Media Maneuvers

Jen Wong

Jen Wong has been named chief operating officer at Reddit, the social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Wong left her position as president of digital and chief operating officer at Time Inc. in January, when the company was acquired by Meredith. She had been Time Inc,’s highest ranking female executive, overseeing The Foundry, a studio which supplies advertisers with branded and native content for advertisers as well as consumer marketing and digital advertising for Time Inc.’s brand portfolio. Wong has also held executive roles at AOL and PopSugar. At Reddit, Wong she be tasked with building out the site’s advertising platform, as well as strengthening diversity and inclusion. Reddit, which was launched in 2005 by co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, says it has 330 million monthly global users.

Following Apple’s purchase of digital newsstand business Texture in March, the company is now planning to launch its own premium news subscription service, according to a report from Bloomberg. The service, expected to be part of an upgraded version of the Apple News app, will share its revenues with the magazine publishers who are to supply it with content. Texture, which was owned by Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, Rogers Media and KKR before being bought by Apple, allowed readers to access around 200 magazines for a monthly fee of $9.99, with a premium $14.99-per-month subscription including some weekly titles. Bloomberg reported that around twenty Texture employees were let go following the acquisition, with the remaining staff and technology becoming part of the Apple News team.

According to a report in the New York Post, the Justice Department is getting close to clearing the $6.6 billion acquisition of Tribune Media by Sinclair Broadcasting. The Post story cites sources that say DoJ antitrust lawyers have contacted colleagues at the Federal Communications Commission to advise them of the move. Following the merger, Sinclair stations would reach an estimated 72 percent of US households—a far cry from the 39-percent limit currently set by the FCC. The FCC is reviewing whether or not to allow Sinclair to exceed that limit, and is expected to make its decision in August. While the merger has its share of opponents on both the left and the right, it does have the enthusiastic backing of President Trump. “Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke,” he noted in a tweet earlier this month.