Mediagazer: Sources: Spotify has offered advance fees to managers and indie acts in exchange for licensing music directly to Spotify, cutting out music labels in some cases (Hannah Karp/Billboard)

4:25 PM ET, June 6, 2018

Top News:

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Facebook partners with seven news orgs, including ABC News, CNN, and Fox News, to roll out a series of news shows on Facebook Watch this summer — After going through the fake-news wringer, Facebook is shelling out money on original news content. The strategy is partly aimed at driving …

Pan Kwan Yuk / Financial Times:

Daily Mail's Paul Dacre to step down in November as editor, a post he has held for 26 years, will serve as chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers — Paul Dacre will step down as editor of the Daily Mail in November, bringing the curtain down on a 26-year run at the tabloid …

Discussion: The Guardian, The Independent, @bethrigby and @newstatesman

Michael Wilson / New York Times:

A Brooklyn eatery lost customers and faced a massive online backlash after a HuffPost article identified its owner as the brother of a right-wing troll — The night that ended far differently started out normal. It was Thursday at Mekelburg's, a busy Brooklyn grocery with a cafe and bar …

Discussion: @tomkludt and @marcatracy

Nick Baumann / HuffPost:
After naming woman behind anti-Muslim Twitter account, a HuffPost reporter's Twitter account was temporarily suspended, while he and colleagues were threatened

Discussion: Poynter, PEN America, @lukeobrien, @lukeobrien, @lpolgreen, @lpolgreen, @ashleyfeinberg, @kfile, @noahmichelson, @alexckaufman, @lpolgreen and @lpolgreen

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook tests Lip Sync Live feature to compete with musical.ly and says users can now upload videos with copyrighted music — Facebook users will no longer have their uploaded videos with copyrighted background music taken down thanks to a slew of deals with all the major record labels plus many indies.

Discussion: Facebook, RAIN News, hypebot, The Next Web, @joshconstine, The Verge, Adweek, Fortune, VideoInk, CNBC, BetaNews and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Noreen Malone / New York Magazine:

The New Yorker's editorial staff are unionizing with the NewsGuild of New York — The era of white-collar organized labor is fully upon us: the editorial staff of The New Yorker wants to unionize. This morning, organizers sent a letter to the magazine's editor, David Remnick …

Discussion: New York Times, @ashleyfeinberg, HuffPost, @jacksmithiv, @nymag, @jmrivera02, @colettearrand, @maxwellstrachan and @jacksmithiv

Hannah Karp / Billboard:

Sources: Spotify has offered advance fees to managers and indie acts in exchange for licensing music directly to Spotify, cutting out music labels in some cases — Spotify has offered advances to a number of managers and indie acts in exchange for licensing their music directly to the streaming service, sources tell Billboard.

Discussion: Variety, The Verge, @carolforden, @gadyepstein, @cpayneonaplane and The FADER

Tim Peterson / Digiday:

Snap hires Flipboard's ex-Head of Publisher Partnerships Sarah Gallagher to lead its newly created 12-person support team for publishers — Snapchat is looking to get publishers more invested into the platform with a key new hire of a publishing veteran. — Former Flipboard …

Jon Levine / The Wrap:

Fox News host Shannon Bream offered an on-air apology on Tuesday night following Monday segment on Philadelphia Eagles players — Fox News host Shannon Bream offered an on-air apology on Tuesday night following a Monday segment where she suggested that Philadelphia Eagles players who were kneeling …

Discussion: Mediaite, The Hill and CBSSports.com

Matthew Flamm / Crain's New York Business:

Business publication Fast Company is unionizing with the Writers Guild of America East — Business magazine's 40 editorial staffers become 14th media group to join the Writers Guild of America East — Joe Ricketts could not stop the trend of media outlets unionizing. In fact, he may have helped it.

Discussion: Adweek, @bfishbfish and @katie_honan

Robert Channick / Chicago Tribune:

SEC filing: McCormick Media's deal to buy ex-Tronc Chairman Michael Ferro's 25.6% stake in the company for $208.6M has fallen through — Michael Ferro, Tronc's former chairman, said he terminated the agreement to sell all his shares in the company to McCormick Media because of a “breach of its obligations” by the buyer.

Discussion: Chicago Sun-Times, Wall Street Journal, @kurtgessler and @megjameslat

Jessica Davies / Digiday:

Spiegel expands its paywall and announces subscription service Spiegel+, offering readers a digital-only subscription for €19.99/month, or €24.99 with print — The pivot to paid has many variations. German publisher Spiegel, which publishes weekly news magazine Der Spiegel …

Discussion: @digiday, @digiday and @digiday

Benjamin Mullin / Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Instagram may soon allow posted videos to be up to an hour long, has talked with content creators and publishers about producing long-form videos — Feature to allow videos of up to an hour in length — Instagram, which allows users to post photos and brief glimpses …

Discussion: Adweek, Gizmodo, Fast Company, The Verge, Tubefilter, Engadget, Ad Age, Refinery29, New York Magazine, Variety, Business Insider, The FADER, @juiceboxca and Mashable, more at Techmeme »

Karen K. Ho / Columbia Journalism Review:

Q&A: CBS's David Begnaud on covering Puerto Rico when few others did — Just 48 hours before the start of hurricane season, CBS Correspondent David Begnaud was back in the US territory of Puerto Rico, reporting about a Harvard study that estimates the number of deaths linked to Hurricane Maria at more than 4,000.

Discussion: Macleans.ca and Gothamist

Josh Gerstein / Politico:

Florida judge rules BuzzFeed can claim “fair reporting privilege” for its post about the Russia dossier in a libel case brought by tech exec Aleksej Gubarev — BuzzFeed scored a significant legal victory on Monday with a judge's ruling that the online outlet appears …