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1:50 PM ET, December 18, 2020

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
David Folkenflik / NPR:
NYT retracts the core of Caliphate after a review finds that the podcast gave too much credence to its central character and reassigns Rukmini Callimachi  —  Toggle more options  —  The New York Times has retracted the core of its hit 2018 podcast series Caliphate after an internal review found …
Celine Castronuovo / The Hill:
The Washington Post plans to add 150 jobs next year, bringing its total staff to a record high of more than 1,000  —  The Washington Post plans to add more than 150 jobs to its newsroom next year, bringing its total staff to a record high of more than 1,000, the newspaper confirmed to The Hill Thursday.
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
In a memo, NBCU CEO Jeff Shell says that Premier League soccer coverage is Peacock's number one driver of premium subscriptions and engagement  —  EXCLUSIVE: NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell didn't mince words about the “bad dream” that was 2020, but touted the success of Peacock and laid …
Discussion: The Streamable
Elaine Low / Variety:
Charli D'Amelio and her family will star in The D'Amelio Show, an eight-episode docuseries on Hulu that will follow “the first family of TikTok”  —  Charli D'Amelio, who at 16 rocketed to fame with over 150 million followers on TikTok, is getting her own show on Hulu alongside her sister …
Robert Channick / Chicago Tribune:
Tribune agrees to sell product review site BestReviews to Nexstar for $160M and will enter into a licensing and revenue-sharing agreement for use of its content  —  Tribune Publishing and BR Holding Co. will sell the BestReviews website to TV station owner Nexstar Media Group for $160 million, the companies announced Wednesday.
Patience Haggin / Wall Street Journal:
As its revenue surges, Roku has become increasingly forceful in its negotiations with media companies, as evidenced by its fights with Fox and WarnerMedia  —  The maker of the leading streaming-media player has taken up brash negotiating tactics over its terms to carry services like HBO Max and Peacock
Ben Collins / Nieman Lab:
Lots of Americans slipped into conspiracy thinking in the pandemic; we'll need news outlets and others to explain how fantasy took hold and how we can dig out  —  “We're going to have to learn to create a vocabulary to talk about how their friends fell down the wrong YouTube hole and came out speaking another language.”
Helene Fouquet / Bloomberg:
Tencent buys another 10% stake in Universal Music Group, adding to the 10% stake it bought last year, at the same valuation of €30B  —  - Vivendi plans to sell additional minority stakes in UMG  — Deal values world's biggest music company at $30 billion euros
Reza Chowdhury / AlleyWatch:
Comcast's FreeWheel, a TV advertising platform, buys Beeswax, a programmatic ad-tech platform founded in 2014; terms of the transaction were not disclosed  —  Beeswax, the programmatic ad-tech platform that offers “bidder-as-a-service”, has been acquired by FreeWheel, the digital TV advertising platform.
Taylor Lorenz / Nieman Lab:
As journalists adopt influencer tactics for solo businesses, they'll see more drawbacks that influencers have faced, including reliance on fickle tech platforms  —  “Successful independent journalists will realize how difficult it can be to strike the right balance between cultivating enough …
Jack Morse / Mashable:
Twitter says it will stop prompting users to Quote Tweet, restoring the standard RT functionality, and says QT use increased but overall sharing dropped by 20%  —  Well, it was worth a shot.  —  Twitter announced Wednesday that it will cease prompting users to quote tweet in lieu of the standard retweet.
RELATED:
Twitter:
Twitter says it will start its new verification policy on January 21 and is developing profile labels to designate bots and memorial accounts
Jason Gurwin / The Streamable:
Hulu reaches agreement with Nexstar to bring back 20 ABC affiliates to Hulu + Live TV and launch WGN America on the service in January  —  In October, Hulu + Live TV lost Nexstar ABC affiliates on the service.  The two sides have now reached a deal to bring back the 20+ Nexstar-owned ABC affiliates …
 
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 More News: 
Patricia Nilsson / Financial Times:
An investigation into who owns MindGeek, the secretive company behind Pornhub, which had $460M in revenue in 2018 and has 115M+ daily visitors to its sites
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
A startup called Gawq has launched a news app that organizes 150+ news sources; the app helps users compare sources, check facts, and even rate stories
Discussion: @petezin
 Earlier Picks: 
Martha Carr / New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Times-Picayune and New Orleans Advocate launch statewide investigative unit in a three-year, $1.5M initiative supported by donations to a local community fund
Ben Monnie / The Keyword:
Google News Initiative is launching a program to help entrepreneurs as they build digital news startups, seeks applicants for GNI Startups Lab in North America
William Turvill / Press Gazette:
The Guardian says it has 352K subscriptions to app and tablet editions, up 60% YoY, 548K recurring contributors, up 33% YoY; print subs are up 11% YoY to 119K
Paresh Dave / Reuters:
The Nation, Genius Media Group, and The Progressive sue Google, alleging it has unlawfully stifled advertising competition; they are seeking class-action status
 

 
From Techmeme:

Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority:
Source: Google has canceled the development of a second-generation Pixel Tablet, planned for release in 2025, due to concerns that it wouldn't sell very well

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is testing a more conversational version of Siri, dubbed “LLM Siri”, with plans to release it in spring 2026 as part of iOS 19 and macOS 16

Hannah Lang / Reuters:
Sources: a16z, Ripple, Kraken, and Circle are jostling for a seat on Trump's promised crypto advisory council, which is expected to set up a bitcoin reserve

 
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