 Katrina vanden Heuvel |
Katrina vanden Heuvel, who has been editor of The Nation since 1995, is stepping down as of June 15. One of the publication’s owners, vanden Heuvel will remain publisher and editorial director. Her successor is D. D. Guttenplan, who has been with The Nation since 1997, most recently as editor-at-large. In 2015, he co-edited the magazine’s 150th Anniversary issue with vanden Heuvel. He has also served as editor-in-chief of the London-based Jewish Quarterly. The Nation’s circulation is currently about 132,000—down from a peak of 186,000 in 2006, according to the New York Times. Under vanden Heuvel’s leadership, The Nation transformed itself into a multi-platform operation, with a Twitter feed it says has more than 1.24 million followers. In addition, over 30 percent of its online audience (theNation.com along with Facebook and Instagram pages) consists of readers between 18 and 34 yeard old.
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The Zagat New York City restaurant guide is set to reappear in print. The guide, which produced its last print version in fall 2016, has been an online entity since then. According to the New York Times, Zagat.com is issuing its 2020 survey this fall. Google acquired Zagat from founders Tim and Nina Zagat in 2011 for $151 million. Restaurant rating and guides platform The Infatuation bought it from Google for an undisclosed sum last year. The Infatuation founder and chief executive Chris Stang told the Times that “it didn’t take long to understand how much the community wanted the guide back.” As in the past, that community will be a central part of the guide. Voting for the restaurants that are to appear in the new guide is open through May 5. The New York City guide is the only version currently scheduled for a print comeback.
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The Hearst Foundations have awarded $125,000 to the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications to support the Hearst Data Deserts Project, which is intended to improve the quality of civic data. “With the Hearst Foundations’ support, we’ll be able to shine a bright spotlight on the ‘data deserts’ where public agencies are falling short in their duty to gather and report reliable, apples-to-apples data about essential public concerns." said Frank LoMonte, Brechner Center director. The grant will support two visiting fellow positions for experienced practitioners in media and technology to spend a residency working at the center on projects that work to advance the accessibility of high-quality data. It will also provide stipends and expense allowances for journalism and law students to develop and publish in-depth data journalism projects.
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.
