 David Pecker with Donald Trump |
American Media CEO David Pecker may be using his ties with President Trump as a bargaining chip as he considers expanding his business into Saudi Arabia, according to the NewYork Times. The story notes the presence of Kacy Grine, a French businessman who has brokered deals between Saudi investors and companies in France, Senegal and the U.S., at a July White House meeting that included Pecker and Trump. American Media has put out a glossy magazine, “The New Kingdom,” that extols the virtues of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his country. The magazine, which includes an interview with Grine (who is pictured posing with Trump in the Oval Office), is being sold at outlets including Walmart. The National Enquirer, an American Media publication, has a long history of favorable coverage of Trump. In addition to giving Trump the first presidential endorsement the paper ever made, the Enquirer also paid a $150,000 kill fee to ensure that former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s account of her alleged affair with the President was not published. Pecker’s ties with the Saudis include a January attempt to secure Saudi funding for the potential acquisition of Time magazine.
 Laura Ingraham |
Laura Ingraham has formally apologized for a tweet mocking Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, but she only did so after the success of a campaign by Hogg that called for advertisers on Ingraham’s Fox News show to pull their ads. TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Hulu, Nutrish, Nestle and Stitch Fix all agreed to remove their ads, and Expedia said it had also pulled its spots from the program. Ingraham then jumped back onto Twitter to post her apology. “On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland,” her tweet says. Hogg was unimpressed by the apology. “She’s only apologizing after a third of her advertisers pulled out and I think it’s really disgusting the fact that she basically tried promoting her show after apologizing — or ‘apologizing’ to me,” Hogg said in a CNN interview.
 Jacob Brogan |
Jacob Brogan is coming on board at the Washington Post as an editor for the paper’s Outlook/PostEverything digital team. Brogan currently hosts the Slate podcast “Working,” in addition to writing about culture, politics, and the natural world for the site., He has also written for publications including The New Yorker, Smithsonian and The New Republic, covering TV, literature, emerging technologies and Internet history, among other topics. He has also served as an editor at the think tank New America. Brogan will join the Post on April 9.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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