Top News:
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 …
Discussion:
Media Matters for America, HuffPost, CNNMoney, @ewerickson, New York Times, Washington Post, Adweek, Mediaite, @jessicavalenti, Daily Wire, @jessicavalenti, The New York Observer, The Wrap, @noahcrothman, Vox, ThinkProgress, @kristinerudolph, @jillfilipovic, Jezebel, The Federalist, Hit & Run, @benshapiro, @noahcrothman, @mattgertz, @sulliview, @mlcalderone, Slate, iMediaEthics, TheBlaze, Politico, Mother Jones, @ilyseh, @ifwhenhow, @wentrogue, Boing Boing, @anildash, @alexyablon, @stephstephking, @jray05, @maggieserota, @libbycwatson, @danilizsky, @austin_walker, @jamilsmith, @shakestweetz, @joeconason, @robbysoave, @wentrogue, @jljacobson, thecut, The Daily Caller, @leannenaramore and Boing Boing
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.
Discussion:
Variety, NPR, Fast Company, Reuters, The A.V. Club, CNET, @theundefeated, Slate, PAPER, The Daily Caller, The Verge, Fortune, IndieWire, Business Insider, 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
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, Forbes, Fortune, GeekWire, ZDNet, Engadget, TechCrunch, CNET, Business Insider, Fast Company, The Outline and Los Angeles Times, more at Techmeme »
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.
Discussion:
Facebook, Politico, Slate, Recode, Fortune, 9to5Google, @patrickesque, Yourstory.com, BBC, Mashable, The Ringer, BuzzFeed, Mumbrella and Bloomberg, more at Techmeme »
RELATED:
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, /Film, Business Wire, Deadline, Forbes, Business Insider, Android Police, @tim_stevens, Hollywood Reporter, TechCrunch, The Wrap 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.
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.
Discussion:
Informed and Engaged and Poynter
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
NBCU debuts CFlight metric, which adds up exposure via broadcast, cable, and streaming and counts completed views of commercials, as audience metrics multiply — - Jason Chaffetz, Katie Pavlich, Brian Kilmeade and Pete Hegseth to Sub for Laura Ingraham on Fox News
Discussion:
Deadline, Broadcasting & Cable, AdExchanger and FierceCable
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:
Forbes, BuzzFeed, National Union of Journalists, @jamesrbuk, gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk, Digiday and WIRED UK
Mike Ananny / Columbia Journalism Review:
Report on Facebook's fact-checking partnerships examines the struggles of tech companies teaming up with news orgs, details distrust and lack of transparency — Facebook and five US news and fact-checking organizations—ABC News, the Associated Press, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and Snopes …
Discussion:
The Wrap, The Verge, @writemegwrite, @alkapdc, @seanrobinsontnt, @grahamstarr, @jon_allsop, @michaelbkelley, @doplinger, @alaphia, @bgrueskin, @clancynewyork, @cwarzel, @towcenter and @jayrosen_nyu
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
Interview with Renée Kaplan, FT head of audience engagement, on appealing to more female subscribers via a newsletter, encouraging potential op-eds, and more — Only 20 percent of the FT's subscribers were women. Renée Kaplan, the paper's head of audience engagement, is doing a lot of things to change that.
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, AOL, CBS Dallas, TVSpy, Mediaite, Center for Public Integrity, CNNMoney and @buzzfeedben