Mediagazer: Report: Microsoft is working on a program to let select brands advertise within free-to-play Xbox games, such as on a billboard, and won't take a revenue cut (Emma Roth/The Verge)

4:35 PM ET, April 18, 2022

Top News:

Filings: three companies owned by Alex Jones, including Infowars, filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas, after Jones lost several Sandy Hook lawsuits — Companies owned by far-right radio host Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy after being hit by a flurry of lawsuits.

Emma Roth / The Verge:

Report: Microsoft is working on a program to let select brands advertise within free-to-play Xbox games, such as on a billboard, and won't take a revenue cut — The ads supposedly wouldn't disrupt gameplay — Microsoft is reportedly working on a program that will let brands showcase …

Discussion: Insider, TechCrunch, @swodinsky, @patrickcoffee, @seyitaylor, ScreenRant, I have some questions and CNET, more at Techmeme »

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:

Scraping content that is publicly accessible on the internet is legal, a US appeals court reaffirms, ending a landmark case LinkedIn brought against a rival — Good news for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists: Scraping publicly accessible data is legal, according to a U.S. appeals court ruling.

Discussion: MediaPost, @alexmleo and @zackwhittaker, more at Techmeme »

Alistair Gray / Financial Times:

Kantar: UK users canceled ~1.5M subscriptions to Disney+, Apple TV+, Now, and others in Q1, due to inflation; 58% of households have at least one subscription — About 1.5mn accounts terminated within three months as inflation squeezes finances — British households have cancelled video subscriptions …

Discussion: @avasantina, @unloveablesteve, @simonjharris, @john_stepek and @carlquintanilla

Richard J. Tofel / Second Rough Draft:

Legacy local newspapers should eliminate national news and use the freed-up money and space to produce more local content, making themselves more distinctive — Thinking about the problem of local news from the supply side — Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time …

Discussion: @mike_canan, @jamcnn, @jere_hester and Nieman Lab

Elizabeth A. Harris / New York Times:

How Barnes & Noble, with book sales up 14% from pre-pandemic, went from a threat to industry anchor by letting store managers choose books to promote and more — To independent booksellers, the enormous chain was once a threat. Now it's vital to their survival. And it's doing well.

Daniel Wiessner / Reuters:

CBS shareholders settle for $14.75M in a lawsuit that claimed the company misled investors by failing to disclose sexual harassment allegations against Moonves — Paramount Global (PARA.O) has agreed to pay $14.75 million to shareholders of the former CBS Corp in a proposed class action claiming …

Discussion: Variety, New York Post and The Hollywood Reporter

Nick Kostov / Wall Street Journal:

French music streaming service Deezer will go public through a SPAC merger at a €1.05B valuation and says it had 9.6M subscribers and €400M in revenue in 2021 — French music streaming service is merging with a special-purpose acquisition company, aiming to go public

Discussion: Variety and Music Business Worldwide, more at Techmeme »

David Hume Kennerly / New York Times:

Photojournalist David Hume Kennerly on the power of graphic war images in Ukraine and other conflicts: “the best photographs might make us want to look away” — The following images depict graphic violence. — A couple of weeks ago I came across the graphic images of bodies littering …

Discussion: @cliffordlevy, @peterbakernyt, @dabeard, @natashakhanhk, @kennerly and @nickkristof

Michael Grothaus / Fast Company:

Netflix debuts a series with a corresponding game for the first time, with the Exploding Kittens animated comedy series and associated games for iOS and Android — The streaming industry has grown exponentially in the past several years. Where there was once only Netflix, now there's Disney Plus …

Discussion: SlashFilm, TechCrunch, The Wrap, Next TV, The Streamable, Variety, The Verge and 9to5Mac

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:

Stem, which offers music rights management software for independent artists, raises $20M from QED Investors and Block, bringing its total funding to nearly $40M — Jordan Higa was waiting for her flight when she stopped to ask her travel companion how much they would spend on tickets to see BTS perform live.

Discussion: @lucas_shaw

Ian Johnston / Financial Times:

Ukrainian independent media is finding success on Patreon; The Kyiv Independent, which has raised $1.5M on GoFundMe, has ~7,000 patrons, making $73K+/month — Use of funding platform by smaller publications is emblematic of wider trend in media sector — Olga Rudenko, editor of The Kyiv Independent, has had a punishing six weeks.

Discussion: @w_kononczuk and @shashj

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Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
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Tom Hals / Reuters:
The New York Times sues an anti-immigration author for the cost to defend itself against his 2020 defamation lawsuit, a first under NY's expanded anti-SLAPP law

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Al-Monitor:
Prominent Algerian newspaper Liberte shuts down after three decades, citing its “economic situation”; Liberte is owned by the country's richest man, worth $3.8B

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Stuart A. Thompson / New York Times:
Analysis shows how the Russian media uses Fox News content to bolster Russia's claims about Ukraine, from blaming NATO to pushing conspiracy theories on biolabs

Bron Maher / Press Gazette:
Analysis: news publishers raised nearly $12M from selling NFTs since March 2021; Time Magazine earned the most with $10M+ and The New York Times made $560K

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Denise Lavoie / Associated Press:
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Discussion: WHSV-TV, MSNBC, WTTG-TV and Washington Post

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 internal reorganizations, including an AI-focused Platforms and Devices group overseeing Pixel, Android, Chrome, and more, led by Rick Osterloh

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Europol and 19 countries make 37 arrests and disrupt phishing-as-a-service platform LabHost in a year-long operation with help from Microsoft, Intel, and others

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