“The high-profile departure comes amid a continuing rift between Google and news outlets over how the search engine drives traffic and uses their content.”

“In the week since the United States presidential election, Elon Musk has used X, the social media platform he owns, to reiterate his support for President-elect Donald J. Trump. Some of the platform’s users have decided that they would rather post elsewhere. Among the largest beneficiaries of that desire is Bluesky, a rival service that has gained more than a million new users in the week since the election … It now has 14.7 million users, the company said.”

“Media executives told the Financial Times that some brands were preparing to advertise on X once again, as its billionaire owner was likely to gain an influential role within a second Trump White House … ‘Whether by accident or design Musk has created not a new Twitter but a new Truth Social, albeit one that Trump isn’t a majority shareholder in.'”

Eligible applicants include “journalism support organizations and intermediaries with a proven track record of deep service to local news organizations; news organizations that are working or plan to work collaboratively with other news organizations as part of their grant… [and] newsroom collaborations, local/regional collaborations and/or a practitioner/university partnerships.” Phase 1 applications are due Jan. 15, 2025, with invitations for Phase 2 to be sent out in February 2025.

“In an email obtained by Semafor titled ‘Suspending Operations,’ and sent to hundreds of network staff on Tuesday, one of Al Jazeera English TV’s Gaza-based correspondents Hani Mahmoud said that the team based in Gaza would no longer be broadcasting on air until the network paid its bills. Mahmoud wrote that due to the delay of fuel payments by the Qatar-backed satellite television organization, Al Jazeera’s employees can no longer drive vehicles between their homes and broadcast locations — and don’t want to risk traveling by public transportation … One person familiar with the situation told Semafor that in addition to missed expense repayments, staff in Gaza had also struggled to receive payment in recent months.”

“The declines are isolated only to the affiliate arms of these publishers, said Sistrix marketing manager Steve Paine. So CNN Underscored declined in search visibility, but CNN.com did not. This pattern is highly atypical, according to Paine. It is rare to see such a small number of sites be affected by an SEO update, and it is rarer still to see site directories, rather than the domains themselves, experiencing isolated drop-offs. ‘To target at a directory level—that would require some very specific algorithms or a human touch. I would say this is almost unprecedented.'”

“Many people in Trump’s orbit were caught by surprise by his decision, the sources said. Hegseth didn’t emerge as a top candidate for defense secretary until Monday, a Trump adviser said, with the Fox News host interviewing for the role over the last 24 hours. Trump’s choice of Hegseth is a notable departure from his picks for defense secretary in his first term, when he selected a four-star general, James Mattis, and an Army secretary, Mark Esper, to lead the Pentagon. But Trump ultimately soured on both of those secretaries and was sharply critical of them after Mattis resigned and Esper was fired.”

“The site will start showing ads in the U.S. to start, and they’ll be formatted as ‘sponsored follow-up questions.’ (E.g., ‘How can I use LinkedIn to enhance my job search?’) These ads will be positioned to the side of answers and labeled as ‘sponsored.’ Brands and agency partners participating in Perplexity’s ad program include Indeed, Whole Foods, Universal McCann and PMG.”

“While the ‘test’ is supposed to determine how it will impact traffic and the overall search experience, it won’t show up for everyone. Google will only remove EU news articles from search results, Google News, and Discover for one percent of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. Google says it’s running the ‘time-limited’ test because EU regulators and publishers ‘have asked for additional data about the effect of news content in Search.'”

“Confidants of President-elect Trump are considering changes that would give newer, MAGA-aligned voices access to daily press briefings … The briefing room currently seats 49 reporters across an array of outlets. Any efforts to expand access to daily press briefings to pro-Trump outlets, such as Steve Bannon’s War Room, would need to come at the expense of existing outlets.”

“This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”