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12:15 PM ET, May 12, 2026

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Byron Allen is taking a majority stake in BuzzFeed, investing $120M, and will become CEO; Jonah Peretti will move to a new role as president of BuzzFeed AI  —  BuzzFeed announced it has entered into a transaction agreement with Allen Family Digital, an affiliate of Byron Allen's family office …
RELATED:
Sarah Fielding / Fast Company:
BuzzFeed's shares jump 130%+ following the deal with Allen Family Digital; BuzzFeed plans to set up BuzzFeed Studios and Tasty as a new independent entity  —  Allen will become CEO, while founder Jonah Peretti will transition to a new role.  BuzzFeed shares had been trading at under a dollar for most of 2026.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Trump privately complained to acting AG Todd Blanche about media leaks tied to the Iran war; the WSJ has received subpoenas for records of reporters  —  President Trump privately complained to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about media leaks in the wake of the Iran war last month …
Scott Nover / Washington Post:
President Trump nominates Kari Lake, whom he tasked with dismantling USAGM and VOA, as US ambassador to Jamaica; a judge ruled in March she illegally ran USAGM  —  Lake was tasked with dismantling the U.S. Agency for Global Media and Voice of America, and became embroiled in contentious legal battles.
Max Goldbart / Deadline:
Ofcom is investigating GB News over a Trump interview from November for “due impartiality and material misleadingness”, after initially declining to investigate  —  Ofcom will probe GB News over a Donald Trump interview after all.  —  The UK regulator, which has been in something …
Merin Curotto / Observer:
Film critic Rex Reed, who was known for his distinctive prose and wrote for six decades for major publications, including The New York Observer, dies at 87  —  The last time I saw Rex Reed in person was at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on January 12, 2026.  His longtime friend William Kapfer …
Luke Barr / ABC News:
The US DOJ charges Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, CA, with acting as an illegal foreign agent for China; Wang worked on a website called U.S. News Center  —  Eileen Wang agreed to plead guilty, the Justice Department said.  —  City of Arcadia, councilmember, Eileen Wang attends …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Spotify celebrates its 20th anniversary with a Wrapped-like experience that features “never-before-shared data” going back to when users first joined Spotify  —  The company will include ‘never-before-shared data’ as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix launches a website saying it has invested $135B+ in films and TV over the past decade, contributing $325B+ to the global economy and creating 425K+ jobs  —  What's good for Netflix is... good for the world?  —  In January 2016, the streaming giant expanded its service …
Eliot Chen / The Wire China:
Six years after a US-China tit-for-tat cycle of journalist expulsions, the number of US journalists in China is dwindling, making it harder to cover the country  —  When President Donald Trump travels to China next week for his summit with Xi Jinping, a swarm of reporters will accompany his entourage.
 
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 More News: 
Ruth Fowler / Wired:
A Hollywood writer recounts working as an “AI trainer” for Mercor, Outlier, and others, as AI gig work becomes the new waiting tables for entertainment workers
Max Tani / Semafor:
Julie K. Brown's special Pulitzer citation after a previous snub shows how the awards are struggling to keep up with public sentiment and shifting media habits
New York Times:
A look at Israel's efforts to influence Eurovision, as some broadcasters pushed to ban Israel from the music competition and threatened to boycott the event
 Earlier Picks: 
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Some high-profile publications have migrated from Substack to rivals like Ghost and Beehiiv citing Substack's high fees and increased focus on social features
Alison Weissbrot / Adweek:
WPP US president Michael Houston will step down and transition to a new role as senior adviser; WPP will not backfill Houston's role
Discussion: MediaPost
Yash Roy / Bloomberg:
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy faces criticism for filming a reality show for The Great American Road Trip, sponsored by companies regulated by the DOT
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Texas AG Ken Paxton sues Netflix for allegedly spying on consumers by collecting their data without consent, and designing its platform to be addictive
 

 
From Techmeme:

Anthropic:
Anthropic details its progress toward recursive self-improvement, and its implications, and says 80%+ of the code merged into its codebase is authored by Claude

Cloudflare:
Cloudflare acquires VoidZero, the company behind Vite, Vitest, Rolldown, Oxc, and Vite+ frameworks, and says the projects will stay open source

Ted Chiang / The Atlantic:
A look at AI consciousness debates; LLM conversations are cleverly disguised examples of sentence continuation, but that doesn't deny how impressive LLMs can be
 
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