 Cyma Zarghami |
Cyma Zarghami is stepping down as president of Nickelodeon Group. Zarghami, who joined Nickelodeon in 1985, has served as president since 2006. With her departure, the leadership of every Viacom cable network has changed hands since Bob Bakish became Viacom president and CEO in December 2016. Debra Lee, chairman and CEO of BET Networks, exited last week. While Viacom conducts a search for a successor to lead Nickelodeon, Sarah Levy, COO of Viacom Media Networks, will lead the network on an interim basis. Levy has had oversight of both Nickelodeon and BET since February. Viacom is currently in contentious merger negotiations with CBS.
 Gerard Baker |
Gerard Baker is leaving his post as editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal. Baker, who worked for the BBC, Financial Times and Times of London before coming to the Journal in 2009, is to remain with the paper as editor-at-large, with duties that will include writing a weekend column and hosting a Journal-themed show on the Fox Business Network. Baker will be replaced as editor-in-chief by Matt Murray, who has been with the Journal since 1994, most recently serving as executive editor. While Baker oversaw an upswing in readership at the Journal, he also came under fire from staffers for being soft on President Trump. There has also been a steady stream of reporters who have left the Journal to work for other papers, with 10 of them heading to the Washington Post.
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Bob Brody, a senior VP and media strategist at Powell Tate, has a new book out, in time for Father’s Day, that talks about mothers, fathers, parenting, work and growing up. “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age” expands on essays that Brody has written for the New York Times, Washington Post and Atlantic, among other publications. It describes his experiences of being raised by deaf parents, starting his own family and leaving the freelance world behind to enter the full-time workforce, “finally resembling an adult.” The book has been excerpted in Reader’s Digest, and is available on Amazon.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. has replaced CEO and former California Congressman Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media sales executive.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being bought by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that is the parent organization of the Baltimore Banner... The British Broadcasting Corporation is axing approximately 2,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its work force... Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is also succumbing to layoff fever, announcing plans to lay off 16 percent of its employees, about 1,000 people.
CBS News Radio will go off the air on May 22, part of the axe-swinging managerial plan put into play by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss... The Economist, which was first published in 1843, is changing hands. Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith has agreed to acquire a 26.9 percent stake in the publication from Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, her family and family foundation... Nexstar Media Group says it has closed its acquisition of TEGNA, the broadcast, digital media and marketing services company that was formed in 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publicly traded companies.
