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The Wall Street Journal is pulling the plug on its Greater New York section, which focused on local news, effective July 9. The section, which currently employs eight journalists, was launched in 2010. Those employees will “have the chance to apply for other jobs,” according to an internal memo from Journal editor-in-chief Matt Murray. The WSJ is also launching two new sections. Life & Work, which it says will be staffed by more than 60 journalists, will focus on education for personal lifestyle choices related to the economy, and “Speed & Trending,” which will cover breaking news.
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Condé Nast agrees to a contract with unionized employees at The New Yorker, tech platform Ars Technica and music website Pitchfork, ending over two years of negotiations and averting a threatened strike. In addition to placing a cap on healthcare cost increases and formalizing a 40-hour workweek, the contract also mandates that employees can only be fired for cause. The contract is the first labor agreement made by Condé Nast in the company’s history. At The New Yorker, it covers copy editors, fact checkers and designers, but not the magazine’s writers. Negotiations are still going on between Condé Nast and the unionized employees at Wired.
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| Jared Kushner |
Former first son-in-law Jared Kushner has signed a book deal with Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Broadside says that Kushner’s book, which is scheduled to be published in early 2022, “will be the definitive, thorough recounting of the administration—and the truth about what happened behind closed doors.” It also noted that Kushner was a key player "in the administration's most significant accomplishments." The New York Post’s Keith Kelly writes that “more importantly, perhaps, for a publisher, [Kushner] and first daughter Ivanka Trump were also reportedly urging Trump as early as November 9 to concede the 2020 election to Joe Biden.” Kushner is just one of several Trump administration vets writing books. Ex-vice president Mike Pence is working with Simon & Schuster, and Post Hill Press planning to release former ex-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s “For Such a Time as This: My Faith Journey through the White House and Beyond” in December.
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.
