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12:20 PM ET, January 2, 2026

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Katherine Rosman / New York Times:
Without disclosure, New York Magazine digitally removed a senior adviser to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani from a December 17 cover photo after she resigned  —  Catherine Almonte Da Costa was part of a photo shoot on the mayor-elect's inner circle.  The next day she resigned amid an uproar …
Anthony D'Alessandro / Deadline:
Sources: theaters earned $25M+ from Netflix's Stranger Things finale over New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, selling concession vouchers in a new price strategy  —  Sources are telling us this morning that the Stranger Things finale cleared well north of $25M, possibly even $30M …
Katie Campione / Deadline:
Nielsen: the most-watched Christmas NFL game was Netflix's Lions-Vikings, with 27.5M live plus same-day US viewers; Prime Video's Chiefs vs. Broncos drew 21.06M  —  The most-watched game of the holiday proved to be the mid-afternoon Lions-Vikings match up on Netflix, which secured 27.5M live + same …
Duke University School of Law:
Books, movies, music, and works of art published in 1930, including William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and sound recordings from 1925 enter the US public domain  —  On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925.
Jordan Moreau / Variety:
Zootopia 2 becomes Disney Animation's highest grossing movie ever, with $1.46B at the global box office, beating Frozen 2, which made $1.45B in 2019  —  “Zootopia 2” is going down in the Disney record books.  —  The animated sequel is now Walt Disney Animation's highest-grossing movie …
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Adam Mosseri details trends shaping Instagram and says it'll be more practical to authenticate real media than label AI, as AI gets better at imitating reality  —  Adam Mosseri says creators should prioritize “unflattering” images to prove they are real.  —  It's no secret that AI-generated …
David H. Montgomery / YouGov's The Surveyor:
Survey of 2,203 US adults: 59% say they read at least one book in 2025; readers who prefer e-books report more reading than those who prefer print or audiobooks  —  Featuring data on how many books Americans read in 2025.  —  It's the end of the year, which means it's time for me to count up my reading stats and see how I did.
RELATED:
New York Times:
The US book business faces challenges including AI slop, but print sales and e-book and audiobook revenue were stable in 2025, and 422 stores joined the ABA
Michael Savage / The Guardian:
UK's Ofcom is reviewing multiple complaints against GB News over not challenging Trump's assertions, including that climate change is “a hoax”, in an interview  —  US president's assertions climate change is ‘a hoax’ and London has police no-go areas left unchallenged, say critics
David Bauder / Associated Press:
In 2025, 126 media industry people were killed globally, the US had 170 reports of assaults on journalists, and Trump's government increasingly attacked media  —  By nearly any measure, 2025 has been a rough year for anyone concerned about freedom of the press.
Michael Schneider / Variety:
Paramount shut down some UK MTV music channels on December 31; the main MTV channel is still on-air, despite social media claims of a global MTV shutdown  —  You've probably seen a variation of this news on social media over the past few days: MTV officially shut down on New Year's Eve …
Pat Saperstein / Variety:
Following Clooney's criticism, Bari Weiss invites him to “visit The CBS Broadcast Center” where she is “spending the holidays” to “relaunch the Evening News”  —  After George Clooney said he felt that newly-named editor-in-chief Bari Weiss was …
RELATED:
Brent Lang / Variety:
George Clooney criticizes CBS and ABC for settling lawsuits with President Trump and says Bari Weiss “is dismantling CBS News as we speak”
 
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 More News: 
Cynthia Littleton / Variety:
CBS faced a technical snafu that knocked the live broadcast of “New Year's Eve Live: Nashville's Big Bash” off the air for about 12 minutes on December 31
Angelique Chrisafis / The Guardian:
The French rightwing party UDR launches a parliamentary inquiry into the “neutrality, workings and financing” of state TV and radio amid accusations of bias
Kay Powell / Atlanta Magazine:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which had about 75K digital-only subscribers and 40K print subscribers, ends its print edition after 157 years
Jeff Horwitz / Reuters:
Internal docs reveal Meta's tactics to fend off pressure to crack down on scammers, including efforts to make scam ads “not findable” for regulators and others
 Earlier Picks: 
Charles Ornstein / ProPublica:
ProPublica reporters on three recent stories were ignored by federal or state workers when seeking comment, and then were accused of stalking or intimidation
Bloomberg:
Nielsen streaming data: none of 2025's 10 most-watched shows were new, Tubi and Roku are almost twice the size of HBO Max and Peacock, and more
 

 
From Techmeme:

Bloomberg:
xAI's Grok says “lapses in safeguards” led it to create sexualized images of minors in response to user prompts on X; the images have been taken down

Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times:
Yann LeCun says Llama 4's “results were fudged a little bit”, and that the team used different models for different benchmarks to give better results

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Pebble unveils Pebble Round 2 smart watch with a rounded screen and basic health and activity tracking but no heart rate monitor, shipping in May for $199
 
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