Check out Mini-Mediagazer for simple mobiles or Mediagazer Mobile for modern smartphones.
5:00 PM ET, December 18, 2025

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Shane O'Neill / Washington Post:
Q&A with Christopher Anderson, who photographed Trump's inner circle for VF: “My job is to ... draw on my experience as a journalist and photograph what I see”  —  Every line, spot, blemish and blood vessel was captured by Christopher Anderson's lens.  What was he thinking?
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
CBS News and The Free Press announce Things That Matter, a series of town halls and debates, starting in early 2026, with Sam Altman, J.D. Vance, and others  —  The news division is also planning a town hall with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore in the ‘Things That Matter’ series, with Bank of America lined up as a sponsor.
RELATED:
Natalie Korach / Status:
Sources: Bari Weiss moved a planned internal CBS town hall, set to lay out her broader vision, from this month to 2026, after the Erika Kirk town hall flopped
Financial Times:
Trump Media agrees to merge with Google-backed fusion energy company TAE in a $6B deal and build the “world's first utility-scale fusion power plant” in 2026  —  Deal represents bet on nuclear energy powering artificial intelligence boom  —  The Trump family media group has agreed …
Jake Kanter / Deadline:
YouTube terminates Screen Culture and KH Studio, two large channels that used AI to create fake movie trailers; the platform earlier suspended the channels' ads  —  The Google-owned video giant has switched off Screen Culture and KH Studio, which together boasted well over 2M subscribers and more than a billion views.
Anna Betts / The Guardian:
David Brooks, who wrote a NYT column last month decrying popular fixation on the Epstein story, appears in newly released photos of a 2011 event with Epstein  —  Images, undated and uncaptioned, include Vladimir Nabokov lines written on women and show Bill Gates and Noam Chomsky
Will Sattelberg / 9to5Google:
Google returns as a partner service for Movies Anywhere, after leaving the service during a feud with Disney in October and November  —  Movies Anywhere was one of the unintended casualties faced during Google and Disney's brief feud throughout October and November, but as promised …
Discussion: How-To Geek
Katie Deighton / Wall Street Journal:
A study of 1,000+ marketing campaigns: host-read podcast ads on YouTube are up to 25% less effective at driving purchases than in audio-only podcasts  —  Ads that appear in video podcasts are alluring for visually-minded marketers but may perform worse on the whole than audio-only, according to a new study
M.G. Siegler / Spyglass:
YouTube streaming the Oscars in 2029 makes Netflix's WBD bid less likely to face antitrust issues, as it shows Netflix might need WBD to compete against YouTube  —  With YouTube poaching The Academy Awards, it sure feels like Netflix is going to be allowed to buy Warner Bros now...  Say ‘UGC’ again.
OpenAI:
OpenAI launches the OpenAI Academy for News Organizations, which offers journalists AI training, open-source projects, and practical use cases  —  Working with the American Journalism Project and The Lenfest Institute to launch a new learning hub for journalists and publishers using AI.
Mark Stenberg / Adweek:
Dow Jones hires ex-Bloomberg Media CEO M. Scott Havens as its first chief growth officer, overseeing subscription growth and other consumer revenue streams  —  Dow Jones has hired M. Scott Havens as its first chief growth officer and global head of consumer, a newly created role that underscores …
Discussion: Talking Biz News
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Mediagazer at 5:00 PM ET, December 18, 2025.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 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: 
Emilio Casalicchio / Politico:
Downing Street makes changes to press access, cutting an afternoon briefing and promising more press conferences, which will be open to social media influencers
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix hires ESPN anchor Elle Duncan as its first on-air host for live sports and cultural events; she has appeared on SportsCenter, College GameDay, and more
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple says it will roll out more App Store ads in 2026 “to increase opportunity in search results”; Apple's website says 800M+ users visit the App Store weekly
 Earlier Picks: 
Jennifer Schuessler / New York Times:
PEN America elects novelist Dinaw Mengestu as president, as the organization navigates free speech challenges across the US and criticism of its Gaza response
Discussion: PEN America
John Rogers / Associated Press:
Peter Arnett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent who covered the Vietnam War for the AP and the first Gulf War for CNN, has died at 91
Laura Cress / BBC:
Netflix wins rights to a FIFA soccer simulation game, developed by Delphi Interactive and set for release ahead of the 2026 World Cup, for free to Netflix users
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
YouTube says it will no longer give data to US Billboard charts after January 16, arguing Billboard's ranking formula doesn't count ad-supported streams fairly
 

 
From Techmeme:

Caroline Haskins / Wired:
The AI boom is driving an unprecedented wave of data center construction, but there aren't enough skilled workers in the US, such as electricians, to keep up

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
TrendForce: data centers will use 70%+ of the high-end memory chips all manufacturers will produce in 2026, with little new manufacturing capacity until 2027

Rob Copeland / New York Times:
A look at Michael Saylor's Strategy, known for buying bitcoin via creative financing strategies, as its stock trades way below its peak amid the crypto downturn
 
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