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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.
USA TODAY brings on Jamie Stockwell as VP of news, effective March 30. Stockwell was most recently deputy managing editor of news for the Washington Post... YouTube expands its likeness detection capabilities to a pilot group of government officials, journalists and political candidates... The AP Fund for Journalism adds 50 news organizations to its local news program, bringing the total number of participating newsrooms to 100. 
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. 
