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| Rashida Jones |
MSNBC names Rashida Jones president, effective Feb. 1. Jones, who will be the first Black woman to lead a major cable news network, joined MSNBC as an executive producer in 2013, and is currently senior vice president, overseeing daytime news coverage for the network. She will succeed Phil Griffin, who has been MSNBC president since 2008. “Rashida knows and understands MSNBC, in part because it’s where she started when she first joined NBCU seven years ago,” he said in a memo to employees “She knows that it is the people who work here that make it great, and she understands its culture. She also appreciates the impact and potential of the brand.”
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| Monica Richardson |
The Miami Herald appoints Monica Richardson as executive editor, making her the first Black executive editor in the paper’s 117-year history. Richardson, who comes on board at the Herald on Jan. 1, is currently senior managing editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Before coming to the AJC in 2007, she worked at the Charlottesville Observer, Florida Times-Union and Lexington Herald-Leader. In her new position, Richardson will also oversee el Nuevo Herald and the Bradenton Herald, and serve as McClatchy’s Florida regional editor (McClatchy is the Herald’s owner.) “She has a strong record of leadership in local journalism at one of the great metro newsrooms in the country. Now, she brings her commitment to accountability journalism and a track record of successful digital innovation that serves local audiences,” said McClatchy senior vice president of news Kristin Roberts.
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The Hartford Courant is the latest Tribune Publishing newspaper to leave its physical office space behind. On Dec. 27, the paper is vacating the building it has occupied since the mid-1940s. Employees that include the Courant’s advertising staff and reporters have worked from home since March, so the offices have mostly been empty. Other Tribune papers that have closed their newsrooms include the New York Daily News, the Orlando Sentinel, Capital Gazette in Annapolis, MD, and the Morning Call in Allentown, PA.
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.
