Top News:
Rosalind S. Helderman / Washington Post:
Internal AT&T documents show it made a $600K deal with Cohen days after inauguration, specifying he would advise on Time Warner merger and on matters before FCC — Three days after President Trump was sworn into office, the telecom giant AT&T turned to his personal attorney Michael Cohen …
Discussion:
The Wrap, The Hill, @klasfeldreports, Slate, @ericuman, @joenbc, @jamilsmith, Dealbreaker, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Techdirt and Motherboard
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Spotify announces a hateful content and conduct policy to distance itself from controversial artists and introduces AudioWatch tool to scan its back catalog — Spotify has announced a new hate content and hateful conduct policy as it looks to distance itself from controversial music artists …
Discussion:
newsroom.spotify.com, Bloomberg, New York Times, CBS Dallas, Ad Age, @emceenetwork, @vdare, @buzzfeedben, @danrys, @pitchfork, The Verge and @mtfiii, more at Techmeme »
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Dan Rys / Billboard:
Spotify removes R. Kelly and rapper XXXTentacion from the service's playlists, including-algorithmically generated ones, as part of new “hateful conduct” policy
Spotify removes R. Kelly and rapper XXXTentacion from the service's playlists, including-algorithmically generated ones, as part of new “hateful conduct” policy
Discussion:
The Hill, TechCrunch, @ericajoy, @anildash, @bhorowitz, The Outline, Engadget, The Guardian, @lkherman, The Root, The Scottish Sun, PAPER, Refinery29, CBS Los Angeles, The Daily Beast, Slate, FOX40, Fast Company, The A.V. Club, Washington Post, Fortune, Vanity Fair, Gizmodo, Music Business Worldwide, Business Insider, The FADER, Consequence of Sound, NewsBusters, Vox, CelebrityAccess, TMZ.com, Mashable, The Muse and Hits Daily Double, more at Techmeme »
Financial Times:
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson calls for governments to create an “algorithm review board” to keep tech companies in check — The head of News Corp has called for governments to create an “algorithm review board” to keep tech companies in check, the latest in a long line of attacks …
Discussion:
Sydney Morning Herald
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Reuters:
News Corp beats estimates with Q3 revenue of $2.09B, up 5.8% YoY, records net loss of $1.13B mainly due to write-downs for Telstra/Foxtel deal in Australia — (Reuters) - News Corp (NWSA.O), controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, topped analysts' estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday …
Discussion:
CNBC, Deadline, Yahoo! News and News Corp.
Bloomberg:
House Democrats release 3,519 Facebook ads from Russia-linked accounts, spanning 2015 to 2017, showing a coordinated campaign to sow distrust in US politics — - House Intelligence Committee Democrats publish 3,519 ads — Posts targeted specific groups to inflame civil discord
Discussion:
NBC News, Facebook, Media Matters for America, ABC News, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Kent Garry, @byrontau, @axios, @byrontau, @noupside, @adamfelber, Amy Siskind, Sarah Ashman, @facebook, @nbcnews, @firstdraftnews, @oneunderscore__, @sarahfrier, Associated Press, Wired and USA Today, more at Techmeme »
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
IAB report: online advertising exceeded total spent on broadcast and cable TV in 2017, reaching $88B, a 21% increase from 2016; mobile rose 36% YoY to $49.9B — Online advertising reached $88 billion last year, a 21 percent increase from 2016 and a new high, according to the latest IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report.
Discussion:
MediaPost, MediaPost, @jason_kint, Adweek, IAB, Ad Age and AdExchanger, more at Techmeme »
Shan Wang / Nieman Lab:
Medium abruptly ends feature that let publishers use the platform to collect revenue from their own subscriptions, affecting 21 publishers — “Could we have a better metaphor for the way Silicon Valley considers local journalism?" fumed the owner of one of these remaining publications.
Brianne O'Brien / BuzzFeed:
BuzzFeed to launch a new Saturday podcast, The News, where BuzzFeed staffers add context to news — Don't get lost in the chaos. Join BuzzFeed News reporters and editors every Saturday for news that's smart, not stuffy. — We get it. — With the news alerts constantly blowing up our phones …
Discussion:
@janelytv
Jeff Baumgartner / Broadcasting & Cable:
The rate of decline in pay TV subscriptions slowed in Q1, analyst Craig Moffett says, with cable operators losing 323K subscriptions and satellite losing 418K — ‘Conversion rate’ from traditional pay TV to OTT TV a particularly good trend for major programmers, analyst says
Discussion:
MediaPost and FierceCable
Simon Dumenco / Ad Age:
The Onion's Clickhole launches Resistancehole to parody the Trump “resistance” the same way Patriothole, started last year, parodies the conservative right — Do you oppose President Trump? And do you have a sense of humor about your opposition? (Or do you not have a sense of humor about it but don't realize it?)
Discussion:
ResistanceHole and @jenniferm_q
Matt Yoder / Awful Announcing:
A look at the declining relevance of ESPN's public editor job, which it has ended, saying it “outlived its usefulness” and citing similar moves by NYT and WaPo — ESPNBy Matt Yoder on 05/10/201805/10/2018 — Once upon a time, the regular ESPN ombudsman column was a must-read for anyone passionate about sports media.
Discussion:
@poynter, Poynter, HuffPost, Deadspin and ESPN Front Row
Sahil Patel / Digiday:
Sources: Facebook Watch is proposing annual budgets from $5M to $10M for daily news programming and $1M to $2M for weekly shows, based on per-episode costs — As Facebook looks to recruit news publishers for daily and weekly shows for Facebook Watch, the company is proposing a wide range …
Discussion:
Tubefilter