9:00 AM ET, October 1, 2023
October 1, 2023
7:00 AM
New York Times:
Fact-checking sites have been declining worldwide as social media platforms cut back on disinformation efforts, and bogus AI-generated content thrives online
September 30, 2023
8:00 PM
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Byron Allen, one of the many parties trying to acquire ABC from Disney, says Disney's internal deliberations are the main factor delaying a formal sale process
2:00 PM
Financial Times:
French billionaire Xavier Niel plans to put his 40%+ stake of Le Monde in a foundation in 2023 and says he wants the newsroom “to be as independent as possible”
September 29, 2023
11:50 PM
Andre Rhoden-Paul / BBC:
Ofcom launches an investigation into the Dan Wootton Tonight show on GB News after Laurence Fox insulted journalist Ava Evans, sparking 7,300 complaints
11:25 PM
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
One of India's largest music labels Saregama acquires a 51.82% stake in Pocket Aces, which produces short-form video content aimed at young Indians, for ~$20M
6:05 PM
Josh Kosman / New York Post:
Source: Diamond Sports is seeking to cut the broadcast fees it pays to the NHL and NBA by up to 20%; Diamond pays NBA teams about $600M a year
4:30 PM
Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:
A history of Vine's failure to build relationships with its top creators, who Vine leadership resented for gaming the app's ranking algorithm and their humor
4:00 PM
The Information:
Sources: Jasper, which offers an AI writing tool for marketers, cut its $140M ARR projections for 2023 by 30%+ and its internal valuation by 20% from $1.5B
3:10 PM
Todd Spangler / Variety:
FilmRise acquires the worldwide digital media rights to 1,200+ hours of BuzzFeed Studios' library of content, including past episodes of Hot Ones and Worth It
1:35 PM
Amanda Zamora / The 19th:
Amanda Zamora says she will step down as publisher of The 19th at the end of 2023 and continue working on The 19th News Network in an advisory director capacity
1:10 PM
Richard Sandomir / New York Times:
Ed Fancher, one of the founders of the alternative weekly newspaper The Village Voice and its publisher for 19 years, died on September 27 at age 100
12:55 PM
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Podcast company Pushkin Industries lays off 17 of its 54 employees, or 30%+ of its staff in its second round of cuts in 2023, and changes its leadership team
12:00 PM
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
X CEO Linda Yaccarino says that the company has paid out nearly $20M to creators; Elon Musk said in July 2023 that the first payments totaled $5M
10:20 AM
Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Letterboxd's founders sell a majority stake to Canadian company Tiny; a source says the deal values the film-focused social network with ~10M users at $50M+
10:05 AM
Washington Post:
The Supreme Court agrees to hear two cases concerning whether Florida and Texas can restrict social media companies from removing political posts or accounts
9:55 AM
The Marshall Project:
The Marshall Project launches its second local news operation in Jackson, Mississippi, where two reporters are set to start on October 2
9:00 AM
Naomi Clarke / The Independent:
GB News presenter Calvin Robinson says the broadcaster suspended him for defending Dan Wootton online, making him the channel's third suspended presenter
8:05 AM
Bob Sillick / Editor and Publisher:
A look at Agenda Watch, built by Stanford's Big Local News and which scrapes public agencies' documents to help city hall, police, and school beat reporters
September 28, 2023
10:45 PM
Michael Schneider / Variety:
HBO Max's The Janes wins top documentary at the 44th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards; CNN won 10 news awards, Vice nine, and The New York Times five
10:25 PM
Ross A. Lincoln / The Wrap:
Negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and video game companies end without a deal; the current contract will continue as the sides “make final efforts to reach a deal”
9:00 PM
Sarah Scire / Nieman Lab:
Q&A with Society of Professional Journalists' treasurer, Israel Balderas, as membership numbers and revenue dwindle; its foundation still has ~$14M in the bank
8:05 PM
Matthew Keys / The Desk:
Filing: a judge denies journalist Timothy Burke's request to have his seized equipment returned and to unseal an FBI affidavit that led to his home's search
6:40 PM
Drew Richardson / CNBC:
After Media Matters found NFL ads placed on white nationalist X accounts, the NFL “immediately expressed our concerns to X to understand and rectify the issue”
