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| Pete Hesgeth |
Fox News, Newsmax and the Daily Caller are holding back from signing Pete Hegseth’s edict restricting press access in the Pentagon, but it seems like the opposition to the new rules is not quite unanimous. Among the 15 who have signed on, according to the Washington Post, are cable network One America News and Falun Gong mouthpiece the Epoch Times. Website the Federalist, which expects the new guidelines to “result in fewer professional con artists and media hoaxers roaming the halls looking for new lies to peddle,” also indicated its agreement with the restrictions. A reporter for Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian initially gave the rules a thumbs-up, but then backtracked after the WaPo story. The Hegseth line also had several takers in Turkey: a reporter for the Turkish newspaper Akşam, three individuals from the state-run Anadolu Agency and two freelancers. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, was in step with the signees, calling the new policy “common sense media procedures.” However, Newsmax CEO and majority owner Christopher Ruddy called the new requirements “unnecessary and onerous.”
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| Claudia Milne |
CBS News sees the first executive departure of the Bari Weiss era. Head of standards and practices Claudia Milne, who came to CBS News in 2019 as a managing editor of CBS This Morning, announced on Oct. 16 that she was leaving. While not naming any names, Milne did note that her exit came in the midst of “complicated times” for the company. Shortly after Weiss took on her new job, she sent a memo to staff requesting that each employee submit a written statement describing their job duties and offering feedback on the organization, after which the Writers Guild of America East advised its members against responding until further details were provided by the company. CBS also recently got a new ombudsman: former Trump adviser Kenneth Weinstein. “It’s times like this that what we do matters most,” Milne said in a note that was obtained by Variety. “I believe our role as journalists is to hold the powerful to account.”
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Indiana University shuts down the print version of The Indiana Daily Student. The closure follows the firing of the IU media school’s director of student media Jim Rodenbush, who was the paper’s advisor. Rodenbush claims that he was dismissed because he refused to order the students to stop publishing news, as he said the university had demanded. The day after Rodenbush was terminated, the university prohibited the students from publishing a planned print edition of the newspaper, saying they could only publish online going forward. The university says the move to digital-only was simply a way of addressing the newspaper’s financial deficit, not about controlling what the students publish. But Daily Student co-editor Andrew Miller counters that “the media school tries to construe this as a business decision, but fundamentally they are trying to tell us what we can and cannot print.”
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.
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.
