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| Dan Peres |
The reboot of news and gossip site Gawker, which was announced earlier this year, has been postponed, according to a report in the New York Post. The site’s entire staff, including former Details editor Dan Peres, has been laid off. Bustle Digital Group, which owns Gawker, said in a statement that it was putting the site on the back burner for the time being in favor of “our most recent acquisitions, Mic, The Outline, Nylon and Inverse.” Bustle’s owner Bryan Goldberg, who also founded sports site Bleacher Report, purchased Gawker at a bankruptcy auction last summer. That auction came after Gawker Media lost a legal battle against wrestler Hulk Hogan over its publication of a sex tape. Goldberg told the Post he plans to relaunch the site at a later, unspecified date.
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Newsday Media Group is offering voluntary buyouts to some employees as it shifts its focus toward events and video production. The number of buyouts to be granted has not yet been determined, but the company says that those taking the buyout will receive three weeks’ pay for every year of service. The eligible employees work in Newsday’s newsroom, advertising, marketing and finance departments. “Newsday is transforming from a traditional newspaper into a leading-edge multimedia and multiplatform content-generation machine,” said company spokeswoman Kim Como. The buyouts come as Newsday Media Group prepares to move into a new headquarters building that has a television studio and theater equipped for live broadcasts, and follow a round of involuntary buyouts for pressmen, truck drivers and collators that were made last year.
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Johnson Publishing, the former owner of Ebony and Jet magazines, has sold its photography archive, which contains close to a million photographs and 3.35 million unprocessed negatives dating back to 1948. A group of private foundations led by the J. Paul Getty Trust placed the winning $30 million bid for the archive at a bankruptcy auction in Chicago on July 24. The group also includes the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The foundations have pledged to donate the archives to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and “other leading cultural institutions for the public benefit and to ensure the broadest access for the general public and use by scholars, researchers, journalists and other interested parties.”
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. 
