 |
| 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.
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.
Have a comment? Send it to 
No comments have been submitted for this story yet.