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| Marty Baron |
Marty Baron announces that he is retiring from the executive editor slot at the Washington Post, effective Feb. 28. Baron has presided over a period of both critical acclaim and financial growth for the paper. Under his management, the Post has won 10 Pulitzers, the number of news staffers has grown from 580 to over 1,000, and its digital-only subscriber base has jumped by close to a million over the past year, currently coming in at more that 3 million. Baron joined the Post in 2013 after a decade-plus tenure as executive editor at the Boston Globe, where he oversaw its Pulitzer-winning coverage of the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal. Before that, he led the Miami Herald. Barron says that he is leaving the Post “well-positioned for the future,” with broadened coverage and more journalists. The paper says it plans to look at both internal and external candidates for Baron’s replacement. “Our success these past several years would not and simply could not have happened without you,” Post owner Jeff Bezos wrote about Baron in an Instagram post.
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| Joe Ricketts |
Joe Ricketts, who owned news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist, is getting back into the journalism business. Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, is starting up Straight Arrow News, an Omaha-based outlet that says it will produce bias-free coverage. Ricketts merged DNAinfo into Gothamist when he purchased the New York news outlet in 2017. He closed the merged company shortly thereafter, following a vote by employees to unionize. A longtime contributor to Republican candidates (his son, Pete Ricketts is the current Republican governor of Nebraska), Ricketts says he thinks there’s a “business opportunity” for news with no professed slant. “I think there’s a gap in the market—there’s no source for unbiased, fact-based news,” Ricketts told the Omana World-Herald.
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WGN America is also jumping on the “fact-based and unbiased” news bandwagon with its rebrand as NewsNation. Set to relaunch on March 1, NewsNation will be available in 75 million homes, thanks to new carriage deals that increased its reach by 8.5 million households. NewsNation will also add two hours of live programming to its Monday-to-Friday broadcast schedule. WGN America was acquired by local TV station chain Nexstar in 2019 as part of its $4.1 billion purchase of Tribune Media. “Rebranding WGN America as NewsNation underscores the network’s clearly defined mission of delivering fact-based and unbiased news,” said Nexstar networks division president Sean Compton.
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.
Michael Kaminer, who was responsible for the Observer’s “Power List” for the past 13 years, has cut ties with the publication... The New York Times Company continues the march toward its goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027... The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is providing more than $6 million in funding to eight organizations working to address the challenges local news and information environments face along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Conservative outlets Fox News, Newsmax and the Daily Caller are holding back from signing Pete Hegseth’s edict restricting press access in the Pentagon... CBS News sees the first executive departure of the Bari Weiss era as head of standards and practices Claudia Milne exits... Indiana University shuts down the print version of The Indiana Daily Student.
Rothschild family plans to unload 26.7 percent stake in The Economist... STAT, a digital media company that focuses the life sciences, brings back Damian Garde, who anchored its biotech newsletter and podcast from 2016 to 2024... High Times officially resumes print publication (following its 2024 shutdown) with the release of a limited-edition, collectible 50th anniversary issue. 
