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Five female reporters have resigned following the return of Newsweek chief content officer Dayan Candappa. Candappa was suspended Jan. 29 following allegations of sexual misconduct while serving as Americas editor at Reuters. Newsweek Media Group was allegedly unaware of those allegations when they hired Candappa in 2016. According to the New York Post, an investigation conducted by law firm Orrick Herrington and Sutcliffe said that there was “no evidence to substantiate the claims made against Mr. Candappa while at Reuters.” The resignation of the five reporters comes as a steady stream of editors and reporters are heading for the exits at the troubled magazine. Editor-in-chief Bob Roe, executive news director Kenneth Li and reporter Celeste Katz were all let go after having been involved in coverage of Newsweek’s current financial and legal difficulties. Those difficulties stem from alleged ties between NMG and Olivet University, a Christian college, and its leader, South Korean pastor David Jang. Following those firings, senior writer Matthew Cooper quit in protest, criticizing NMG for its “reckless leadership” on his way out the door. NMG co-owner Etienne Uzac and finance director Marion Kim, Uzac’s wife, stepped down earlier this month.
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Several dozen CNN Digital employees are set to lose their jobs in a re-structuring and re-organization of several departments at the network. According to a report in Vanity Fair, the changes will affect employees who work for divisions including CNN Money, video, tech and social publishing. In addition, the company will be paring down such digital endeavors as virtual reality productions and its efforts on Snapchat, where it recently axed a live daily webcast four months into its run. “Not every new project has paid off so we will stop some activities in order to reallocate those resources and enable future experimentation,” a CNN spokesman said in part in a statement. Despite coming in at $20 million under its 2017 revenue targets, CNN Digital remains profitable, generating $370 million in revenue for the year. CNN currently has more than 600 employees in its digital operations. The cuts, which should affect less than 10 percent of that workforce, are expected to come by the end of the week.
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Amazon.com has named NBC Entertainment president Jennifer Salke head of Amazon Studios, its movie and television unit. Salke takes over following the resignation of Roy Price amid sexual misconduct allegations. Her new position at Amazon will mark the first time she has run a world-wide digital business or worked in movies. At NBC, she spearheaded the development of such shows as the drama “This Is Us” and the comedy “The Good Place,” as well as overseeing Universal Television, NBCUniversal’s production studio. Before coming to NBC, she was a television executive at 21st Century Fox. Amazon Studios has an annual budget of more than $4.5 billion, according to people at the company, and while it has produced such successful films as “The Big Sick” and “Manchester by the Sea,” it is looking for greater traction in the television series sector. According to Variety, Salke plans to remain at NBC during a transition period.
Versant Media Group, the NBCUniversal cable TV spin-off, today reported its first financial results as 2025 revenues dipped 5.3 percent to $6.7B and standalone EBITDA dropped 9.1 percent to $2.2B.
Trump Media & Technology Group is discussing a spin-off of the Truth Social platform following the expected closing of its $6B merger deal with TAE Technologies... Condé Nast sells off Them, the digital LGBTQ-focused platform it launched in 2017, to Equalpride, publisher of Out, The Advocate, Out Traveler, Health PLUS Wellness and Pride.com... CBS News has parted ways with longevity influencer Peter Attia, one of the 19 contributors that editor-in-chief Bari Weiss brought on as part of her plan to present a wider variety of voices on the platform. 
Symbolic.ai forms a partnership with News Corp to begin using the company’s AI-native publisher platform in the newsrooms of News Corp publications to augment research, writing and publishing... Mediaite launches a newsletter that promises to give readers a summary of—media newsletters... The Fund for American Studies launches the Journalism Excellence Fellowship, a program that will provide promising young journalists the opportunity to work alongside top writers, reporters, and media professionals.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has roots going back to 1786, is going out of business, the paper’s owners, Block Communications, announced on Jan. 7... GQ editor Will Welch is stepping down to take on a new Paris-based role with the musician Pharrell, who is also men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton... Semafor says it has raised $30 million on a $330 million valuation, following its first profitable year. 
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach an agreement that will make a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars available for use by Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform... CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has moved Tony Dokoupil, a co-host at “CBS Mornings” since 2019, into the anchor’s chair for the “CBS Evening News,” following the departure of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois... USA Today editor-in-chief Caren Bohan has left the paper.
