Check out Mini-Mediagazer for simple mobiles or Mediagazer Mobile for modern smartphones.
12:55 PM ET, February 18, 2021

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Damien Cave / New York Times:
Australia's concentrated media industry, dominated by News Corp, is aligned with the prime minister and has sought compensation from tech companies for years  —  Pathbreaking legislation showed that even a small nation can get the tech giant to bend.  But the United States seems unlikely to follow.
RELATED:
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Banning Australian news makes sense for Facebook and may prompt people to visit news sites directly; Google's payoffs, though, will invite global shakedowns  —  Yesterday, I wrote that Australia's News Media Bargaining Code threatened to splinter the internet.
Campbell Brown / Facebook:
Facebook News Partnerships VP: Australia's planned law “fails to recognize ... the fundamental nature of the relationship between our platform and publishers”  —  Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to restrict the availability of news on Facebook in Australia.
Reuters and Associated Press:
Facebook says it generated ~5.1B free referrals to Australian publishers worth ~AU$407M last year, as Australia's Media Bargaining law passes the House  —  - Facebook will no longer allow people in Australia to read or share news  — The move is a response to the country's proposed Media Bargaining law
Benedict Evans:
Australia's proposal for media compensation, which covers raw link sharing, is presented as a competition case when it's actually a tech tax and media subsidy  —  Newspaper revenue really started to collapse well over a decade ago, and we've been discussing what to do about it for almost as long.
William Easton / About Facebook:
Ahead of proposed media law, Facebook says it's banning Australians from sharing/viewing news and all users from sharing from and viewing Australian news Pages  —  In response to Australia's proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing …
Nicholas McElroy / ABC:
Australian authorities in public health, weather, and other areas say Facebook has removed posts from their feeds following Facebook's news ban
News Corp:
News Corp announces a multi-year, global partnership with Google to provide content from its news sites “in return for significant payments by Google”
Nicholas Quah / Vulture:
Hanaa' Tameez / Nieman Lab:
NYT debuts a Slack app that provides a daily recommended read, a “save for later” button, and alerts users if a link they shared was discussed in other channels  —  On Thursday, The New York Times launched a Slack app that's designed to help foster conversations about Times stories …
Discussion: NYT Open and @annadubenko
Marc Tracy / New York Times:
Profile of Stewart Bainum, who set up a nonprofit to buy The Baltimore Sun; filing shows price of $65M for The Sun and other papers under nonbinding term sheet  —  Stewart Bainum, a hotel magnate and former politician, has swooped in with a plan to run it and other papers in Maryland as part of a nonprofit.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Recent deals like the iHeart Media's purchase of Triton Digital suggest that ad tech, not exclusive content, will be the key to long-term success in podcasting  —  iHeart Media acquires Triton Digital for $230 million  —  iHeartMedia, the company behind podcasts like Stuff You Should Know and hundreds …
Manori Ravindran / Variety:
BBC Studios' streaming channel BBC Select launches today in the US on Amazon Prime and Apple TV for $4.99/month, with non-fiction culture and politics shows  —  With this week's launch of streaming service BBC Select, one of the world's most recognizable media brands is joining North America's streaming ranks …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Court filing says a Facebook manager warned that the company reported revenues it “should have never made” by overstating how many users advertisers could reach  —  Lawsuit cites product executive's qualms over figures provided to advertisers  —  A Facebook employee warned …
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Mediagazer at 12:55 PM ET, February 18, 2021.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Who's Hiring in Media? 
 
 See Also: 
Mediagazer: site main
Mediagazer River: reverse chronological Mediagazer
Mediagazer Mobile: for phones
Mediagazer Leaderboard: Mediagazer's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
Mediagazer RSS feed
Mediagazer on X
Mediagazer on Mastodon
 
 
 More News: 
Todd Spangler / Variety:
UFC signs partnership with TikTok, under which it will produce live content including interviews and training segments for the platform
Sean Burch / The Wrap:
Triller CEO says the company never inflated user numbers after a report said the app had half the 50M users it claimed
Reuters:
Belarusian court sentences two journalists who filmed protests to two years in prison; they were accused of orchestrating the protests by filming them
 Earlier Picks: 
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
WarnerMedia, known for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, plans a preschool brand, Cartoonito, and will work to attract more young girls and families as viewers
ProPublica:
ProPublica says Richard Tofel, its founding general manager and president since 2013, will retire from the company when a successor is found
Brian Flood / Fox News:
Rush Limbaugh has died at the age of 70 after a battle with lung cancer
 

 
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

 
Sister Sites:

Techmeme
 Top news and commentary for technology's leaders, from all around the web
memeorandum
 What US political commentators are discussing online right now
WeSmirch
 The top celebrity news from all around the web on a single page