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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/.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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