Top News:
Michael O'Connell / Hollywood Reporter:
Memo: HBO CEO and Chairman Richard Plepler tells staff he is leaving the company, nine months after AT&T's acquisition of HBO parent Time Warner — It's the end of an era. — One of the most storied runs in TV is coming to an end. Richard Plepler is leaving HBO after 27 years with the cable giant …
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Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Source: Turner Broadcasting President David Levy will leave WarnerMedia as part of a broader shakeup by corporate parent AT&T — David Levy, the longtime Turner executive, will leave WarnerMedia as part of a broader shakeup, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Discussion:
The Wrap, The Information, Ad Age, Awful Announcing, Broadcasting & Cable, @mvpeers, Hollywood Reporter, @bristei, @bristei and @richarddeitsch
Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
UK charities declare the Momo challenge a hoax after the media publishes hundreds of articles on it, causing a moral panic despite absence of evidence — Groups say no evidence yet of self-harm from craze, but resulting hysteria poses a risk — It is the most talked about viral scare story …
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Nieman Lab, The Guardian, The Atlantic, One Man & His Blog, BuzzFeed News, @zeynep, @lmatsakis, @janelytv, @taylorlorenz, @mtrc, @maxkennerly, @dralangreene, Gizmodo, @laurahazardowen, @parkermolloy, @oneunderscore__, Fast Company, @jimwaterson, @vickiturk, BBC, The Drum, Metro.co.uk, The Independent and TMZ.com
YouTube Creator Blog:
YouTube says it will disable comments on almost all videos featuring minors, improve classification of comments, and continue to ban harmful accounts — We know that many of you have been closely following the actions we're taking to protect young people on YouTube and are as deeply concerned as we are that we get this right.
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Adweek, New York Times, The Verge, @susanwojcicki, Ad Age, Bloomberg, The Guardian, Fortune, WREG-TV, 9to5Google, @gymcoaching, Variety, Tubefilter, Gizmodo, The Daily Beast, The Week, Mashable, PC Gamer, The Hill, Engadget, MediaPost, CBS Los Angeles and Vox, more at Techmeme »
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Ev Williams announces that all Medium paywalled stories will be free for readers who come to the site from Twitter — If you're not the paying sort, Medium has a mile-wide new hole in its paywall that might interest you. (But really, you should be the paying sort.)
Discussion:
@ev, Adweek, @bmccandless, @peterc, Engadget, MediaPost, @ev, @chronotope, @sdkstl and @sdkstl
University of California:
The University of California will not renew subscriptions with academic publisher Elsevier, saying Elsevier was unwilling to meet open access publishing goals — As a leader in the global movement toward open access to publicly funded research, the University of California is taking …
Discussion:
@volcanodoc, STAT, @cbahlai, @carlystrasser, @punctum_books, @creativecommons, @mchl_wolfe, @jselingo, @mchris4duke, @antoniogm and @no_reply
Alex Feerst / OneZero:
Interviews with 15 content moderators from YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms on their day-to-day work, how the job has affected them personally, and more — Tech platform trust and safety employees are charged with policing the impossible. They open up to Medium's head of trust and safety.
Discussion:
@marlene and Fast Company, more at Techmeme »
Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab:
NYT is testing a feature that bars use of incognito mode to circumvent its paywall as Google is working on code to prevent sites from detecting incognito mode — As long as The New York Times has had a metered paywall — it's coming up on eight years! — people have been trying to sneak around it.
Discussion:
@jbenton
Jem Aswad / Variety:
RIAA: US revenue for recorded music grew 12% in 2018 to $9.8B largely due to a 30% surge in streaming revenue; subscriptions to services like Spotify topped 50M — The U.S. music industry posted its third consecutive year of double-digit growth, according to the RIAA's year-end revenue report issued today.
Discussion:
@jank0, MacRumors, Music Business Worldwide, Wall Street Journal, RIAA and Billboard, more at Techmeme »
Mike Allen / Axios:
Jonah Goldberg to leave the National Review and partner with ex-Weekly Standard EIC Steve Hayes to launch conservative media company, starting with newsletters — Jonah Goldberg is leaving National Review in the coming months to start a new conservative media company with Steve Hayes …
Discussion:
@jpodhoretz, @davidafrench, @mattyglesias, @dankennedy_nu, @chrisrbarron, @arkloster and The Wrap
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Warner Music's lawsuit against Spotify in India underscores music labels' worry over music streaming services doing more direct deals with artists in the future — Big Tech and Big Music are used to being frenemies. Now things are getting feistier. — The music business is booming, for real.
Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:
Cohen's testimony mostly vindicates BuzzFeed reporting on Trump “directing” him to lie, but saying Trump's directions were explicit was a self-inflicted wound — In mid-January, a BuzzFeed News report hit the news cycle like a mile-wide asteroid landing on Earth.
Discussion:
@bgrueskin, @brettdl, @kimmasters, @rickhasen, @will_bunch, Roll Call, New York Times and Bloomberg
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