1:55 AM ET, April 19, 2024
April 18, 2024
11:50 PM
Wall Street Journal:
Internal draft: UK's ICO says Google's Privacy Sandbox falls short and leaves gaps that can be exploited to undermine privacy of users who should be anonymous
9:40 PM
Ben Burgis / Jacobin:
A deep look at the reasons behind the ongoing strike at The Long Beach Post, including layoffs after staffers voted to form a union
8:45 PM
David Ingram / NBC News:
Hyundai says it is pausing ads on X, after one ad appeared next to antisemitic and pro-Nazi content; the ad appeared on a user profile that had 55K+ followers
6:43 PM
New York Times:
Sources: Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo discussed a joint all-cash offer for Paramount, which is still in an exclusive negotiation window with Skydance
5:40 PM
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Essence magazine's parent, Sundial Media Group, agrees to buy Refinery29 from Vice Media and names former Vice COO Cory Haik as CEO of Refinery29
4:23 PM
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix won't report subscriber numbers or Average Revenue per Membership starting in Q1 2025, saying time spent is its “best proxy for customer satisfaction”
4:14 PM
Sarah Whitten / CNBC:
Netflix reports Q1 revenue up 15% YoY to $9.37B, vs. $9.28B est., paid users up 16% YoY to 269.6M, vs. 264.2M est., and net income $2.3B, up from $1.3B YoY
3:45 PM
New York Times:
The judge in Trump's NY criminal trial ordered reporters on April 18 to not disclose jurors' job info and warned against sharing jurors' physical descriptions
3:12 PM
Daniel Tencer / Music Business Worldwide:
Short-form video app Triller is merging with Hong Kong financial services company AGBA; Triller shareholders will own 80% of the combined company valued at $4B
2:40 PM
Sara Fischer / Axios:
CalMatters, a nonprofit focused on CA politics and policy, acquires tech news nonprofit The Markup; CalMatters has ~$12.5M in funding and The Markup has $5M
1:15 PM
Neel Dhanesha / Nieman Lab:
Q&A with Erica Heilman, host of “Rumble Strip”, an independent podcast she created in 2013 that chronicles how Vermont changed over the years
11:45 AM
Jessica Testa / New York Times:
A look at Highsnobiety, a creative consultancy and clothing line, as well as magazine and website led by EIC Willa Bennett covering fashion and youth culture
9:35 AM
Souhail Karam / Bloomberg:
A Tunisian court sentences prominent government critic and journalist Mohamed Boughalleb to six months in prison for defamation, renewing press freedom concerns
8:20 AM
Jonathan Barrett / The Guardian:
James Warburton, the CEO of Australia's Seven West Media since 2019, steps down; CFO Jeff Howard will take over as CEO starting on April 19
6:00 AM
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Twitch plans to roll out its TikTok-style discovery feed later in April, letting users scroll clips and livestreams, after testing the feature for a year
5:00 AM
Amy Thomson / Bloomberg:
Music rights investor Concord agrees to buy Hipgnosis Songs Fund in a deal valuing the song catalog company at ~$1.4B, capping a period of turmoil for Hipgnosis
April 17, 2024
9:55 PM
Russell Brandom / Rest of World:
How Oscar winner RRR's success brought a wave of Telugu-language movies to Netflix's US catalog, about 50% of which is now made up of non-English content
7:00 PM
Gene Maddaus / Variety:
A Los Angeles ethics agency fines former CBS CEO Les Moonves $15K for misconduct in obtaining confidential police info about a sexual assault claim against him
6:45 PM
Sheena Vasani / The Verge:
TikTok starts rolling out TikTok Notes, its Instagram rival for sharing photo and text content, for limited testing in Australia and Canada on Android and iOS
5:40 PM
Kate Knibbs / Wired:
How one author gained a limited copyright for the “selection, coordination, and arrangement of text” from AI, as the US Copyright Office wrestles with AI law
4:25 PM
Andrew Deck / Nieman Lab:
A look at Newsweek's use of AI, including in video production, an AI-focused Live News desk for breaking stories, and letting the tech write some first drafts
2:30 PM
James Careless / TV Tech:
Parks Associates: US households with internet now consume an average 43.5 hours of video per week across all viewing devices, up from 37.2 hours in 2020
1:50 PM
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
