digital news

Five years after parting ways with the Disney-ABC Television Group, Ben Sherwood is getting back in the media game. The one-time ABC News president has been granted a minority stake in The Daily Beast, the news and opinion site created by Tina Brown in 2008 an owned by Barry Diller’s IAC Inc.

The flow of traffic to Donald Trump’s most loyal digital-media boosters isn’t just slowing; it’s utterly collapsing.

Vice was once promised to become the brash young voice of news. But wild expenses, shady deals, and greed turned it into “a fucking clown show.”

Karen Gadbois has kept The Lens alive as other newsrooms have crumbled. Her next move is important not just for her outlet, but a whole industry.

Initial distributors are Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus, Xumo Play, Vizio WatchFree Plus, Sling Freestream and Plex.

Deadspin has laid off its existing staff after G/O Media agreed to sell the sports news site to European startup Lineup Publishing. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller revealed the update in a company-wide email on Monday.

NBC News Now — which is a free streaming service distributed across more than 20 platforms — serves as a seamless extension of NBC’s linear programming, and that linear-to-streaming symbiosis is believed to be the key to NBC News’ future. “The tradition of providing high-quality, free content is in the DNA of NBC and so it’s the future and the past, merged together,” says Janelle Rodriguez EVP of programming. “We’re using the same studios, control rooms, and are treating it like one big production.”

Vice, which filed for bankruptcy last year before being sold for $350 million to a consortium led by the Fortress Investment Group, is also looking to sell its Refinery 29 publishing business, CEO Bruce Dixon said in his memo to staff. It’s the latest sign of financial problems buffeting the media industry.

An aging A-list, AI anchors and agents struggling to justify superstar paydays: “The trend is to replace them with people they can pay considerably less.”

At the end of the year, The Times had 10.36 million subscribers, 9.7 million of them digital-only.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a video posted to X on Tuesday that he is in Moscow to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin rarely gives interviews, particularly to Western journalists. Carlson, however, is cited frequently on Russian state TV because of his opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine’s war effort, embrace of other Russian-friendly narratives and criticism of President Biden. Carlson said the interview would air “unedited” on his website and on X. He also accused the mainstream media of a pro-Ukraine bias and unwillingness to cover Putin’s point of view.

The tech giant is paying an undisclosed but significant sum to the media company as it launches “Signals.” The feature intends to “offer readers diverse, sophisticated perspectives and insights on the biggest stories in the world as they develop,” Semafor wrote on Monday.

The Messenger, the upstart digital news outlet that hired hundreds of journalists and vowed to upend the industry as a centrist publication, will shut down less than a year after its high-profile launch, the company said Wednesday. The collapse of the outlet, founded by media entrepreneur Jimmy Finkelstein, marks one of the largest and swiftest failures of a media outlet in recent memory. The Messenger’s closure comes just eight months after its debut that was built on a strategy of generating gobs of internet traffic from social media platforms and search engines despite broader industry headwinds.

In an internal note about the job cuts, the company’s chief executive cited its plan to shift focus solely to news coverage of business, tech and innovation.

Mass layoffs, closures and reader fatigue are afflicting news organizations as Americans prepare for a consequential election year.

The dismissal of a beloved editor and Pulitzer-winning journalist raises questions about the future of the well-funded Houston Landing, and nonprofit news in general.

Three new shows will debut on Scripps News this month, focusing on politics and the economy. Local reporters in key battleground states will contribute on-the-ground coverage.

The company, which debuted last year with big plans to disrupt journalism, generated only $3 million in revenue by the end of December.

In a memo, Stephanopoulos says he decided to step aside to give CEO Mark Thompson the “freest hand possible” to shape the organization.

The “post-cable” news network said “unforeseen internal and external factors” caused the sudden work stoppage.

The Iowa Caucus set to take place on Monday, Jan. 15, represents the first major presidential contest of the long election season, and NBC News is preparing for it with Closing Arguments: Iowa, a series of in-depth interviews with a trio of Republican presidential candidates.

The company, an aggressive entrant to the digital news space, is expected to cut roughly two-dozen employees this week.

Altice USA closed a deal on Thursday to sell the youth-skewing business news streaming channel Cheddar News to Archetype, a media company owned by private equity firm Regent LP.