 |
| James Murdoch |
James Murdoch, son of News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch, is investing in a start-up accelerator aimed at supporting tech companies that want to fight fake news and develop a “more sustainable news ecosystem.”
The younger Murdoch’s Lupa Systems, a holding company that he founded after he exited his chief executive post at 21st Century Fox in the wake of last year’s Disney/Fox deal, is teaming up on the project with Betaworks, a company that has made seed and early-stage investments in such platforms as Twitter, Bitly and Medium.
Called Betalab, the program will combine investments in companies working to “fix the Internet” with a series of workshops and events intended to generate activity around those companies.
According to John Borthwick, who founded Betaworks in 2008, the goal of Betalab is to develop “tech that fixes and inoculates us against information collapse.”
In a March 5 Medium post, Borthwick said Betalab will initially focus on areas that include: protecting, detecting or authenticating synthetic media or data; building platforms that address such “negative outcomes” of social media networks as abuse, spam and disinformation; developing products to let consumers manage their personal data and privacy; and creating identity and authentication tools.
James Murdoch has taken an increasingly divergent media approach from his father since walking away from his company. In January, James and his wife chastised News Corp for its promotion of climate change skeptics as wildfires tore through Australia.
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.
