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3:30 AM ET, December 18, 2020

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Edmund Lee / New York Times:
Axios buys Charlotte Agenda, a North Carolina-based digital startup with a staff of 11, as part of a push into local news; sources say the deal was close to $5M  —  The site focuses on service journalism for North Carolina's largest city.  Now it has been scooped up in a deal valued …
Ben Collins / Nieman Lab:
Lots of Americans slipped into conspiracy thinking in the pandemic; we'll need news outlets and others to explain how fantasy took hold and how we can dig out  —  “We're going to have to learn to create a vocabulary to talk about how their friends fell down the wrong YouTube hole and came out speaking another language.”
Twitter:
Twitter says it will start its new verification policy on January 21 and is developing profile labels to designate bots and memorial accounts  —  A couple of weeks ago, we announced that we're planning to bring back our public verification program in 2021, shared a draft of our new policy …
RELATED:
Jack Morse / Mashable:
Twitter says it will stop prompting users to Quote Tweet, restoring the standard RT functionality, and says QT use increased but overall sharing dropped by 20%
Reza Chowdhury / AlleyWatch:
Comcast's FreeWheel, a TV advertising platform, buys Beeswax, a programmatic ad-tech platform founded in 2014; terms of the transaction were not disclosed  —  Beeswax, the programmatic ad-tech platform that offers “bidder-as-a-service”, has been acquired by FreeWheel, the digital TV advertising platform.
Patience Haggin / Wall Street Journal:
As its revenue surges, Roku has become increasingly forceful in its negotiations with media companies, as evidenced by its fights with Fox and WarnerMedia  —  The maker of the leading streaming-media player has taken up brash negotiating tactics over its terms to carry services like HBO Max and Peacock
Patricia Nilsson / Financial Times:
An investigation into who owns MindGeek, the secretive company behind Pornhub, which had $460M in revenue in 2018 and has 115M+ daily visitors to its sites  —  Mario Salieri was shooting a pornographic movie in a lavish Prague villa two decades ago when he first caught sight of the computer geeks who were about to upend his industry.
Taylor Lorenz / Nieman Lab:
As journalists adopt influencer tactics for solo businesses, they'll see more drawbacks that influencers have faced, including reliance on fickle tech platforms  —  “Successful independent journalists will realize how difficult it can be to strike the right balance between cultivating enough …
Axios:
Texas AG says the state and nine others have filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming Google illegally hurt competition in the ad tech market  —  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday that he's leading a lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of taking illegal actions …
RELATED:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Spotify is now available on the Epic Games Store, signaling Epic's ambitions to make its game-focused store into a general app store  —  Epic is in prolonged battles with Apple and Google over their app store business models  —  Spotify is now available on the Epic Games Store …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
A startup called Gawq has launched a news app that organizes 150+ news sources; the app helps users compare sources, check facts, and even rate stories  —  A new startup called Gawq wants to tackle the problem of fake news and the “echo chamber” problem created by social media …
Discussion: @petezin
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Vice food vertical Munchies is launching a channel on OnlyFans, the first verified media publisher to do so, to post exclusive weekly videos for $4.99/month  —  Vice's food vertical, Munchies, is launching a verified channel on the breakout creator platform OnlyFans, a subscription site …
Ben Monnie / The Keyword:
Google News Initiative is launching a program to help entrepreneurs as they build digital news startups, seeks applicants for GNI Startups Lab in North America  —  Over the past nine months, we've been working with LION Publishers and UNC's Hussman School of Journalism and Media to study …
Martha Carr / New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Times-Picayune and New Orleans Advocate launch statewide investigative unit in a three-year, $1.5M initiative supported by donations to a local community fund  —  Specialized reporting team will be community funded and double the size of investigative staff  —  1 of 21
 
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 More News: 
William Turvill / Press Gazette:
A list of the 24 English language news sites with 100K+ online subscribers, featuring NYT in the lead by a wide margin, WaPo, WSJ, Gannett, FT, the Athletic
Sahil Patel / Wall Street Journal:
Oracle has found a streaming TV scam that exploits flaws in ad-serving tech to fool marketers into paying for ads that are never seen, estimates $14.5M stolen
Richard Waters / Financial Times:
Washington Post becomes the first major publisher to sign up for Trade Desk's single ID system as advertisers search for a successor to cookies
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Walmart partners with TikTok to test live-streamed video shopping, during which users will be able to shop Walmart fashion without leaving the app
@kerrymflynn:
The Information will officially launch an Opinion section in January 2021; EIC Jessica Lessin says it will feature the work of industry experts
William Turvill / Press Gazette:
The Guardian says it has 352K subscriptions to app and tablet editions, up 60% YoY, 548K recurring contributors, up 33% YoY; print subs are up 11% YoY to 119K
 Earlier Picks: 
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Facebook rolls back temporary post-election change that lifted news from authoritative outlets over hyperpartisan sources
Hollywood Reporter:
Inside Warner Bros.' plan to debut movies on HBO Max, as CEO Ann Sarnoff says partners were not told before because of fears the news would leak
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Substack launches Substack Reader, an RSS reader for tracking newsletter subscriptions and other feeds, in beta
Bloomberg:
Facebook attacks Apple in full-page newspaper ads, claiming upcoming iOS 14 changes that limit data gathering and targeted ads are bad for small businesses
 

 
From Techmeme:

Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Cisco details a hacking campaign that penetrated multiple governments' networks using two zero-day flaws in its VPN and firewall Adaptive Security Appliances

Ben Glickman / Wall Street Journal:
IBM agrees to buy HashiCorp, which helps companies manage cloud infrastructure, in a deal valuing HashiCorp at $6.4B and expected to close by the end of 2024

David Pierce / The Verge:
Hands-on with the Rabbit R1: a fun and funky AI device that feels pretty nice and does a solid job with basic AI questions, but the Rabbithole app is unfinished

 
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