Mediagazer: People magazine's digital team announces its intention to form a union with the NewsGuild, joining its print division, which unionized in the 1970s (Katie Kilkenny/Hollywood Reporter)

4:20 PM ET, May 13, 2020

Top News:

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Memo: Condé Nast will lay off about 100 US employees, with a similar number temporarily furloughed and a small number of staff getting reduced work schedules — Similar number to be temporarily furloughed as advertising slowdown takes a bite — Condé Nast …

Discussion: @parismartineau, The Wrap, Talking Biz News, Mediaite, Adweek, @laurengoode, @mekosoff, @grahamstarr, @jessiwrites, @kerrymflynn, @loudmouthjulia, @mathewi, @maxwelltani, @edmundlee, @edmundlee, @edmundlee and @jeffreyt1

Max Willens / Digiday:

Sources: Apple is asking the publishers participating in Apple News+ for permission to produce audio versions of stories, with Apple handling production costs — Apple News+ is pivoting to audio. — Over the past several months, Apple has been asking the publishers participating …

Discussion: @johnpaczkowski, @brianroemmele, @rstephens, 9to5Mac, @chrismessina, @alexhern, @kerrymflynn, @chrismoranuk, @reneritchie, @mattnavarra, @marklittlenews and The Verge, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / CNN:

A Fox Corp memo extends the company's work from home directive through June 15, as Fox News stars echo Trump's call to “reopen the country” — New York (CNN Business)A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You can sign up for free right here.

Discussion: @brianstelter, @poniewozik, The Wrap and MediaPost

Mark Sweney / The Guardian:

BuzzFeed to end news operations in the UK and Australia and furlough ten in UK and four in Australia; sources: those furloughed are “highly unlikely” to return — Website says it will focus on news that ‘hits big’ in US after advertising revenue dried up

Discussion: CNN, Press Gazette, @amolrajan, The Hill, Folio, @alexwickham, @hasanpatel, @liamthorpecho, @jonwalker121, @arusbridger, @matinastevis, @andyjey, @louiseridley, @hannahalothman, @janinegibson, @katebevan, @ashkan, @hannahalothman and @maxwelltani

Bloomberg:

Sources: Luminary Media raised $30M+ at a level below last year's $200M valuation, bringing its total raised to $160M, and is seeking more funding — - Startup raises more than $30 million in round, looks for more — Luminary Media, the money-losing podcasting startup …

Discussion: @lucas_shaw, @barondavis, @lucas_shaw, @pkafka, @mikerugnetta and @thekendallbaker

Katie Kilkenny / Hollywood Reporter:

People magazine's digital team announces its intention to form a union with the NewsGuild, joining its print division, which unionized in the 1970s — Ninety-six percent of the brand's digital group employees nationwide who are eligible have signed cards indicating their interest in organizing.

Discussion: @thr, @katiekilkenny7, @sgillette7, @mcorriston, @ninedaves, @wear_a_helmet and @katiekilkenny7

Adam Gabbatt / The Guardian:

Save our Sun, a campaign backed by Baltimore-based philanthropists, is hoping to buy The Baltimore Sun and turn it into a non-profit to avoid further cuts — The Baltimore Sun has just won the Pulitzer prize for local reporting, despite years of job cuts and as the coronavirus pandemic appears set …

Justin Baragona / The Daily Beast:

Fox News has launched a new series called COVID Contrarian on Fox Nation with notorious coronavirus skeptic and one-time NYT reporter Alex Berenson — Public-health experts have taken issue with the former reporter's militantly contrarian takes on the pandemic, but he's found a home in the right-wing media ecosystem.

Discussion: @oliverdarcy, @alexberenson, @pblest, @mollyjongfast, @mollyjongfast, @noahshachtman, @justinbaragona and @thedailybeast

Bijan Stephen / The Verge:

Reports: live-streaming grew 45% between March and April, and 99% YoY; Twitch saw the highest growth, as hours watched rose 50% from March to April and 101% YoY — Every platform grew, but Twitch is still the biggest — We finally have numbers to back up the wild view counts we've seen …

Discussion: @joeljohnson

Katie Roof / Bloomberg:

Morning Consult, the market research startup founded in 2014, raises $31M Series A from James Murdoch's Lupa Systems and others, at a valuation of $306M — - Murdoch's Lupa Systems backs market research firm with funding — Company raised $31 million valuing it at $306 million

Discussion: The Media Nut

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Some European Netflix users say video quality throttling is still in place, angering those who pay more for higher-quality plans — Facebook to Pay $52 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over Moderators' Exposure to Graphic, Disturbing Content — Almost two months ago, Netflix …

Discussion: The Streamable, more at Techmeme »

Paul Kiel / ProPublica:

ProPublica, WaPo, Bloomberg, NYT, and Dow Jones have sued the Small Business Administration over its refusal to release details about who received PPP loans — The Small Business Administration, which is administering the lending program, has said it will disclose the names of companies that got loans — just not yet.

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More News:

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:
Filing shows ViacomCBS laid off 450 staffers across its New York offices, meaning an additional 333 people have been affected since its mid-January filing

Discussion: @erik_hayden and @thr

Pamela McClintock / Hollywood Reporter:
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Jon Allsop / Columbia Journalism Review:
Coverage of COVID-19 case data feels inconsistent, disjointed, and conditional; instead, it should aim to tell readers about the limitations of the shared data

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review

Barton Gellman / Washington Post:
Adapted excerpt from the book Dark Mirror by Barton Gellman, describing working with Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, and WaPo in the days after the NSA leak

Discussion: @bartongellman, @aaschapiro and @freedomofpress

Washington Post:
Trump's “ask China” answer to a question by CBS' Weijia Jiang shocked listeners and fit his pattern of suggesting reporters have loyalties based on ethnicity

Discussion: Vanity Fair, The Nation, @tracyjan, @eugene_scott, The Federalist, @ericboehlert, @jinkding, @ericboehlert, @sulliview, Vox, @jayrosen_nyu, The Week and Letters from an American

Earlier Picks:

Reed Richardson / Mediaite:
NBC's Chuck Todd apologizes for airing a truncated clip of a CBS News interview with AG Bill Barr but says it was “not our edit,” after blowback from Trump

Discussion: @oliverdarcy, @tomwjones, @davidfolkenflik, The Daily Beast, @realdonaldtrump and @jenniferjjacobs

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Facebook will pay $52M in a settlement covering 11,250 content moderators as compensation for mental health issues developed on the job

Gene Maddaus / Variety:
Hulu faces class action lawsuit, claiming it forces customers to use its app by deliberately throttling its service via browsers, all to collect more data

Discussion: The Streamable and The Wrap

Tim Warsinskey / Plain Dealer:
Cleveland.com will now produce all content for The Plain Dealer, 4 remaining Plain Dealer reporters have job offers at cleveland.com; union to be dissolved

From Techmeme:

Joanna Nelius / The Verge:
Qualcomm details its Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite chips; benchmarks from a demo suggest the chips match Apple's M3, Intel's Core Ultra 9, and AMD's Ryzen 9

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft begins rolling out Windows 11 Start menu ads that show app “recommendations” from “a small set of curated developers”; users can disable the ads

Shubham Sharma / VentureBeat:
Apple debuts OpenELM, a family of language models with 270M, 450M, 1.1B, and 3B parameters, designed to run on-device, pre-trained and fine-tuned on public data

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