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Bloomberg News will cut about 90 employees, mostly editors, from its staff, according to the New York Times. In a memo to staffers, Bloomberg editor in chief John Micklethwait placed some of the blame for the move on “unnecessary back-reading or re-editing,” adding that after the reorganization, editors will report to managing editors, who would assign them stories. However, Micklethwait said new hires in priority areas such as data journalism would offset the layoffs and that he expects the company to end 2021 with as many journalists as it had before the pandemic. “We have always sought to make the newsroom better — to make us more nimble, to improve our content, and to help us ‘chronicle capitalism’ in an even more comprehensive way,” he said. Overall, Bloomberg News has more than 3,100 editorial and research employees, and Bloomberg Media is expected to bring in at least $100 million this year from consumer digital subscription revenue.
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Condé Nast is looking to trim down the amount of rent it pays for its offices in One World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The company is withholding the $2.4 million in rent it owes for January 2021 and says it may withhold more in the future if it does not reach an agreement with its landlords, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Durst Organization. Condé Nast wants to reduce its square footage and its rent per square foot at the office tower. A spokesman for Advance, which owns Condé Nast, told the Wall Street Journal that the company “continues to be in discussions about bringing the lease in 1WTC into line with current market conditions and its ongoing needs at that location.” The company has also started looking for 400,000 square feet of alternative office space for at least some of its operations, with some of that space located in Jersey City, NJ.
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Google has launched News Showcase, which pays publishers for news content, as part of its Google News app in the UK and Argentina. The service, which covers over 120 publications in the UK and 40 in Argentina, also gives readers the ability to access some of a publication’s paywalled content for free. To read that content, users must register with the individual publisher. Participating publications receive a monthly fee to curate news stories for the service, as well as for granting access to their paywalled content. The UK publications participating include Reuters, the Financial Times, The Independent, the New Statesman, and The Telegraph. News Showcase was released in Germany and Brazil last year and in Australia last week. It now includes content from over 450 publications worldwide.
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.