5:30 PM
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
A study of 110 people in the US, the UK, and Germany shows that younger people and older people may have different reference points for the price of online news
4:05 PM
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google lets publishers use a robots.txt flag to opt out of the company using their data to train its AI models, while remaining accessible through Google Search
2:45 PM
Wall Street Journal:
Gannett received nearly 1,000 applications for two jobs, covering Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, including from Emmy-award-winning journalists and TikTok influencers
2:20 PM
Jason Bailey / New York Times:
Using “content” to describe art and entertainment, as Variety did in a tweet, flattens many professions into one and purposefully minimizes creators' work
1:40 PM
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Fox TV Stations signs a deal with Waymark, which uses AI to help local and regional advertisers make commercials; Waymark works with Gray, Spectrum, and others
1:20 PM
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
NYC-based IYK, which lets brands, musicians, and creators build “digi-physical experiences”, including through NFTs, raised a $16.8M seed led by A16z Crypto
12:50 PM
Tony Stubblebine / The Medium Blog:
Medium plans to block AI companies from training on posts published on Medium until the company can get concessions regarding credit, compensation, and consent
12:40 PM
Songtradr:
Music licensing marketplace Songtradr acquires Bandcamp and plans to keep operating Bandcamp as a marketplace and community with an artist-first revenue share
12:18 PM
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
Epic Games lays off 16% of its workforce, or ~830 employees, divests from music storefront Bandcamp, and intends to spin off “kid-tech” company SuperAwesome
11:05 AM
Parker Herren / Ad Age:
Spotify launches video ads for its CTV apps, beginning with Roku, as part of its upcoming Spotify CTV Partner Network that will share duties with its partners
10:30 AM
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
The Financial Times reports 2022 UK operating profit up 179% YoY to £13.4M, revenue up 14% YoY to £422.5M, and web and newspaper subscribers up 9% YoY to 1.26M+
9:40 AM
Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
In response to this week's GB News events, DMG Media terminates its contract with Dan Wootton, whose MailOnline freelance column had already been paused
8:10 AM
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Reddit removes the ability to opt out of ad personalization based on Reddit activity but says that users will still have opt-out controls in “select countries”
September 27, 2023
10:39 PM
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
X CEO Linda Yaccarino claims 90% of the top 100 advertisers “returned to the platform in the past 12 weeks alone” and that X will be profitable by early 2024
10:10 PM
Shauneen Miranda / Axios:
Late-night TV talk shows return: Bill Maher on Sept. 29; John Oliver on Oct. 1, and Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Kimmel on Oct. 2
9:42 PM
Deadline:
SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP say they plan to “resume negotiations for a new TV/theatrical contract” on October 2, after the WGA ended its strike on September 27
6:50 PM
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Meta's celebrity AIs are generated AI animations built from filming the 28 people they represent; Meta would not comment on how the celebrities were compensated
5:45 PM
Matt Tamanini / The Streamable:
Disney tells its Canadian Disney+ subscribers the company updated the service's subscriber agreement to limit usage to a single household, effective November 1
5:40 PM
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Meta debuts AI chatbots based on over a dozen influencers, including Snoop Dogg, MrBeast, and Charli D'Amelio, on Instagram and Facebook, and plans to add more
4:35 PM
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Warner Music CEO Robert Kyncl: AI will greatly impact the music industry in the next year and YouTube Content ID can be a blueprint for protecting rightsholders
4:05 PM
Mark Kleinman / Sky News:
Source: National World lines up advisers for a £600M takeover bid for The Daily Telegraph, joining multiple other interested parties, including Lord Rothermere
2:20 PM
Emma Garland / Huck:
