“As such, Tribune is no longer permitted to engage in discussions and negotiations with, or provide diligence information to, Newslight and its principals in connection with their proposal, and accordingly has terminated such discussions and negotiations with, and access to diligence information for, Newslight and its principals.”

The company’s owned by Germany’s Axel Springer, which is very familiar with working with newsroom unions. “The formation of a union at Insider is part of a broader industry trend, following organizing efforts at BuzzFeed News, Vice, The New Yorker and Vox Media. Last week, a group of more than 650 tech workers at The Times formed a union.”

“It’s also, obviously, way too early to figure out if Facebook’s massive scale will help it dethrone Clubhouse. But Zuckerberg hasn’t been shy about copying services or features built by competitors or would-be competitors, with mixed results: It successfully aped the ‘Stories’ feature pioneered by Snapchat, for instance, but Rooms, its would-be Zoom competitor, never caught on.”

“I was surprised to see that it is quite a struggle to survive, let alone work as a journalist in France. Usually, people tell me I have an African accent. I’ve met quite a few media outlets that have said the same thing.”

“…so often, the shootings that get the most attention are those in white or suburban areas with a certain level of ‘surprise value,’ Abené Clayton, the lead reporter for the Guns and Lies in America project at The Guardian…those shootings garner a lot of attention because ‘so many Americans say to themselves, “I could have been here.”‘”

“NPR cut spending in areas including staff and executive pay to offset a decline in revenue spurred by the pandemic, particularly in corporate sponsorship. The network’s revenue is ‘slightly above’ its 2019 income but hasn’t reached 2020 levels, [Deborah] Cowan said. Next year, NPR will aim to completely roll back the budget cuts that staffers agreed to last year in order to avoid layoffs. That timeline is ‘not totally clear yet,’ Cowan said.”

“New data from Centro finds that political ad spend on CTV by political campaigns outpaced overall CTV growth across the industry by more than three times…This is a huge departure from the decades-long practice of campaigns buying TV ads that are targeted to local demographic market areas without much precision other than age and gender.”

“For reasons both technical and financial, streaming has largely eschewed sports, leaving a very notable gap in an ecosystem that’s otherwise come to dominate contemporary media…’If sports were not on TV, people would have cut the cord in a lot bigger numbers a long time ago.'”

“The change is a strategic pivot by George Cheeks, the executive who took responsibility of CBS’s television properties last year and is now charged with shaking up a news division that is long on history, but short on viewers. CBS News may be the former home of Edward Murrow and Walter Cronkite — its Manhattan studios are filled with relics from midcentury halcyon days — but it has struggled for years to compete against ABC and NBC.”

“Google is going it alone with its proposed advertising technology to replace third-party cookies. Every major browser that uses the open source Chromium project has declined to use it, and it’s unclear what that will mean for the future of advertising on the web…It’s a complicated technology that does appear to keep you semi-anonymous, but there are enough details to hide dozens of devils.”

“When you put a political reporter on a story, they never start by writing ‘of course this happened, because this is how things work.’ Because political reporters tend to think very short-term, they can be easily surprised. They can find a “wow, look what just happened!” story where a subject-matter expert would write ‘this is a big distraction from the real issue’ or ‘this really doesn’t address the problem.'”

“Penske will make a strategic investment in the closely held company, SXSW LLC, in return for a 50% stake in the business, the people said. The event had been owned by its founders who created the festival in 1987. They will continue to manage and operate the festival, although Penske will own the largest stake, the people said.”

“The pandemic altered how readers discover and buy books, and drove sales for celebrities and best-selling authors while new and lesser-known writers struggled…This mass consumer migration — which was already underway but accelerated during the pandemic — could have a profound impact on literary culture.”

“Into April, news articles on the OAN website consistently referred to Donald J. Trump as ‘President Trump’ and to President Biden as just ‘Joe Biden’ or ‘Biden.’ That practice is not followed by other news organizations, including the OAN competitor Newsmax, a conservative cable channel and news site.”

“Mr. Wyss, who made his fortune as a medical device manufacturer, had joined the Maryland hotel executive Stewart Bainum Jr. in a bid that seemed as if it had a chance of preventing Tribune from becoming fully owned by its largest shareholder, the New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital. … Mr. Bainum, who had taken a special interest in another Tribune paper, The Baltimore Sun, remains committed to pursuing ownership of Tribune Publishing.”

“The Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in January created a trove of self-incriminating evidence, thoroughly documenting their actions and words in videos and social media posts. Now some of the camera-toting people in the crowd are claiming they were only there to record history as journalists, not to join a deadly insurrection. It’s unlikely that any of the self-proclaimed journalists can mount a viable defense on the First Amendment’s free speech grounds, experts say. They face long odds if video captured them acting more like rioters than impartial observers. But as the internet has broadened and blurred the definition of a journalist, some appear intent on trying.”

“In a 22-page order, Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright cited examples of police treatment of the press over the past week, including police orders specifically directed to members of the press to vacate protest areas, and incidents of journalists being pepper sprayed, physically grabbed, or hit by projectiles.”

“Ms. Kennedy was an accomplished cook and knowledgeable about fashion, interior design and architecture. She was disappointed when she was told that she was ‘not ready’ for Styles, [reporter Lena Williams] said, though she occasionally freelanced for the section anyway. [Paul Delaney, the first Black reporter hired in the newspaper’s Washington bureau], said ‘you’re not ready’ was a common explanation when a Black reporter was denied a move. ‘That was the kind of stuff we faced all the time,’ he said. ‘That’s what we had to overcome.'”

“And as she rounded the corner, Totenberg recalls, the driver looked at her and said, ‘Lady, you need a gun.'”

“Self-absorbed writing by Substack writers seems to have been no impediment in their acquisition of vast, paying audiences. The popularity of these windy works must be read as another blow against the cult of the editor.”