After Forbes found 120+ YouTube videos and 27 Google ads promoting AI deepfake porn tools and “nudifier” Telegram bots, Google took them down
12:50 PM
Ben Mullin / @benmullin:
About 50 NPR staffers sign a letter to NPR leadership calling for a public rebuke of the “factual inaccuracies and elisions” in Uri Berliner's essay
12:50 PM
Oliver Darcy / CNN:
Uri Berliner says he is resigning from NPR as he “cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm” NPR's problems
12:40 PM
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
The European Data Protection Board says large online platforms like Meta should give users an option to use their services for free without behavioral ads
12:00 PM
Steven Kurutz / New York Times:
A profile of Rusty Foster, whose Today in Tabs daily media industry newsletter has 36,000 subscribers, of which ~10% pay $6 per month or $50 per year
10:00 AM
Jesse Whittock / Deadline:
Swedish streaming service Viaplay, which shut down its US app in February, launches a $5.99 per month subscription channel on Prime Video Channels
9:00 AM
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Snap plans to add watermarks to AI-generated images exported from Snapchat; the watermarks appear as a translucent version of the Snap logo with a sparkle emoji
8:25 AM
Ellise Shafer / Variety:
Hugh Grant says he settled with News Group to avoid up to £10M in costs and “Murdoch's settlement money has a stink and I refuse to let this be hush money”
7:25 AM
Mike Allen / Axios:
The Daily Beast seeks a reporter to cover Jeff Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sánchez, part of plans to become a “smart tabloid” and cover tech execs and their ecosystem
6:45 AM
Bloomberg:
A profile of Uday Shankar, a former journalist who worked with the Murdoch family and is set to lead Viacom18, which is poised to dominate India's media market
6:20 AM
Sam Tobin / Reuters:
UK court documents: actor Hugh Grant settled a lawsuit against The Sun publisher News Group Newspapers over claims of using private investigators to phone tap
April 16, 2024
11:05 PM
Alicia Montgomery / Slate:
A former NPR editor says Uri Berliner's critique was inaccurate and ignored inconvenient facts, but the outlet has long been an overcautious, centrist mess
8:26 PM
Hadas Gold / CNN:
The News/Media Alliance asks the DOJ, the FTC, and California's AG for a probe into whether Google broke any laws when removing some links to CA news sites
6:18 PM
Megan Specia / New York Times:
The US assures the UK that Julian Assange could seek US First Amendment protections and wouldn't face the death penalty or be persecuted for his nationality
5:00 PM
Hana Yoo / AdExchanger:
IAB and PwC report on US digital ad sales in 2023: total revenue grew 7.3% YoY to $225B, digital video grew 10.6% to $52.1B, and digital audio grew 18.9% to $7B
2:58 PM
Matt Donnelly / Variety:
Internal email: Participant Media, which backed films like Green Book and Spotlight, is shutting down; sources: almost all of its 100 employees will be let go
2:10 PM
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Spotify says 25% of paid users in the US, UK, and Australia have started an audiobook as part of their subscriptions; 57% are between 18 and 34 years old
12:55 PM
CNN:
Smartmatic and OANN say they have settled a defamation suit filed by the voting tech company, filed in 2021
11:45 AM
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Dozens of Alden-owned newspapers ran editorials over the weekend arguing that Google's threat to cut off news in California “is a bully tactic”
11:00 AM
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Amazon launches Amazon Live FAST channel, where influencers show off products, on Prime Video and Freevee in the US
10:20 AM
The Intercept:
Memo: The New York Times told journalists covering the Israel-Hamas war to restrict the use of “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, and “occupied territory”
9:40 AM
Todd Spangler / Variety:
TikTok signs a deal with ticketing provider AXS to let users buy tickets to live events in the US, UK, and more; TikTok has had a Ticketmaster deal since 2022
8:40 AM
Richard Stengel / The Atlantic:
Publications should suspend paywalls for all 2024 US election coverage, as they get in the way of the public being informed, the foundation of democracy
8:10 AM
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
