Mediagazer: How investigative journalists in Ukraine face increasing intimidation, as some worry outlets are censoring themselves, seeing patriotism as trumping journalism (Jamie Dettmer/Politico)

4:10 PM ET, May 8, 2024

Top News:

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:

Sources: Warner Bros. Discovery plans more cost-cutting to hit financial targets for next year, including raising Max prices and the possibility of more layoffs — - Job cuts are possible as executives look for more savings — CEO eyes streaming operations' marketing, technology costs

Discussion: Engadget, The Hill, The Desk, Awful Announcing, The Streamable, Reuters, Next TV, Lucas Shaw on LinkedIn, 9to5Google and @lucas_shaw

Maggie Harrison Dupré / Futurism:

An investigation into AdVon, the company behind Sports Illustrated's fake writers, finds its AI content and fake authors at the LA Times, Miami Herald, and more — A few years back, a writer in a developing country started doing contract work for a company called AdVon Commerce …

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:

The NYT added 210,000 digital subscribers in Q1, for 10.5M subscribers in total, up 8% YoY, and ad revenue fell 2.4% YoY to $103.7M; the OpenAI lawsuit cost $1M — Adjusted operating profit was $76.1 million, an increase of about 41 percent from a year earlier.

Discussion: Engadget, @benmullin, The Wrap and Charles Miller on LinkedIn

The New York Times Company:

The NYT reports Q1 revenue up 6% YoY to $594M, subscription revenue up 13% YoY to $293M, operating profit up 73% YoY to $48.3M, Athletic revenue up 33% to $37M — NEW YORK, May 8, 2024 - The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) announced today first-quarter 2024 results. Key Highlights

Discussion: Rory Maloney on LinkedIn

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:

The New York Times Games rolls out a Wordle archive with 1,000+ past puzzles for “Games” and “All Access” subscribers, and adds its WordleBot to NYT Games app — The New York Times Games announced on Tuesday that it's launching a Wordle archive …

Discussion: The New York Times Company, Fast Company, Gizmodo and The Verge

Kathryn Lundstrom / Adweek:

Disney Advertising strikes a deal with Walmart Connect to let advertisers target Disney's streamers, including Disney+ and Hulu, using Walmart's shopper data — The new retailer-CTV partnership promises detailed sales attribution data — Disney Advertising struck a deal with Walmart Connect …

Discussion: The Desk, MediaPost, Julia Thornton on LinkedIn, Dana McGraw on LinkedIn and AdExchanger

Jamie Dettmer / Politico:

How investigative journalists in Ukraine face increasing intimidation, as some worry outlets are censoring themselves, seeing patriotism as trumping journalism — Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. — KYIV — “I ran investigations for 15 years before the war, and it was always hard and risky.

Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:

EchoStar reports losing ~348K net pay TV subscribers in Q1, vs. a 552K drop in Q1 2023, and revenue down 8% YoY to $2.7B; Sling TV subscribers fell 135K to 1.9M — Telecom mogul Charlie Ergen's EchoStar is led by Hamid Akhavan as president and CEO, with Ergen serving as executive chairman.

Discussion: The Streamable, Deadline and Streaming Better

Nik Roseveare / Advanced Television:

Sky announces Sky Sports+, a new service starting in August that will increase coverage of the English Football League and more, as part of its EFL partnership — Sky has announced it will launch Sky Sports+ this August, a service it says will be “transformational in the amount of choice sports fans …

Discussion: Daily Mail, The Athletic, The Guardian and WORLD SCREEN

Sara Fischer / Axios:

Source: last month, Sundial Media bought Refinery29 for ~$30M, or roughly its 2023 revenue; Refinery29 buys trade beauty show Beautycon to move away from ads — - The company bought Refinery29 for roughly the same amount that the publisher made in top-line revenue in 2023, which was $30 million, a source told Axios.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal

Todd Spangler / Variety:

NBCUniversal signs deal to make iHeartMedia the exclusive audio partner for the 2024 Paris Olympics; iHeartMedia will create an original iHeartPodcast — Pact includes new podcast from ‘Las Culturistas’ hosts Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers — NBCUniversal inked a deal with iHeartMedia making …

Discussion: Radio & Television …, Inside Radio, Michael Biondo on LinkedIn, Jeff Hurley on LinkedIn, Barrett Media, @xpangler and Next TV

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:

Fox Corp reports Q3 revenue down 15% YoY to $3.4B, ad revenue down 33% YoY to $1.2B, a $704M net income, up from a $50M loss YoY, $1.9B affiliate fee revenue — The owner of Fox, Fox News and Fox Sports hosted the Super Bowl a year ago, leading to the advertising decline.

Discussion: @brianstelter, @jbflint, Fox, @jbflint, Variety, @jbflint, The Wrap, @jbflint and WORLD SCREEN

Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab:

A historical look at Pulitzer winners shows the decline of local and regional newspapers and the growth in online news outlets, especially at the local level — For the first time ever, more online news sites produced Pulitzer finalists than newspapers did.

