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ViacomCBS is axing between 300 and 400 employees, citing financial pressure from the coronavirus pandemic and the effects of last year’s merger between Viacom and CBS. The cuts include staffers at CBS Entertainment, CBS News, CBS Sports, CBS Studios and CBS Television Studios. The Los Angeles Times reports that 12 people are being let go at Chicago CBS-affiliate WBBM. At CBS News, five percent of the division’s 1,400 full-time employees are expected to lose their jobs. “Working with reduced budgets, we have had to make some extremely difficult decisions,” CBS News president Susan Zirinsky said in a memo to employees. “But this restructuring is necessary to ensure CBS News remains strong long into the future.”
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| Jonathan Karp |
Simon & Schuster (which is owned by ViacomCBS) has named Jonathan Karp president and CEO, effective immediately. Karp succeeds Carolyn Reidy, who passed away earlier this month. He most recently served as president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, which includes Atria Books, Avid Reader Press, Gallery Books, Scribner, Simon & Schuster and their associated sub-imprints. Before joining Simon & Schuster in 2010, Karp was founder, publisher and editor in chief of Twelve, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group. “Jon embodies the values that Carolyn instilled at Simon & Schuster, and he is well suited to guide the continued growth and evolution of this incredible global brand,” said ViacomCBS president and CEO Bob Bakish. ViacomCBS recently announced plans to sell Simon & Schuster.
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A “news segment" about Amazon that was aired on local television stations around the country was actually put together by Amazon’s PR unit. A video from nonprofit media company Courier Newsroom shows reporters from stations in California, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Georgia reading the same Amazon-provided script, which puts a favorable spin on the company’s role in delivering essential groceries and cleaning products during the COVID-19 pandemic, while "keeping its employees safe and healthy." The video footage that accompanied the reports also came from Amazon. “Just got an email from Amazon’s PR team with a pre-edited news story and script to run in our shows. They are selling this as giving our viewers an ‘inside look’ at the company’s response to COVID-19,” Zach Rael, an anchor for ABC affiliate KOCO 5 News in Oklahoma City said in a Tweet. A statement from Amazon said the package was designed to aid news media that cannot shoot on location during the pandemic.
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.
Trump Media & Technology Group is discussing a spin-off of the Truth Social platform following the expected closing of its $6B merger deal with TAE Technologies... Condé Nast sells off Them, the digital LGBTQ-focused platform it launched in 2017, to Equalpride, publisher of Out, The Advocate, Out Traveler, Health PLUS Wellness and Pride.com... CBS News has parted ways with longevity influencer Peter Attia, one of the 19 contributors that editor-in-chief Bari Weiss brought on as part of her plan to present a wider variety of voices on the platform. 
Symbolic.ai forms a partnership with News Corp to begin using the company’s AI-native publisher platform in the newsrooms of News Corp publications to augment research, writing and publishing... Mediaite launches a newsletter that promises to give readers a summary of—media newsletters... The Fund for American Studies launches the Journalism Excellence Fellowship, a program that will provide promising young journalists the opportunity to work alongside top writers, reporters, and media professionals.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has roots going back to 1786, is going out of business, the paper’s owners, Block Communications, announced on Jan. 7... GQ editor Will Welch is stepping down to take on a new Paris-based role with the musician Pharrell, who is also men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton... Semafor says it has raised $30 million on a $330 million valuation, following its first profitable year. 
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach an agreement that will make a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars available for use by Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform... CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has moved Tony Dokoupil, a co-host at “CBS Mornings” since 2019, into the anchor’s chair for the “CBS Evening News,” following the departure of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois... USA Today editor-in-chief Caren Bohan has left the paper.
