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G/O Media's Splinter is shutting down due to insufficient traffic; G/O editorial director says staff will be reallocated but some tweet they've been laid off — The website's parent company praised the outlet but said it failed to bring in sufficient traffic. — Splinter is shutting down.
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Quartz says its website has been blocked in China and its app has been removed from the App Store due to government complaints about its coverage of HK protests — Quartz says its website has also been banned in mainland China — News organization Quartz tells The Verge that Apple …
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Billboard, @jkeefe, en.people.cn, CNN, New York Post, 9to5Mac, Breitbart, Business Insider, @conarck, @aaschapiro, Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, Quartz, Softpedia News, CNET, @lauriechenwords, @backlon, @zeynep, @missanabeem, On my Om, Scroll.in, @maryhui, @jm_mcgrath, @alexstamos, @mollymckew, Talking Biz News, Memex 1.1 and 9to5Mac, more at Techmeme »
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Blizzard is facing an intense backlash after banning a player over Hong Kong pro-democracy comments, with some fans boycotting its games
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Business Insider, BGR, @kenroth, @marcorubio, @blakersdozen, Vanity Fair, @seamoosi, Music Ally, @crtejada, @phila_siu, New York Times, @emilygorcenski, @slasher, @grummz, @grummz and @grummz, more at Techmeme »


Sources: James Murdoch's holding company Lupa Systems is buying a minority stake in Vice Media Group, valuing the group that now includes Refinery29 at ~$4B — James Murdoch's new holding company has agreed to buy a minority stake in Vice Media Group, according to people briefed on the deal …
Discussion:
@lpolgreen


NYT hires Alex Hardiman as head of product, reporting to the COO; Hardiman has been chief product officer at The Atlantic and head of news product at Facebook — The New York Times has hired former Times product veteran Alex Hardiman as the company's head of product, reporting to chief operating officer Meredith Kopit Levien.
Discussion:
Nieman Lab, @thebryandavis, @sarafischer, @alex_hardiman and @samsifton


Facebook's choice to allow political ads with misinformation, while making ad details public, is not a perfect decision but it is a sensible and democratic one — It's a problem that needs more than a technical solution — If you see an ad on Facebook, should the contents of that ad be true?
Discussion:
New York Times, @fredbenenson, @dancharvey, @slpng_giants, @ingridlunden, @ferrasvinh and @cwarzel, more at Techmeme »
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Facebook refuses Biden campaign's request to take down a misleading Trump campaign ad, rejected by CNN, reigniting a debate about Facebook and political speech
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As power goes off for 800,000 to 2M in California, local newspapers have taken down paywalls, but we still need to talk more about paywalls and info amid crises — In what would be the world's fifth-largest economy by itself, at least 800,000 but as many as 2 million residents have already lost power …
Discussion:
Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, The Weather Channel and @newsbyschmidt


TheMaven CEO says the company plans to build three studios, two in New York and one in LA, to produce 20 hours of news per day for Sports Illustrated — Despite a brutal round of cutbacks that resulted in more than 50 people axed at Sports Illustrated last week, the new publisher “definitely” …


A look at local “fixers” in Tijuana, Mexico, who say the work can be particularly gruesome and journalists' requests are often “like a wish list to Santa Claus” — Margarito Martinez spent 10 nights sleeping inside his white minivan parked outside a Tijuana makeshift shelter …
Discussion:
@anniebknox, @dennisjromero, @najera13 and @sjgrattan


Fact checkers from UK, Argentina, South Africa, India, and Iran explain how misinformation gains traction and how to fight it with tools like community meetings — How five organisations from four continents are identifying and dealing with false claims and misinformation specific to their region
Discussion:
Press Gazette


Report: investments in major donor procurement by eight nonprofit newsrooms in a pilot program led to increased major donor funding, ranging from 9% to 367% — As that was impressed upon the cohort, that helped make a shift: It helped give people a mindset where they felt more confident and realized …
Discussion:
@niemanlab, @niemanlab and @niemanlab


To shift from advertising to subscriber revenue, NYT, WaPo, and Hearst added CMOs in 2018; Kantar: WaPo more than doubled its media spend YoY to $14M in H1 2019 — Publishers pivoted to subscriptions, in part, to reduce their reliance on a business dominated by Facebook and Google.
Discussion:
@lenfestinst


A behind-the-scenes look at how OpenAI's GPT-2 predictive text algorithm works, which can be “fine-tuned” to write phony customer reviews or even news articles — I glanced down at my left thumb, still resting on the Tab key. What have I done? Had my computer become my co-writer?
Discussion:
@newyorker, @sapinker, @benwallacewells and @michaelluo


Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill has an interview with former NBC News employee Brooke Nevils, who alleges that Matt Lauer raped her at the 2014 Sochi Olympics — Ronan Farrow's new book “Catch and Kill” recounts his investigation of Harvey Weinstein; the hurdles his then-employer NBC News put …
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