 |
| Josh Frydenberg |
Australia’s government says it will start forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news content.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had been working to reach a voluntary agreement with the platforms to pay traditional media for their content, but Australian treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that those negotiations have resulted in “no meaningful progress.”
According to an op-ed Frydenberg wrote in the Australian, the code will include provisions for revenue sharing, transparency of ranking algorithms and access to user data, as well as sanctions and penalties for non-compliance.
A draft of the mandatory code is expected to be ready by the end of July, with the final text to be agreed upon by the Australian government soon after that.
A report in the Guardian says that “dozens of regional newspapers” have stopped printing since the onset of the coronavirus crisis due to declines in advertising revenue.
Underscore Media, a new creator-led media venture dedicated to New York sports, is built around three established New York sports personalities, Sal Licata, Jimmy Traina, and John Jastremski.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
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.
