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BuzzFeed News laid off 43 on Friday, closing its Spain bureau, eliminating the national desk and national security desk, and slashing the health and LGBT desks — New York (CNN Business)BuzzFeed laid off dozens of employees on Friday inside its prized news division as the media organization restructures …
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Sources: BuzzFeed and Group Nine have discussed merger; companies have ties via BuzzFeed's chairman Ken Lerer and his son Ben Lerer, CEO at Group Nine — BuzzFeed is cutting costs and getting leaner, but it still wants to get bigger — by exploring a deal with Group Nine.
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HuffPost layoffs: WGAE spokesperson says at least 15 union members laid off; non-union managers also affected; head of opinion section says unit is “no more” — New York (CNN)Some employees at HuffPost learned Thursday morning that their days in the newsroom are numbered, as layoffs hit the popular news website.
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A source shared BuzzFeed News Slack messages in which staffers criticized the CEO for the handling of layoffs; 40+ BuzzFeed News staffers were fired on Friday
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The Telegraph apologizes to Melania Trump for false statements in “The Mystery of Melania”, an article published last week, agrees to pay “substantial damages” — (CNN)A British magazine has issued an apology to first lady Melania Trump for an article it published …
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Telegraph, TheBlaze, The Daily Caller, Slate, The Daily Beast, Mediaite, The Gateway Pundit and The Wrap


An excerpt from Jill Abramson's book “Merchants of Truth” on her time as the New York Times' executive editor as digital disruption took off — Adapted from the forthcoming book Merchants of Truth, by Jill Abramson. Copyright © 2019 by Jill Abramson. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Columbia Journalism Review, @lauraelizdavis, @sesmith, @kpfinnerty, @jbenton and Tablet Magazine


Staff from Toronto's Citizen Lab, behind exposés of government hacking tool vendors like NSO, describe meetings likely arranged to get compromising quotes — NEW YORK (AP) — The researchers who reported that Israeli software was used to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi's inner circle …
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Edelman: number of people who read traditional news weekly rises 14% YoY to 40% as number of people who read traditional news less often drops 20% YoY to 28% — An urgent desire for societal change and a chaotic media environment is driving a renewed interest in fact-finding, according to Edelman's 2019 Trust Barometer.


Study of registered US voters in 2016: 6.7% of all news consumed on Twitter was fake news, 1% of users were exposed to 80.0% of it, and 0.1% shared 79.8% of it — There was a proliferation of fake news during the 2016 election cycle. Grinberg et al. analyzed Twitter data by matching Twitter accounts …
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Nieman Lab, @davidlazer, @noupside, Washington Post and VentureBeat


Research firms: UK ad spending is expected to slow for Facebook and grow for TV in 2019 as TV ad sellers start providing better, online-like targeting tools — Ad budgets are flowing from Facebook back into TV in the U.K. But the inversion isn't solely due to how fed up brands are with the social network …
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Axios, @digiday and @pomeranian99


Sources: The Players' Tribune lays off eight employees; the company had about 85 US full-time staffers as of April 2018 — The Players' Tribune, the athlete-centric sports publisher from Derek Jeter, has laid off eight employees as the company looks to shift its business strategy going forward …
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@frntofficesport, Awful Announcing and @sportsrapport


Wattpad, the online reading and writing community, is launching its own publishing division, Wattpad Books, this fall with six YA titles — Wattpad, the Toronto-based online reading and writing community that says it has received 565 million story uploads since its launch, is starting its own publishing division, Wattpad Books.


Researchers say India's political parties are using armies of volunteers to spread misinformation and hate speech via WhatsApp group chats ahead of elections — SUBSCRIBE Home U.S. Politics World Business Tech Health Entertainment Science Newsfeed Living Sports History The TIME Vault Magazine Ideas …
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@sonaliranade, @gitagovinda and @drsyquraishi, more at Techmeme »