“Surely the most inane attempt at an Omicron-shaming came from Bryan Goldberg’s resurrected Gawker, which posted a so-called ‘blind item’ that asked simply: ‘Which media company’s very large holiday party resulted in a rash of COVID diagnoses?’ Hmmm, maybe all of them?”

“My experience of meeting someone in the metaverse [was] disorienting, oddly intimate, [and], not that easy, as my list of questions disappeared from the virtual screen so I had to keep peering out of my Oculus headset to my written notes.”

No. 10 is that “mainstream media struggle to get noticed at newer, more visual social networks” like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.

“Spotify is borrowing a page from rival Apple with the addition of a five-star user ratings system for podcasts — a new tool for sorting through the more than 3.2 million podcast titles on Spotify’s platform to find the most popular shows … Spotify expects user ratings will be another signal for listeners to discovery new podcasts, in addition to existing features like Podcast Charts and personalized recommendations.”

“When Christina Greer thinks about all the ‘inspirational’ news stories she’s read about people for whom the mere act of voting has become an endurance sport, she’s not inspired by the coverage. She’s exasperated.”

The Manchester Mill published its first print edition and 15,000 copies are circulating around the U.K. city.

People are wrestling with “a level of vigilance and concern that maybe was sustainable for two weeks or two months, but not for two years.”

“It is difficult to overstate the anomaly — and the danger — of the current case.”

“At the Global Times, Hu Xijin helped establish a chest-thumping new tone for China on the world stage – but can he keep up with the forces he has unleashed?”

Staffers of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he strongly supports the section of the Build Back Better bill aimed at helping local news outlets. More on the potentially transformative payroll tax credit here.

“Newspapers in Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and other cities with forward-thinking owners, most of them rooted in the local community, are finding their way forward. My old paper might be able to do that, too — but not under Alden.”

Read more about the Internet Archive and digitization efforts here.

Hint: “Offensive” payment offers.

The kind of “bad faith” behavior that Google is being called out for in France? Launching a Google News Showcase product that looked like “a cynical attempt by Google to more cheaply circumvent legal requirements.”