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The Financial Times has picked up a minority stake in Business of Fashion, a media company with a website, daily newsletter and print magazine that cover the fashion industry. The FT is taking the lead in the company’s Series B funding round, alongside such current partners as Index Ventures and Felix Capital. Founded in 2007 by former McKinsey consultant Imran Amed, BoF’s annual sales rose more than 50 percent annually between 2013 and 2018. It currently has an international audience of about five million for its online, print and events business, with 35,000 paying members. Annual subscriptions run $240 per year in the U.S. While FT Strategies, the FT’s consulting division will be providing BoF with support and tech expertise, BoF and the FT will remain editorially independent. “This investment will give us greater presence in the B2B and industry agenda,” said FT Group chief executive John Ridding.
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Blogging site Tumblr, which was picked up by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013, has been sold by Verizon (which acquired Yahoo in 2017) to Automattic, the owner of online-publishing platform Wordpress.com, for a price that several sources put at just $3 million. Automattic will take on Tumblr’s 200 employees. In an interview with tech website The Verge, Automattic chief executive Matt Mullenweg said that he is looking to increase the advertising revenue that Tumblr brings in. As regards the two platforms, he said that “there’s a lot of overlap in what both do. I would love for them to interoperate. I do believe that long-term, there’s an opportunity to merge backend technology so that Tumblr is actually powered by WordPress.” Mullenweg also plans to maintain the ban on adult content that was put in place at Tumblr last year.
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High Times is partnering with international awards competition Clio to launch Clio Cannabis. The new awards will recognize individuals and companies involved in marketing and advertising cannabis products. “Clio Cannabis is poised to set the bar for creative work in a rapidly expanding industry, help to build an understanding of a developing category and elevate the marketplace to solicit creative contributions from top talent and agencies,” said Clio president Nicole Purcell. Submissions in the following categories will be accepted starting Aug. 26: advocacy, brand design, digital/mobile, film/video, partnerships & collaborations, print & out of home, product design, social media and social good. Clio currently runs awards programs centering on the advertising, sports, fashion, music, entertainment and health industries. For more information about the awards, go to http://www.cliocannabisawards.com/.
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.
Michael Kaminer, who was responsible for the Observer’s “Power List” for the past 13 years, has cut ties with the publication... The New York Times Company continues the march toward its goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027... The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is providing more than $6 million in funding to eight organizations working to address the challenges local news and information environments face along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Conservative outlets Fox News, Newsmax and the Daily Caller are holding back from signing Pete Hegseth’s edict restricting press access in the Pentagon... CBS News sees the first executive departure of the Bari Weiss era as head of standards and practices Claudia Milne exits... Indiana University shuts down the print version of The Indiana Daily Student.
