Top News:
Maxwell Tani / The Daily Beast:
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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Financial Times:
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:
@mattgarrahan, @jaredbkeller, Business Insider, New York Times, Variety, The Wrap and @lpolgreen
New York Times:
AG William Barr met privately on Wednesday with Rupert Murdoch, whose media holdings include Fox News, which recently has been more critical of Trump — William P. Barr, the attorney general, met privately Wednesday evening with one of President Trump's frequent confidants, Rupert Murdoch …
Discussion:
@atrupar, CNN, Mediaite, Breitbart, @lisatozzi, @mrbromwich, @karlbode, @freedlander, @jdawsey1, @juddlegum, The Hill, @mollyjongfast, @chrisgeidner, @pauldutton1968 and The Week
Wall Street Journal:
Source: NBCUniversal won't air a Trump re-election campaign ad targeting Joe Biden on its cable networks unless changes are made to the spot — Commercial, rejected by CNN last week, alleges Democratic candidate promised Ukraine $1 billion to fire prosecutor
Discussion:
MSNBC, @jeffjarvis, @msnbc, @anikageisel, The Hill, @ceciliakang, @andrewbatesnc and @ceciliakang
Mandy Jenkins / The Keyword:
Mahoning Matters, the first Compass Experiment site supported by a Google News Initiative-McClatchy partnership, launches with staff from the Vindicator — Today marks the launch of Mahoning Matters, The Compass Experiment's first digital-only news outlet, which will serve readers in Youngstown …
Discussion:
LION Publishers, MediaPost, @mjenkins, @ckrewson and Poynter
Sara Fischer / Axios:
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, @alex_hardiman, @samsifton, @thebryandavis and @sarafischer
Frank Pallotta / CNN:
Nielsen data shows NFL TV viewership is up around 5% compared to this time last year, attracting an average of about 16M viewers — New York (CNN Business)The NFL has so far kept up with a ratings boost that started a season ago. — One month into its 2019 season, the league's viewership …
Nick Statt / The Verge:
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 …
Discussion:
Billboard, Bloomberg, The Guardian, @jkeefe, Business Insider, CNN, 9to5Mac, @ihnatko, @conarck, @jm_mcgrath, The Next Web, kottke.org, @aaschapiro, CNET, Breitbart, @missanabeem, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, On my Om, Scroll.in, Softpedia News, @zeynep, @alexstamos, @mollymckew, @lauriechenwords, @backlon, @maryhui, Music Ally, Talking Biz News, Memex 1.1, Quartz and 9to5Mac, more at Techmeme »
Christine Schmidt / Nieman Lab:
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, The Weather Channel, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and @newsbyschmidt
Max Willens / Digiday:
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
John Seabrook / New Yorker:
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, @jayson_greene, @benwallacewells and @michaelluo
Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:
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” …
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