Mediagazer: Sources: Amazon teams up with the NY Yankees, Sinclair Broadcasting, and others in a bid to buy the YES sports network from majority owner 21st Century Fox (New York Times)

Sources: Amazon teams up with the NY Yankees, Sinclair Broadcasting, and others in a bid to buy the YES sports network from majority owner 21st Century Fox — Amazon is coming to New York — to grab a piece of the Yankees sports network. — Jeff Bezos' tech giant has teamed …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Engadget, Associated Press, Fox Business, @business, @netsdaily, @darrenrovell, New York Post, Bloomberg, Bleacher Report, The Wrap, Awful Announcing, Broadcasting & Cable and BloombergQuint, more at Techmeme »

Alex Sherman / CNBC:

An overview of Amazon's media strategies, which include partnering with channels, expanding sports rights, and connecting content to products it sells — - Jeff Bezos gives the Amazon Studios team a massive budget to win “Lord of the Rings” and even sends Echo speakers to the Tolkien estate.

Discussion: @cristinagberta and @ibtimes_india

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Memo: in 2018, BuzzFeed generated $100M+ from business lines that didn't exist in 2017; Facebook video platform revenue grew from $500K in Q1 to $3M in Q4 2018 — - BuzzFeed CEO Says Company Is Generating Over $200 Million Annually From Businesses That Didn't Exist Two Years Ago

Discussion: Nieman Lab, Business Insider, Adweek, Business Insider, @lucas_shaw, @xpangler, BuzzFeed, @rafat and Digiday

New York Times:

White House Communications Director Bill Shine has resigned to serve as senior adviser on Trump's re-election campaign — Bill Shine, the former Fox News executive who joined the White House staff last summer to manage President Trump's communications operation, has resigned and will move …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman share content plans for Quibi, their streaming service launching in April 2020, including a show on Evan Spiegel and Snapchat — Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman today announced a slate of new series and projects heading to their forthcoming video streaming service, Quibi.

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, @thr, The Wrap, Adweek and Fast Company, more at Techmeme »

Louisa Lim / New York Times:

Australia's defamation laws privilege the right to reputation over freedom of expression and lead to self-censorship in the media, especially regarding China — A court ruling in favor of a billionaire businessman against The Sydney Morning Herald illustrates the sorry state of the country's defamation laws.

Arunabh Saikia / Scroll.in:

The editor and the publisher of Shillong Times, NE India's oldest English-language daily newspaper, held guilty of contempt after running story on judges' perks — The editor and publisher have been ordered to pay a fine of Rs two lakh each within a week, else they will be imprisoned for six months and the paper banned.

Discussion: IJR, @trulymonica, @prasanto, @kingslyj and @loquacious_lion

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Hearst to relaunch Clevver, a YouTube channels network, in a few weeks, having opened a multimedia production studio in Santa Monica and rehired Clevver's staff — - Critical Role Team, After Record-Breaking Fan Crowdfunding Response, Vows to Make ‘The Best Goddamn Cartoon Anyone Has Ever Seen’

Alison Weissbrot / AdExchanger:

Product manager says Google is building a podcast app and hopes to surface podcasts in search results by using speech-to-text to understand audio content — Google, a sleeping giant in the podcast space, is starting to open its eyes and stretch. — Since launching its native podcast app …

Julia Alexander / The Verge:

After YouTube recategorized “Brie Larson”, star of Captain Marvel, as news in search, its algorithm surfaced videos from news publishers, pushing down trolls — How a simple ‘news’ tag can change everything — If you searched “Brie Larson” on YouTube a couple of days ago …

Discussion: The A.V. Club, Business Insider, @moorehn, @kevinroose, @owillis, @dtunkelang, Comic Book, The A.V. Club and Tubefilter, more at Techmeme »

Gene Maddaus / Variety:

Former exec of Asian-themed OTT service DramaFever, which shut down in Oct., sues Warner Bros. alleging anti-Asian bias and retaliation amid exec layoffs — A former executive at the Asian-themed OTT service DramaFever filed suit on Wednesday, accusing Warner Bros. of laying off Asian-American executives due to bias.

Discussion: Forbes, HuffPost and NBC News

Max Willens / Digiday:

NBC News and MSNBC plan to expand their podcasts team; one goal is a podcast focused on the 2020 election, starting out weekly and expanding into a daily show — NBC News and MSNBC are spending more to make podcasts. — On Monday, NBC News is announcing the first of several hires this year …