conde Nast has a median pay gap of 23.3% despite a female majority at every pay level; The Economist Group's 29.5% median pay gap is the highest in UK media — Conde Nast has the largest mean gender pay gap favouring men among all UK publishers and broadcasters, but, when the median is taken …
Discussion:
BuzzFeed, Forbes, National Union of Journalists, @jamesrbuk, gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk, Digiday and WIRED UK
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
Knight study of local TV news: revenues and viewership are rising, and in smaller markets, TV news websites are the dominant local news source — In many smaller markets, it's local TV stations' websites — not newspapers' sites! — that are the dominant digital local news source.
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