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Wednesday, August 7, 2019
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Radio giant Entercom buys podcasters Pineapple Street Media and Cadence13“In other words, the podcast space is in the midst of a plodding consolidation period, and this is just further evidence of that.” By Nicholas Quah. |
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The Markup is back, with Julia Angwin reinstated as editor-in-chief, a new leadership team, and the same reportersAngwin is part of a new leadership team: Nabiha Syed, formerly associate general counsel at BuzzFeed, will be president, and Evelyn Larrubia, who was executive editor of Marketplace, will be managing editor. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
The New York Times / Ben Sisario
iHeartMedia is taking the 11-year-old podcast “Stuff You Should Know” global (in five new languages) →
“For years, iHeartMedia, which operates about 850 radio stations in the United States and has a popular online music app, iHeartRadio, mostly sat on the sidelines of the podcast revolution. Now it is going all-in. Last year, the company bought Stuff Media, the studio that produces ‘Stuff You Should Know’ and other shows, for $55 million, and Robert W. Pittman, iHeartMedia's chief executive, considers podcasts an essential part of iHeartMedia's offerings.” Hmm sounds familiar…
Columbia Journalism Review / Gabriel Snyder
CJR’s Times public editor talked to Dean Baquet about the bad Trump headline →
“‘People think the leadership of the New York Times sat down and tried to come up with a headline that mollified Donald Trump and that's just not the case,’ Baquet tells me. Trying to make the best of a social media dumpster fire, he goes on, ‘People think we are an important and necessary institution and they hold us to a high standard.’ … (A spokesperson for the Times declined to say how many cancellations the newspaper has seen, but acknowledges, ‘We have seen a higher volume of cancellations today than is typical.’)”
NPR / David Folkenflik
NPR eliminated “fewer than 10” jobs in a “realignment…not about saving money” →
“In her note, Barnes cited the desire to bolster additional staffing in investigations along with the network’s flagship shows, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as more funds to cover opioid addiction, climate change and pharmaceuticals, among other beats.” National security correspondent David Welna, an NPR reporter since 1982, was one of the cuts.
Media Nation / Dan Kennedy
The Boston Globe might have the most digital subscriptions for a local paper, but it still doesn’t have a union contract →
After eight months of bargaining, the Boston Newspaper Guild is filing an unfair labor practices complaint with the NLRB and walked out on Tuesday.
Tampa Bay Times / Mark Katches
The Tampa Bay Times’ executive editor on what the Gannett-GateHouse merger means for Florida news →
“Our CEO and Chairman Paul Tash works in the building — not thousands of miles away in a skyscraper. Our digital producers and designers are located in a pod of desks in the middle of our newsroom, just a few feet from our newspaper design team. In the next pod over, our copy editors carefully read behind stories about places they know intimately. All these journalists are surrounded by local reporters, editors and photographers on the perpetual hunt to bring you more local news. And when you have a delivery problem, the people who answer your phone calls or emails are right here in St. Petersburg.”
Mission Local / Lydia Chavez
“Dogs, readers and loyalty”: How this local news nonprofit explains the importance of reader revenue →
“Take readers who returned to Mission Local more than six times last month. That's 2,806 individual readers. Their sessions lasted more than two minutes each, just under the average for the country's top 50 newspapers. If all of those users paid $10 a month, Mission Local would be awash in money – able to train even more journalists and give you more coverage.”
Editor and Publisher / Evelyn Mateos
North Carolina’s last two family-owned dailies form a media management company →
“‘We had a nice long meeting with attorneys, accountants and everybody involved, and thus the birth of Restoration Newsmedia,’ he said. Zepezauer said the significance of the name ‘(focuses) on keeping newspapers alive in each market by restoring faith in the community in journalism.'”
Poynter / Cristina Tardaguila
At least three major digital fact-checking tools have been lost in 2019, with one more ending in September →
“‘One after another door is closing,’ said Bal Krishna, the editor of India Today's fact-checking team. ‘For most people, search means Google. But Google — or most of the other search engines — can't search inside Facebook.'”
AdWeek / Kelsey Sutton
More than a fifth of U.S. households will likely be cord-cutters by the end of 2021 →
“As of 2019, nearly 21.9 million U.S. households are expected to have given up the traditional pay TV services they previously had, constituting 17.3% of all U.S. households, according to eMarketer.”
Vanity Fair / William D. Cohan
Is Vice CEO Nancy Dubuc looking to CBS-Viacom for an acquisition? →
“According to some familiar with Dubuc's strategic thinking, she has viewed a Vice acquisition by CBS-Viacom as the company's best near-term exit strategy and has asked for various analyses to be done about what the combination would look like and what Vice News would look like inside CBS News.”