Discussion: Poynter, @roypeterclark, @stevenwaldman, @michaelluo, @jbenton, Poynter, Michael A. Riepe, Ph.D. on LinkedIn, Rich Jaroslovsky on LinkedIn, @kottke@mastodon.social, artofneed, @niemanlab@mastodon.social and The New York Times Company

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
A look at Chicago's Invisible Institute, a nonprofit newsroom with about a dozen journalists incorporated in 2015 that won two 2024 Pulitzers

Discussion: @chrisahowell@threads.net and Poynter

Archived Page Info:

This is a snapshot of Mediagazer at 4:10 PM ET, May 8, 2024.

View the current page or another snapshot:

Who's Hiring in Media?

Bureau Reporter - Vietnam, HCMC — Bloomberg

Curation Editor (Contract), NY — Apple News

Business Editor, CA — TheWrap

Executive Ed. - Tech & Electronics, AZ — AspenCore

Economy & Industry Reporter, TX — Texas Tribune

Deputy Editor - Health Care, VA — Politico

Political Enterprise Editor, DC — Guardian US

Housing & Real Estate Reporter, ME — BDN

Associate Reporter - Yahoo Finance — Yahoo

Senior Editor, Remote — Raw Story

Deputy Politics Editor, CA — Sacramento Bee

Alphaville Reporter, London — FT

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:

Reuters:
A Moscow court places veteran Russian journalist Nadezhda Kevorkova in pre-trial detention for two months on suspicion of “justifying terrorism”, per her son

Discussion: Voice of America

Hanaa' Tameez / Nieman Lab:
Internews survey of 25 exiled news outlets: all but two are financially dependent on philanthropic or institutional funding, 28% are fully funded by donors

Discussion: @internews and @niemanlab

Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Substack announces Substack Creator Studio, a program to support 10 US-based video creators to “turn their TikTok channels into Substack shows and communities”

Discussion: Christina Loff on LinkedIn, Washington Post, On Substack and On Substack

Natalie Korach / The Wrap:
Dotdash Meredith unionized workers ratify contracts with management after negotiating since 2021; the deal covers ~160 staffers at People and other magazines

Discussion: @meredithunion and @nyguild

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline:
Ricky Strauss, who has been head of marketing at Apple TV+ for 16 months, is leaving; he earlier was president of content and marketing at Disney+ at its launch

Discussion: Variety, @rarebre3d, The Wrap, Puck and 9to5Mac

Earlier Picks:

Kate Knibbs / Wired:
A look at Musi, a free music streaming app popular among high schoolers that uses YouTube to source music, opening Musi up to legal action from record labels

Discussion: Plagiarism Today, Business Insider, @jtlg@mastodon.lawprofs.org, @knibbs, @extremeknibbs@threads.net and 9to5Mac

Pew Research Center:
Survey: 48% of US adults prefer websites or social media for local news; 15% paid for local news in the last year; 63% believe local outlets do well financially

Discussion: @knightfdn, @mattdpearce, @pewresearch, @pewresearch, Press Gazette, @jackshafer, Poynter, Sarabeth Berman on LinkedIn, @jenrubin9@threads.net, @dustysneakers_@threads.net, @iohn.bsky.social and Nieman Lab

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Meta announces an update to its AI ad tools, which can now make full new images, not just backgrounds, and claims to add strong guardrails to prevent abuse

Discussion: Facebook, Voicebot.ai, Marketing Interactive, Digiday, Social Media Today, Neowin, Hadar Dor on LinkedIn, The Drum, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Ad Age, Search Engine Land and The Media Leader

Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
Reddit reports Q1 revenue up 48% YoY to $243M, vs. $212.8M est., net loss of $575.1M, driven by IPO expenses, and DAUq total up 37% to 82.7M; RDDT jumps 15%+

Discussion: MediaPost, Observer, Reddit, Quartz, New York Post, Reuters, Fast Company, The Guardian, Neowin, The Information and Bloomberg

Jennifer Maas / Variety:
Disney CEO Bob Iger says Marvel is going to reduce output and focus on quality by releasing “about two TV series a year” and a “maximum of three” films per year

Discussion: Empire, Screen Rant, IGN, ComingSoon.net, @ballmatthew, @tvgrimreaper, The Hollywood Reporter, The Playlist, Deadline, Business Insider, The Wrap, Quartz, Jackie Szymanski on LinkedIn, SlashFilm, TVLine, The A.V. Club and CNBC

From Techmeme:

John Hudson / Washington Post:
Sources: WH national security adviser Michael Waltz and other National Security Council members have conducted government affairs over personal Gmail accounts

CNBC:
Circle files for a US IPO, with plans to list on the NYSE under CRCL; Circle, which issues the USDC stablecoin, is reportedly seeking a $4B to $5B valuation

Reuters:
Sources: Arm decided not to pursue a deal after recently seeking to acquire Alphawave, a UK-listed supplier of semiconductor IP that is exploring a sale

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