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| Scott Widmeyer |
Scott Widmeyer, founding managing partner and chief strategy officer at Finn Partners, is among the founders of The Overlook media platform.
The reader-supporter non-profit news site promises to be laser-focused on news in the New York Catskills’ communities on Saugerties, Hunter, Hurley, Olive, Shandaken and Woodstock, where Widmeyer resides.
Widmeyer launched Widmeyer Communications (education PR specialist) in 1987 and sold it to Finn Partners in 2013.
The Overlook team includes Jackie Kellachan, (owner of the Golden Notebook Bookstore), William van Rhoden (NYU design professor), and Elliot Toman (website developer).
They launched The Overlook, which will cover cultural, political, education and environmental issues, due to their concern about the decline of media and the future of journalism.
The Overlook was recently approved as an member of the Institute for Non-Profit News, which serves as its 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor.
The site is currently looking to hire a founding editor-in-chief.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
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.
