 Katie Couric |
Katie Couric is developing an online video series for theSkimm, a digital-media company whose main claim to fame is a daily email newsletter with 6 million subscribers, the majority of them young women.
“Getting There,” which, according to the Wall Street Journal, will profile such prominent women as “Barefoot Contessa” host Ina Garten and Instagram head of fashion partnerships Eva Chen, will be sponsored by Procter & Gamble.
Procter & Gamble chief brand officer Marc Pritchard told the Journal that sponsoring Couric’s series is part of the company’s move toward taking more control of the online content with which its advertising appears. That move was partly spurred by several incidents in which YouTube was running P&G ads alongside content that was deemed objectionable.
Most recently global news anchor at Yahoo! following a long network television career, Couric has been taking more control of the content she is a part of as well. “Getting There” will be produced by Katie Couric Media, a production company whose controlling investors are Couric and her husband, John Molner. The company’s previous output includes “America Inside Out” and “Gender Revolution,” two documentary series that are collaborations with the National Geographic Channel.
Couric says she will have complete editorial independence in creating the series.
TheSkimm plans to distribute “Getting There” through its pages on such social media outlets as Facebook and Instagram. The company says that it has two million followers from those two platforms.
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.
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USA TODAY brings on Jamie Stockwell as VP of news, effective March 30. Stockwell was most recently deputy managing editor of news for the Washington Post... YouTube expands its likeness detection capabilities to a pilot group of government officials, journalists and political candidates... The AP Fund for Journalism adds 50 news organizations to its local news program, bringing the total number of participating newsrooms to 100. 
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