YouTube strengthens its “enforcement on third-party apps” violating its ToS, “specifically ad-blocking apps”, leading to error messages and “buffering issues”
7:50 AM
Jake Kanter / Deadline:
Sources: the BBC plans to stop automatic annual pay increases for its highest-paid employees and instead hand them raises based on their performance
7:40 AM
David Folkenflik / NPR:
Before he resigned, NPR suspended Uri Berliner for five days without pay, starting April 12, after he wrote an essay accusing NPR of losing the public's trust
6:15 AM
Lucy Craymer / Reuters:
New Zealand's Stuff Group signs a deal with WBD to provide WBD's New Zealand TV channel with a 6PM daily news program; WBD plans to close Newshub on July 5
5:35 AM
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Mozilla and CheckFirst: Apple, Google, Meta, and others' ad transparency efforts are a work in progress, months after the EU's DSA mandated a searchable library
5:05 AM
Byron Kaye / Reuters:
Two studies find Facebook blocking news in Canada could undermine political discourse by increasing user engagement with opinion and non-verified content
April 15, 2024
10:40 PM
Billy Perrigo / TIME:
Google's Jigsaw expands Perspective API, its set of ML tools for identifying toxic comments, to help rank posts based on seven new attributes, including nuance
6:30 PM
Ricardo Brito / Reuters:
Letter: X's lawyers tell Brazil's Supreme Court that the social media platform will comply with every ruling issued by the court or Brazil's top electoral court
4:55 PM
Laurence Peter / BBC:
Russia's Ministry of Justice labels BBC Russian correspondent Ilya Barabanov and science reporter Asya Kazantseva as “foreign agents”; both now live abroad
3:40 PM
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Major South African outlet The Daily Maverick takes down its site for a day to alert readers to ad revenue, grant funding, and philanthropic support “drying up”
2:30 PM
Winston Cho / Hollywood Reporter:
Rust movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez is sentenced to 18 months in prison in the 2021 accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins
1:25 PM
Alexandra Bruell / Wall Street Journal:
Slack message: NYT's probe into whether staff leaked confidential information about its Gaza war coverage ended without any conclusive findings
12:38 PM
New York Times:
Sources: Instagram is in the early stages of testing “Creator AI” chatbots for top influencers, which would automate DM responses to fans in a creator's “voice”
12:20 PM
Ariel Zilber / New York Post:
CNN axes King Charles, its weekly one-hour primetime show launched in fall 2023 by Chris Licht with hosts Gayle King and Charles Barkley, due to low ratings
11:22 AM
Sahil Patel / The Information:
Sources: Disney plans old-style TV channels within Disney+, with a continuous, scheduled stream of shows that are focused on certain genres like Star Wars
9:15 AM
Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles take minority stakes in The Daily Beast; Sherwood will be CEO and publisher, and Coles will be chief creative and content officer
7:25 AM
Charlotte Klein / Vanity Fair:
A look at the negotiations to provide media access to Trump's trial; the state court system hired ex-journalist Al Baker to prepare for the historic trial
6:35 AM
Bloomberg:
Taylor Swift's music returning to TikTok highlights her power over UMG and its CEO Lucian Grainge, who must now hope other music groups join his TikTok fight
5:55 AM
Richard Brooks / The Guardian:
Ofcom Chair Michael Grade says TV has become more “exploitative and cruel”, which makes him “mad”, and worries that the UK public are now used as performers
5:25 AM
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
As Netflix's new film chief Dan Lin takes charge, the company aims to shift its film strategy to focus on audience appeal and cost efficiency
April 14, 2024
11:05 PM
Max Tani / Semafor:
The Intercept is losing ~$300K/month and could run out of cash by May 2025, according to data from March; its CEO says the projection was a worst case scenario
7:20 PM
Ben Smith / Semafor:
Welcome to Semafor Media, where we are frantically gearing up for Semafor's biggest event ever, the World Economy Summit in Washington, D.C., this week.
5:55 PM
Mike Shields / Next in Media:
Streaming TV companies' reluctance to share their data with third-party audience measurement firms is making it difficult for brands to buy ads across platforms