 Roger Stone |
Roger Stone is planning to take Twitter to court over having his main outlet on the platform, @RogerJStoneJr, suspended. The account was taken down Saturday following an obscenity-riddled chain of posts aimed at various CNN employees after the cable network broke the story of imminent charges against Paul Manafort in the Mueller investigation of possible ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. “When AT&T aquires [sic] Time Warner the house cleaning at CNN of human excrement like @donlemon@jaketapper & dumbf—k @ananavarro will be swift,” was just one of the posts appearing on @RogerJStoneJr early Saturday. In an email sent to Politico, Stone says that Twitter’s move to shut down his account is “part and parcel of the systematic effort by the tech left to censor and silence conservative voices." The legal grounding of Stone’s potential litigation against Twitter remains uncertain, but in the meantime, his bully pulpit appears to have simply moved over to @STONEFLIK, which bills itself at “the official twitter feed for the film that will change your life”—i.e., “Get Me Roger Stone,” a documentary about Stone that is streaming on Netflix.
 Kim Wall |
Peter Madsen, the inventor of the UC3 Nautilus submarine aboard which Swedish journalist Kim Wall lost her life, has admitted that he dismembered her body. However, he still denies killing her. While Madsen initially said Wall died after being hit on the head by the submarine’s hatch, he later changed his story, saying that she died from carbon monoxide poisoning inside the submarine while he was up on deck. After Wall’s death and dismemberment, Madsen sunk the submarine. Wall, who had written for the New York Times, Guardian and South China Morning Post, was working on a feature story about Madsen, who had plans to pursue a space travel project. Police said that Madsen has agreed to remain in custody through his Nov. 15 court date.
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A bit of good news in print publishing: Meredith Corporation has bumped up the rate base of its quarterly magazine The Magnolia Journal to 1.2 million, beginning with the Spring 2018 issue. Based on the Magnolia brand founded by Chip and Joanna Gaines, hosts of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper,” the magazine debuted in Fall 2016 as a newsstand-only title with an initial run of 400,000 copies and a cover price of $7.99. “In just a year we’ve generated 1 million paid subscribers” said Meredith Magazine president Doug Olson. “On newsstands, The Magnolia Journal has averaged nearly a 70 percent sell-through rate, compared to the industry average of 25 percent.”
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Though ratings for the Oscar telecast have been trending downward for the past few years, one thing is rising: the rates that advertisers are being charged to air their spots during the awards ceremony. According to Variety, ABC is charging up to $2.6 million to run a 30-second spot on the 2018 Oscars, beating out last year’s rate of $2.1 million. One of the last true big-ticket events on the broadcast TV landscape, the Oscars have seen their ratings slide from 2014’s 43.7 million to 34.3 million in 2016 and 34.4 million last year. Despite that drop, the Variety report says, the limited amount of ads that run during the telecast increase the prominence of each ad that runs, increasing their value to advertisers.
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.
