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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. Symbolic assists with such tasks as audio transcription, document extraction, newsletter creation and fact-checking. The first platform on board will be Dow Jones Newswires, which is owned by Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch and other titles. Dow Jones Newswires claims its early use of Symbolic yielded productivity gains of as much as 90 percent for such tasks as audio transcription, document extraction, newsletter creation and fact-checking. “The Symbolic team’s deep editorial roots are obvious in their sincere appreciation of provenance, and their patent desire to create products that enhance, not deface, demean or devalue journalism,” said News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson.
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Mediaite launches a media newsletter that promises to give readers a summary of—media newsletters. The Mediaite One Sheet is being touted by the platform as “a fast, five-minute briefing featuring the hottest scoops, sharpest analysis, and biggest swings across each day’s media newsletters.” The new initiative will be headed up by Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall, who has served as a VP at HBO and iHeart Media. Among the newsletters and Substack pages set to be covered by the Mediaite One Sheet are Adweek’s On Background, Axios’s Media Trends, Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News, CNN’s Reliable Sources, the Columbia Journalism Review, Morning Brew, The Poynter Report and PR Daily. While Mediaite founder Dan Abrams told the New York Times that “there is definitely a level of meta here,” he is still betting that newshounds will shell out $79.99 per year to streamline their media newsletter reading habits.
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The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit that hosts academic internship programs, 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 Washington Post and Boston Globe will each host one Fellow on their editorial staffs in 2026. TFAS will continue to announce new Journalism Excellence Fellowship partnerships with news publications throughout 2026. “The Journalism Excellence Fellowship is designed to develop writers who can engage complex issues thoughtfully, challenge prevailing orthodoxies when warranted, and contribute original, well-reasoned perspectives to the national conversation,” said director of the TFAS Center for Excellence in Journalism Ryan Wolfe. “By investing in principled editorial voices early in their careers, we hope to strengthen the quality and credibility of opinion journalism for years to come.”
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.
Michael Kaminer, who was responsible for the Observer’s “Power List” for the past 13 years, has cut ties with the publication... The New York Times Company continues the march toward its goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027... The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is providing more than $6 million in funding to eight organizations working to address the challenges local news and information environments face along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Conservative outlets Fox News, Newsmax and the Daily Caller are holding back from signing Pete Hegseth’s edict restricting press access in the Pentagon... CBS News sees the first executive departure of the Bari Weiss era as head of standards and practices Claudia Milne exits... Indiana University shuts down the print version of The Indiana Daily Student.
Rothschild family plans to unload 26.7 percent stake in The Economist... STAT, a digital media company that focuses the life sciences, brings back Damian Garde, who anchored its biotech newsletter and podcast from 2016 to 2024... High Times officially resumes print publication (following its 2024 shutdown) with the release of a limited-edition, collectible 50th anniversary issue. 
