Top News:
Meg James / Los Angeles Times:
LA Times Guild accepts 20% cut in pay and hours for its members for 12 weeks starting May 10, saving the paper $2M+; the guild represents nearly 440 journalists — Los Angeles Times' newsroom guild agreed Friday to accept a 20% reduction in pay and hours for its members amid a devastating decline …
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Aaron Freedman / American Prospect:
Five years ago, unions barely existed in digital media, and now 35 digital media brands are unionized; organizing continues amid the pandemic — Five years ago, unions barely existed in digital media. Today, they may save the industry from the worst of the COVID-19 depression—and provide a model to other working professionals.
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Alayna Treene / Axios:
Trump's new press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held the first official White House press briefing since March 11, 2019, and claims “I will never lie to you” — President Trump's new press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held her first White House briefing on Friday, the first official press briefing since March 11, 2019.
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Ben Smith / New York Times:
News Corp says David Rhodes, a former Fox News exec and once CBS News president, has been advising News Corp's UK operation, speculating a return to Fox News — David Rhodes, a news executive who has held leadership roles at CBS News and Bloomberg, has been advising the media empire's British operation.
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Reuters:
Sources: NBCUniversal has reportedly started discussing cost-cutting measures, including significant layoffs across its media and entertainment properties — (Reuters) - Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) owned NBCUniversal is evaluating a significant reduction of staff across its portfolio of media …
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Paul Farhi / Washington Post:
Pence's staff threatens to punish a VOA reporter who tweeted that Pence's office told journalists to wear masks on a clinic visit, a rule Pence didn't follow — Vice President Pence's office has threatened to retaliate against a reporter who revealed that Pence's office had told journalists …
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Seb Joseph / Digiday:
Amazon's ad business grew 44% YoY in Q1 to $3.91B, faster than Google and Facebook, but the typical advertiser's spend/day was halved at end of March vs January — The coronavirus lockdowns have helped Amazon swallow more ad dollars. That's likely to be a long-term gain for the retailer-cum-ad-business.
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Adweek, TechCrunch, Vox, VentureBeat, AdExchanger and Protocol
Benjamin Mullin / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: theSkimm, a news-curation startup known primarily for its current-events newsletter, is laying off about 20% of its staff of about 130 employees — Founders Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin pledge to take pay cuts, plan only one round of layoffs — TheSkimm, a news-curation …
Mark Di Stefano / @markdistef:
Financial Times media and technology correspondent Mark Di Stefano, who had been suspended for accessing confidential Zoom calls at rival publications, resigns — Hi, letting everyone know today was my last day at the FT. This afternoon I offered my resignation. Thank you everyone who has given support. I'm now going to take some time away and log off x
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Dan Kennedy / Media Nation:
Report for America's co-founders explain decision to send journalists to Gannett and McClatchy outlets, saying doing so better serves readers and communities — How much support do newspapers owned by cost-cutting corporate chains deserve? It's a dilemma.
Bobbie Johnson / MIT Technology Review:
Pandemic conspiracy theories are being spread using Wayback Machine links of content already discredited by fact-checkers and even deleted — Pandemic conspiracy theorists are using the Wayback Machine to promote “zombie content” that evades moderators and fact-checkers.
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@bkcharvard, @richtatum, @mollymckew, @simplic10, @typodynamofo, @emmalbriant, @bobbie, @bobbie, @bobbie and @bobbie
Sarah Scire / Nieman Lab:
New Tow Center report on digital security in journalism finds many news outlets fail to provide the training, resources, or encouragement to protect journalists — “This is what it is to do journalism in tech — in an online world. It's time to put the typewriters down and fire up the VPN and get out there and do your job."
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@niemanlab, @dartcenter, @vivian, @cjr and @freedomofpress