 |
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.”
 |
| 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.
 |
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.
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.
