 Edward Felsenthal |
Time magazine is keeping Edward Felsenthal on as editor-in-chief and is adding CEO to his job title. Felsenthal said that the magazine expects to hire 60 people, including 30 new editorial staffers plus executives in charge of revenue, technology and human resources. He also affirmed Time’s commitment to remaining a print publication. The magazine was purchased from Meredith by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, in a $190 million deal that closed last week. Time’s connections with its previous owner will remain, however. The deal struck for the magazine included an arrangement for Meredith to keep on printing and distributing it.
 Kara Swisher |
Tech website Recode is being folded into Vox.com, whose parent company Vox Media purchased the site in 2015. Recode is expected to relaunch on Vox in early 2019. Dan Frommer will be leaving his post as editor of the site, but Recode founder Kara Swisher will remain a part of the company. According to the Wall Street Journal, the site drew 1.36 million unique viewers in September 2018, down 50 percent from 2.77 million unique viewers in September 2017. However, the other parts of Recode’s business—its podcasts, newsletters and conferences—have seen an uptick in their audiences, according to a Vox Media spokeswoman. In a piece on Recode, Swisher said that the site plans to “invest in more writers, more resources, more editorial reach with a more ambitious editorial vision.”
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Quad Graphics has acquired LSC Communications in an all-stock transaction valued at $1.4 billion. The move is the latest in a wave of printing industry consolidations that have greatly reduced the number of options that publications have. Quad and LSC rank No. 2 and 3 on Printing Impressions’ 2017 list of the 400 top printers serving the United States and Canada, trailing only printing conglomerate RR Donnelley. LSC, which serves the catalog, book and magazine printing space, was spun off from Donnelley in 2016. Quad says that the merger will bring about a series of “business efficiencies” that will result in $135 million in savings in less than two years.
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.
