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The Irish Voice, a New York-based newspaper that focuses on news and stories from an Irish-American perspective, put out its last print edition on July 5. First published in the fall of 1987, the paper was targeted at Irish immigrants who were then moving to the US in large numbers. Its editorial content, along with founder Niall O’Dowd’s twice-weekly column, will now appear on IrishCentral.com. The Voice’s other publication, Irish America, remains in print, and its event management side, which includes the Irish Legal 100 and Wall Street 50, continues to operate. “We have been a crusading paper,” O’Dowd wrote. “We are, indeed, an activist paper; we don’t believe in journalism that uses phrases like, ‘On the one hand and the other.’ Have an opinion and defend it!”
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| Pablo Rodrguez |
Canada's federal government plans to pull all its advertising from Facebook and Instagram in the wake of Meta's move to restrict news content for Canadians. That move followed the passage of a law by Canada’s parliament that will force tech firms to pay media outlets for news that appears on their platforms. Canadian officials say they are still attempting to avert a similar situation with Alphabet, which has also announced plans to block news content for users in Canada. Canadian heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez says that suspending government advertising will cost Facebook and Instagram about 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.5m) per year.
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Meta also unveils its rival to Twitter. Threads, a companion app to the company’s Instagram, went live on July 5, snagging 10 million users in its first seven hours of operation. Meta has what would seem to be a built-in audience for the app, since users will access Threads via their Instagram account, and Instagram has more than 2.35 billion users. Twitter trails far behind, with more than 360 million worldwide users. Threads is currently available in more than 100 countries for iOS and Android, but users in the European Union are going to have to wait while a series of issues involving user privacy are hashed out.
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.
