 Edward Felsenthal |
The editorial merry-go-round continues to spin at several major magazine publishers. Edward Felsenthal is taking over for Nancy Gibbs as editor-in-chief at Time. Gibbs announced her resignation on Tuesday. Felsenthal has been with Time since 2013, first as editor of Time Digital and then as group digital director, news and lifestyle for Time Inc. Before coming to Time, he was co-founder and executive editor of digital news site The Daily Beast and spent 15 years at the Wall Street Journal. Condé Nast has seen its second editor-in-chief leave in the past two weeks as Cindi Leive announced her departure from Glamour. Leive has run the title since 2001, and has been with Condé Nast for 29 years. She will remain with the company until the end of the year.
 Hope Hicks |
Hope Hicks, who has served as interim White House communications director since August 16, will now assume the position on a permanent basis. Before taking the interim position, Hicks was the President’s director of strategic communications. She will be the Trump administration’s third full-time communications director, replacing Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired in July. Her working relationship with Trump started when she was employed by Hiltzik Strategies. She left that job to work for the Trump Organization. The White House has also appointed Republican strategist and commentator Mercedes Schlapp as a senior communications adviser, in addition to promoting Raj Shah to principal deputy for press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Steven Cheung to head of strategic response.
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Russia Today, which is funded by the Russian government, is being investigated for possibly violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It says on its website that “the company that supplies all services for RT America channel, including TV production and operations, in the US, has received a letter from the US Department of Justice, claiming that the company is obligated to register under FARA due to the work it does for RT.” The name of that company, however, was not disclosed. This comes on the heels of an FBI investigation of Sputnik, another Russian-based news service. In both cases, it is claimed that the news service in question runs as a propaganda arm of the Russian government. According to The Hill, a January report from the U.S. intelligence community called RT America a “state-run propaganda machine” that “has positioned itself as a domestic U.S channel and has deliberately sought to obscure any legal ties to the Russian Government.”
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.
