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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.”
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.
