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Paramount Global, in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth,” has announced plans to shed about 3 percent of its 24,500 employees, amounting to what the Hollywood Reporter says will be about 800 eliminated positions. The cuts follow a year of corporate reorganization that has seen the company merge its Showtime and Paramount+ services and shut down MTV News. It also comes on the heels of widespread speculation that Shari Redstone, president of National Amusements (which controls Paramount Global) is planning to sell either all or part of the company. There was good news this past weekend for the company, however: Super Bowl LVIII (which was presented on its platforms CBS, Nickelodeon and Paramount+) raked in a record 123 million viewers.
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| Noah Shachtman |
Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month. His departure is due to disagreements with the magazine’s chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction it is taking. In a note to staff, Wenner said that deputy editor Sean Woods and digital director Lisa Tozzi would be taking over day-to-day editorial leadership of Rolling Stone until a new editor is named. Shachtman said he would continue to be a contributing writer for the magazine. Before taking over at Rolling Stone in 2021, he was editor of The Daily Beast.
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The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023, partly the result of 300,000 new paid digital subscribers in Q4, the Times Company said on Feb. 7. In the last three months of the year, the Times reported $676.2 million in total revenue, which was essentially flat with 2022. However, operating profit spiked 8.5 percent, hitting $154 million. Things were even looking up—relatively—at The Athletic, the company’s sports vertical. Though it posted a $4.4 million operating loss, that’s a significant drop from the year-earlier figure of $9.6 million and comes on the heels of a 31.3 percent jump in revenue, to $38.5 million. The Times also appears to be well on the way to hitting its goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027, with 10.36 million subscribers at the end of last year. But it looks quite unlikely that the company will be able to close that gap with print subscribers. There were 730,000 of them at the end of 2022—a number that dipped to 660,000 by the end of 2023.
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| Dale R. Anglin |
Press Forward, a coalition of funders that is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms, close longstanding gaps in journalism coverage, advance public policy that expands access to local news and scale infrastructure the sector needs to thrive, names Dale R. Anglin as its inaugural director. Anglin comes to Press Forward from the Cleveland Foundation, where she has served as VP for proactive grantmaking, leading the effort to invest in a regional network of nonprofit journalism initiatives, including the creation of Documenters Cleveland and Signal, the nonprofit newsroom of Cleveland and Ohio. “Dale’s deep experience in leading funder collaboratives, centering equity, and growing nonprofit journalism initiatives will serve this coalition well as we continue to build a movement for local news,” said John Palfrey, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a Press Forward coalition member.
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. 
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach an agreement that will make a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars available for use by Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform... CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has moved Tony Dokoupil, a co-host at “CBS Mornings” since 2019, into the anchor’s chair for the “CBS Evening News,” following the departure of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois... USA Today editor-in-chief Caren Bohan has left the paper.
