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| Lauren Petterson |
Lauren Petterson has been named president of FOX Business Network. Petterson has been with Fox since 2008, most recently as senior vice president of morning programming and talent development. She has also overseen “Fox & Friends” for the past 11 years. Before coming to Fox, Petterson served as an executive producer at both CBS News and WPIX-TV in New York. In addition to her new role, she will continue to oversee talent development. Petterson succeeds Brian Jones, who helped launch FOX Business Network in 2007, and took over as president when Bill Shine left in 2017. Fox gave no reason for Jones’s departure.
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| Richard Gingras |
Google has made changes to its search guidelines that the company says will prioritize original reporting and make it more visible online. “While we typically show the latest and most comprehensive version of a story in news results, we’ve made changes to our products globally to highlight articles that we identify as significant original reporting,” Google vp, news Richard Gingras wrote in a Sept. 12 blog post. “Such articles may stay in a highly visible position longer.” The new guidelines will also give a higher profile to news sources that have a strong reputation for original reporting. The announcement comes as Google, along with Amazon, Apple and Facebook are receiving increasing scrutiny from the US government. According to MediaPost, leaders of the House Judiciary Committee and its subcommittee on antitrust have sent letters to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt requesting information regarding antitrust concerns.
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A recently released report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism looks at the problems facing local news and picks the brains of 54 media executives to find some possible solutions to those problems. The Medill News Leaders Project 2019 is part of the school’s attempt to find the markers of success for local news outlets and to provide supporting data for what they call “Market-Based Opportunities in Local News Innovation.” The executives offering their opinions include senior vice president of news at Gatehouse Media Bill Church, Washington Post director of strategic initiatives Jeremy Gilbert and Vox Media publisher Melissa Bell. Among the takeaways: transitioning to a user-pay model is seen as a key method to develop a sustainable business model for local news; local TV is almost certainly going to see the same kinds of disruption that have faced print media; and nonprofit news organizations are experimenting with promising new revenue models that include philanthropic support. To read the full report, click here.
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.
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.
