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| Ben Smith |
New York Times media columnist Ben Smith is exiting the paper to serve as editor-in-chief for a news organization being started by Justin Smith, who is leaving his position as chief executive of Bloomberg Media. In a tweet, Justin Smith said that the proposed platform would be “a new kind of global news media company that serves unbiased journalism to a truly global audience.” Before coming to the Times in 2020, Ben Smith was editor-in-chief at Buzzfeed News and he previously wrote for Politico. Justin Smith joined Bloomberg in 2013 after serving as president of Atlantic Consumer Media. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the venture, with the working title “Project Coda,” is expected to feature platforms including digital publishing, email newsletters, podcasts and digital video.
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| John Lee |
NBC Universal launches NBCUnified, a first-party identity platform that it says will let advertisers track and monitor consumer relationships without cookies or device IDs. The platform will combine data from streaming viewership, newsletter subscriptions, theme park visits and ecommerce purchases to create person-level IDs and household IDs. That information can then be matched up with first-party data from marketers and third-party data from licensed providers. “The demand for advanced audiences to be utilized is growing at an incredible pace, so we are trying to stay ahead of that,” NBCUniversal Adversiting & Partnerships chief data officer John Lee told Television News Daily.
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| Matt Abramovitz |
New England Public Media hires Matt Abramovitz as president, effective Feb. 1. Abramovitz is currently vice president of programming for New York classical music station WQXR, a part of New York Public Radio. He helped launch WQXR as a public station in 2009 and has served as its program director and interim general manager. Previously, he worked at WNYC, Blue Note Records and Sirius XM Radio. At NEPM, Abramovitz will be responsible for leading its efforts across radio, television, and digital media platforms. “He is committed to the mission and goals of public media and the role that it plays in creating and supporting a strong, vibrant, local community,” said Robert Feldman, chair of the NEPM presidential search committee. Abramovitz succeeds Martin Miller, who announced his decision to retire as president of New England Public Media last year.
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. 
CBS News is set to hand over its reins to The Free Press co-founder Bari Weiss as Paramount acquires her site for $155M... C-SPAN comes on board as an official media partner of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which is charged by Congress to lead the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence... A new Gallup survey says that the level of trust that US audiences have in the media has hit a new low.
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has named Kenneth Weinstein, former head of the conservative Hudson Institute, as ombudsman for CBS News.
