 Kareem Abdul Jabbar |
"Roseanne,” according to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, may actually be the most anti-Donald Trump show on TV. Abdul-Jabbar expresses that opinion in an April 3 Hollywood Reporter column. Abdul-Jabbar, who has been a contributing editor at the Reporter since February, writes that “it’s easy to miss the show’s uncompromising criticism of Trump because the star, Roseanne Barr, just completed an intensive talk-show publicity tour during which she adamantly proclaimed her support for Trump and touted that her show would articulate the feelings and frustrations of Trump loyalists.” Nonetheless, he says the show makes it clear that the Conner family’s problem has been made worse by the Trump administration. Before signing up with the Hollywood Reporter, Abdul-Jabbar was a regular columnist at Time, and he has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, Esquire and Huffington Post, in addition to the being the author of several books.
 Maribel Perez Wadsworth |
USA Today has named Maribel Perez Wadsworth as publisher. In addition to her new role, Wadsworth will continue to lead the paper’s consumer division, overseeing content strategy and operations, and serve as president of the USA Today Network. Wadsworth started her career at Gannett more than 20 years ago, when she worked as an agriculture beat reporter at the Rockford Register Star. She joined the corporate team in 2009, leading digital strategy for all of Gannett’s local newsrooms. In 2015, she became Gannett’s first chief strategy officer. Wadsworth joins Nicole Carroll, who was named USA Today’s editor-in-chief in February.
 Chuck Lewis |
Journalist and author Chuck Lewis has been awarded the 2018 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. The award will be presented at a ceremony in Cambridge, Mass., on May 3. A former producer at ABC News as well as CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity in 1989, and its International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 1997. In April 2016, ICIJ published the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Panama Papers,” about offshore tax havens. Lewis is also the founding executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop based at the American University School of Communication. Established in 2008, the I.F Stone Medal honors the life of investigative journalist I.F. Stone and is presented annually to a journalist whose work captures the spirit of journalistic independence, integrity and courage that characterized I.F. Stone’s Weekly, published from 1953 to 1971. The award is administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
 Olivier Knox |
SiriusXM has named Olivier Knox as its chief Washington correspondent. Knox joins SiriusXM from Yahoo! News, where he was chief Washington correspondent, and he previously covered U.S. politics for 15 years at Agence France-Presse. In July, he will be appointed president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, for which he currently serves as vice president. For more than three years he also hosted a weekly political roundtable show, Yahoo! News on P.O.T.U.S. At Sirius, Knox will provide commentary for all of the radio company’s political channels. He will also host an upcoming weeknight show about the President that will include interviews with top politicians and world leaders, break down current events and answer listener questions.
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.