A look at The Paper, an independent magazine about the “confusing, hopeless but hilarious” state of life in Wales, funded via a Michael Sheen-backed Kickstarter
1:20 PM
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
A profile of Kasie Hunt as she launches State of the Race, a weekday show about US politics for CNN's international service, after moving from NBC News in 2021
11:45 AM
Martin Pengelly / The Guardian:
In his new book, Marty Baron says Jared Kushner pressured the Washington Post publisher to fire Baron as editor over the outlet's Russia investigation coverage
10:57 AM
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
After suspending Laurence Fox, GB News suspends presenter Dan Wootton over “totally unacceptable” comments Fox made about a female journalist on Wootton's show
10:41 AM
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
Warner Bros. Discovery launches CNN Max in an open beta in the US, offering a 24/7 live news streaming feed and 900 hours of CNN Originals to Max subscribers
10:30 AM
Max Tani / Semafor:
Sources: Fox News is charging ~$200K for a 30-second ad during the second GOP primary debate, down from ~$495K for the first, as the primary becomes a “snoozer”
9:25 AM
Hollywood Reporter:
A play-by-play of the final negotiations between the WGA and the studios, represented by Bob Iger, David Zaslav, Ted Sarandos, and NBCUniversal's Donna Langley
8:10 AM
Mark Sweney / The Guardian:
Sources: GB News co-owner Paul Marshall, along with Citadel founder Ken Griffin, plans a bid for the UK-based Telegraph through his UnHerd Ventures media group
7:10 AM
Sara Atske / Pew Research Center:
US survey of 4,742 Black adults: 63% say news about Black people is more negative than news about other races and 43% say the coverage stereotypes Black people
5:30 AM
Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
GB News suspends presenter Laurence Fox after he went on a misogynistic on-air rant about the political journalist Ava Evans; Fox refused to apologize
3:20 AM
Helen Sullivan / The Guardian:
GB News issues an apology and launches a probe after airing “totally inappropriate” comments from Reclaim Party founder Laurence Fox about journalist Ava Evans
2:45 AM
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Linda Yaccarino reflects on her first 100 days as X's CEO, says the intense public scrutiny is “hard on me”, as sources describe her relationship with Elon Musk
September 26, 2023
11:05 PM
Alex Cranz / The Verge:
The WGA contract calls for streaming data transparency, requiring studios to provide “the total number of hours streamed” of self-produced high budget programs
8:47 PM
Jennifer Maas / Variety:
WGA leaders lift the strike order as of 12:01am PT on September 27, release the tentative AMPTP deal, and let writers return to work before final ratification
6:30 PM
Martin Baron / The Atlantic:
An excerpt from Marty Baron's upcoming book, Collision of Power: the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” slogan, Trump asking Bezos for better Post coverage, and more
6:05 PM
Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Memo: New York Public Radio President and CEO LaFontaine Oliver plans to cut NYPR staff by ~12% due to a “free fall in the advertising market”
5:25 PM
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the WGA and AMPTP's deal lets studios train AI models on writers' work while writers would be compensated for work on scripts even if AI tools are used
4:20 PM
Jen Fifield / Votebeat:
Local Labs, tied to Metric Media's network of local websites, is paid by GOP-backed clients for hundreds of public records requests, stymying election officials
3:40 PM
Todd Spangler / Variety:
CollegeHumor rebrands as Dropout, the name of the $6/month streaming service the company launched in 2018 that has users in the “mid-hundreds of thousands”
3:05 PM
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announces plans to reinstate net neutrality, seeking to “largely return to the successful rules the Commission adopted in 2015”
2:00 PM
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Punchbowl News says the news startup is on track to nearly $20M in 2023 revenue, up from $10M in 2021, and revamps its website with links to standalone articles
1:00 PM
Ben Mullin / @benmullin:
Memo: New York Public Radio President and CEO LaFontaine Oliver plans to cut NYPR staff by ~12% due to “the necessity for long-term financial sustainability”
12:00 PM
Matt Donnelly / Variety:
Sources: the Golden Globe Awards plans to add two new categories to its January 2024 show: for highest-earning or most-seen films and for stand-up comedy on TV