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8:20 PM ET, December 21, 2021

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 Top News: 
Todd Spangler / Variety:
AT&T plans to sell its Xandr programmatic advertising marketplace to Microsoft; the deal would not include the ad sales business supporting DirecTV  —  Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory reviews.
Jeremy Barr / Washington Post:
Fox says Jesse Watters was speaking metaphorically when he told a conference audience to “ambush” Dr. Fauci with a “kill shot”; Dr. Fauci calls for his firing  —  The Fox host was referring to confrontational interviews in comments at a conservative conference but leaned hard on violent imagery: 'Boom!
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely steps down as CEO, naming head of communications and marketing Ami Gan as his replacement; Stokely will remain as an adviser  —  OnlyFans named spokesperson Ami Gan as its new chief executive officer, replacing Tim Stokely, who founded and built the media company …
Emma Goldberg / New York Times:
In an internal memo, Fox says all its NYC office staff must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination by December 27, blaming Mayor de Blasio for the vaccine mandate  —  Fox Corporation, the owner of Fox News, told employees on Friday that those working in New York City would have to show proof …
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Meta says over half of its Bulletin newsletter platform's 115 creators have over 1,000 free subscribers, “with many having more than 5,000 or 10,000”  —  Six months in and there are 115 publications writing on it  —  A new blog post from Meta marks the six-month anniversary of its newsletter publishing platform, Bulletin.
Jill Goldsmith / Deadline:
Swedish video game holding company Embracer Group acquires Mike Richardson's comics publisher and production group Dark Horse Media; Richardson remains the CEO  —  Embracer Group, a Swedish video game holding company, unveiled plans to buy Dark Horse Media, the comic book and entertainment group founded and led by Mike Richardson.
Discussion: Embracer, PC Gamer, @paultobin and CNET
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Taboola partners with Microsoft to launch a real-time service by the end of Q1 2022 that lets advertisers bid for ad inventory across the open web  —  Taboola, a content recommendation company, is launching an audience network for advertisers looking to place native ads on the open web.
Keri Blakinger / The Marshall Project:
A look at The Tank, a low-wattage radio station run by the inmates at a Texas prison to help men in solitary and on death row connect with the prison community  —  They can't go to classes or prison jobs, and they don't have tablets or televisions.  But they do have radios.
 
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 More News: 
Washington Blade:
The Washington Blade becomes the first LGBTQ publication to get a designated seat in the White House briefing room, effective January 3
Richard C. Paddock / New York Times:
Interview with journalist Ko Aung Kyaw, who livestreamed his arrest by Myanmar's regime, on being tortured by soldiers, refusing to give up sources, and more
William Turvill / Press Gazette:
Axel Springer reports 2020 revenue of €2.97B, down 5% YoY, with adjusted EBITDA of €653.8M, down 13% YoY, and says its US business is “booming” in 2021
Discussion: @jackshafer and Reuters
 Earlier Picks: 
Sophie Zeldin-O'Neill / The Guardian:
The Guardian ends its Inside The Guardian series, which gave readers a behind the scenes look at the newsroom, after six years and over 250 pieces
The Atlantic:
Mark Leibovich, the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, will join The Atlantic as a staff writer in the spring
Mathew Ingram / Columbia Journalism Review:
The pursuit of “scale” drives media companies to merge, such as in the Vox-Group Nine deal, but what constitutes sufficient scale changes when valuations shrink
 

 
From Techmeme:

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Meta details Llama 3: 8B- and 70B-parameter models, a focus on reducing false refusals, and an upcoming model trained on 15T+ tokens that has 400B+ parameters

David Pierce / The Verge:
Google announces a new Platforms and Devices team overseeing Pixel, Android, Chrome, Photos, and more, to integrate AI across its products, led by Rick Osterloh

Ryan Morrison / Tom's Guide:
Microsoft researchers introduce VASA-1, an AI model that creates a realistic talking face video from a portrait photo and an audio file, in research preview
 
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