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Condé Nast will be putting all of its titles behind a paywall by the end of the year. The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Wired already require consumers to subscribe in order to access more than four articles each month. The new paywalls, affecting such publications as Architectural Digest, Vogue and GQ, will not uniformly follow that plan. “Some brands may have specific content that will be gated, and some will have a wider metered paywall,” Bob Sauerberg, the exiting CEO of the company, said in a memo. “Every brand is distinct, and every brand’s paywall will be its own distinct product.” The paywalls are part of what the company says is a plan to generate $600 million in new revenue. Condé Nast is reported to have lost $120 million in 2017.
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A day after racking up 15 Oscar nominations for its films, Netflix has officially joined the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade association representing Hollywood’s six major film studios (Disney, Paramount, Sony, Fox, Universal and Warner Bros.). “Adding Netflix will allow us to even more effectively advocate for the global community of creative storytellers,” said MPAA chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin in a statement. Netflix is the first internet streaming service to become a member of the group. The MPAA has long been active in the fight against online piracy, a topic that has become more important to Netflix as the streamer continues to produce more original content. Netflix left the Internet Association, a trade group representing such tech companies as Google, Amazon and Facebook, earlier this month.
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San José Spotlight, a news site serving the San Jose Silicon Valley region, has launched. Solely funded through community contributions, it will be the South Bay region’s first nonprofit news organization dedicated to political and business reporting. The site has raised nearly $84,000 from 320 individual donors. The San José Spotlight team is led by editor Ramona Giwargis and director of development Joshua Barousse. Giwargis has served as state government reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and city hall reporter for the San Jose Mercury News. Barousse has been a policy analyst in the offices of San Jose City Councilmembers Ash Kalra and Sylvia Arenas and state Sen. Jerry Hill. “San José Spotlight aims to be a conversation-starter around the issues affecting residents as well as be a responsible voice of journalism for those in our community,” said Giwargis. Singer Assocs. handled the Spotlight launch.
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. 
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. 
