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4:15 PM ET, January 21, 2021

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
USAGM:
VOA Director Robert Reilly and Deputy Director Elizabeth Robbins are out; recently demoted exec Yolanda Lopez has been named acting VOA director  —  United States Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack resigned yesterday after being informed by the Biden Administration that he would be removed.
RELATED:
Jessica Jerreat / Voice of America:
Kelu Chao named acting CEO of USAGM; Chao has worked for VOA for 20 years+ and testified last year in a lawsuit over editorial interference by Pack  —  WASHINGTON - The head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media stepped down Wednesday afternoon at the request of President Joe Biden shortly after Biden took office.
Dan De Luce / NBC News:
Michael Pack, the head of USAGM who oversaw VOA and the Open Technology Fund, has resigned at the request of the Biden administration
The NewsGuild of New York:
New Yorker Union announces 24-hour strike over management's response to pay negotiations; the union asked for $65K/year starting salaries and annual increases  —  Today, the New Yorker Union is undertaking a twenty-four-hour work stoppage.  Between 6 A.M. on Thursday, January 21st …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Google signs an agreement with French media creating a framework for payment for publisher content and has reached agreements with three major newspapers  —  Google has reached an agreement with an association of French publishers over how it will be pay for reuse of snippets of their content.
RELATED:
Brad Bender / The Keyword:
Google announces a global deal with Reuters for News Showcase, which pays publishers for content highlighted in panels in News, Discover, and search results
Margaret Harding McGill / Axios:
Biden designates Jessica Rosenworcel, currently a Democratic commissioner at the FCC, as acting chairwoman of the agency  —  President Biden has designated Jessica Rosenworcel as acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission, according to an agency statement.
RELATED:
April Glaser / NBC News:
Profile of Jessica Rosenworcel, the second woman to lead the FCC as acting chair and a big proponent of net neutrality and expanding broadband access  —  President Joe Biden has picked Jessica Rosenworcel to run the Federal Communications Commission in an interim position.
David Folkenflik / NPR:
Biden addressed divisions sown by media when he spoke about “lies told...for profit” and distrust of those who “don't get their news from the same sources you do”  —  President Joe Biden invoked what he called seven “common objects we, as Americans, love” in Wednesday's inaugural address.
Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:
The media should hold power to account and resist the adversarial-seeming approach to politics it took pre-Trump, like when it focused on Obama's tan suit  —  White House press secretary Jen Psaki was prepared.  She was professional.  She was noncombative.
RELATED:
New York Times:
In her first briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki vowed to bring “truth and transparency back to the briefing room”
Variety:
Bonnie Fuller, founder of entertainment outlet Hollywoodlife.com, has bought out Penske Media's stake in the company, assuming full ownership  —  Penske Media Corporation (PMC) announced today that after a decade of partnership and co-ownership of Hollywood Life, founder Bonnie Fuller …
Discussion: Showbiz411
Hannah Ellis-Petersen / The Guardian:
Indian political drama on Amazon Prime was forced to edit out scenes, the first time that a streaming platform has been subjected to censorship in the country  —  Director of Tandav agrees to remove scenes deemed to insult Hindu gods and office of Indian prime minister
Robert Booth / The Guardian:
UK broadcaster Sky pledges that one in five staff members will be from a minority ethnic background by 2025 and that 5% will be Black  —  UK broadcaster aims to reshape its workforce, partly in response to Black Lives Matter movement  —  Sky has pledged that one in five of its staff …
Discussion: Broadband TV News, @bitc and Kidscreen
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Towns and counties around the US are suing Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services, seeking to regulate them like cable TV and make them pay cable fees  —  A Georgia lawsuit is pushing to expand TV franchising rules  —  Streaming services are slowly turning into cable TV …
Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:
ViacomCBS to launch Pluto TV in France on February 8, making it the first free ad-supported streaming service in the country  —  Offering 40 curated and original channels, it will become the first advertising-supported streamer in the country.  —  ViacomCBS will launch advertising-supported …
 
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 More News: 
Joe Pompeo / Vanity Fair:
A look at the journalists covering domestic extremism in the US and the differing approaches the NYT and WaPo are taking to the topic
The Information:
Sources: Patreon is considering an IPO as soon as this year and has recently passed $100M in annualized revenue
 Earlier Picks: 
Chris Stokel-Walker / Ars Technica:
How one composer got paid for unauthorized use of his work, including on China's CCTV, using YouTube's copyright claims system and lawyers
Jacob Shamsian / Business Insider:
Pro-Trump media outlet OAN has scrubbed stories about voting machine companies from its website without explanation, after the companies hired libel lawyers
Wayne Friedman / MediaPost:
Kantar: HBO Max took 19.2% of new streaming subs in Q4, followed by Prime Video at 18.2%, with 41% of new HBO Max subs citing specific content as sign up reason
 

 
From Techmeme:

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
DeepSeek releases MIT-licensed DeepSeek-V3-0324, the latest version of their enormous DeepSeek v3 model; the previous DeepSeek v3 version had a custom license

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Alibaba releases Qwen2.5-VL-32B, a 32B open model under Apache 2.0, claims better alignment with human preferences and math reasoning than earlier 2.5 VL models

Matthew Griffin / Bloomberg:
eToro files for an IPO, with plans to list on the Nasdaq, and reports 2024 revenue of $12.6B, about 96% of which was from cryptoassets, and net income of $192M

 
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