 Justin Dearborn |
Tribune Publishing chairman and CEO Justin Dearborn has stepped down. Tim Knight, currently president of the company will move to the CEO spot and will join Tribune’s board. David Dreier will assume the chairman role. Dearborn had been chief executive since 2016, when he took over from Michael Ferro, who resigned following allegations of sexual misconduct outside the company. In December, the company terminated negotiations to sell the newspaper chain to the California-based McClatchy Co.
 |
The Forward, which started out as TheJewish Daily Forward in April 1897, is stopping its print editions. It will continue to produce an English-language and a Yiddish-language edition online. The publication also plans to lay off about 40 percent of its editorial staff — including editor-in-chief Jane Eisner, executive editor Dan Friedman, digital director David Goldiner, design director Kurt Hoffman and vice president of marketing Kathleen Chambard. Started as a Yiddish-language daily, the Forward launched an English-language weekly edition in 1990, which became a monthly magazine in 2017. Over the years, writers at the paper have included Elie Wiesel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Cynthia Ozick and Phillip Lopate. The Forward says the shift to digital-only is meant to capitalize on its growth among under-35 readers who prefer to read news online. Currently it says that segment amounts to a third of total readers.
 |
INTO, the news platform launched in August 2017 by gay dating app Grindr, laid off all editorial and social staffers on Jan. 15, according to a statement issued by the site’s editors. Grindr says it is shifting its focus from editorial content to a video-based format. “This decision was driven by the high user engagement and development we see through channels such as Twitter and YouTube,” the company said in a statement to The Wrap. INTO’s editor-in-chief, Zach Stafford, left the site to take the EIC post at The Advocate last year following anti-LGBTQ comments made by Grindr president Scott Chen.
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.
