digital news

It’s the latest evolution for scrappy nonprofit Mississippi Today, founded seven years ago by former NBC News executive Andy Lack. Pictured: Mississippi Today reporter Anna Wolfe (center), with her parents, Bethel and Chris Wolfe, celebrating the news that she had won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting in Jackson, Miss., in May. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)

The cable company acquired the network, once billed as “CNBC for millennials,” in 2019 for $200 million.

When WOIO, Gray’s CBS affiliate in Cleveland, launched its OTT desk, little did it know that it would lead to a company-wide initiative at Gray and give WOIO the ability to launch a live 6 p.m. newscast on its Telemundo affiliate WTCL.

The company was part of a group of bidders that offered $225 million to acquire the bankrupt media company.

Nearly 20 journalists will lose their jobs and more than 20 others will be moved to new assignments.

Fox News has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Tucker Carlson as he ramps up a competing series on Twitter that drew a combined 169 million views for its first two episodes. Fox is continuing to pay Carlson, and maintains that his contract keeps his content exclusive to Fox through Dec. 31, 2024. Carlson is making a First Amendment argument for posting on Twitter, and asserts that Fox has committed material breaches of his contract.

The company will pay more than 150 U.S. news publications to feature their content.

Lester Holt has a new way of delivering headlines to the NBC Nightly News crowd. NBC News is updating the look of its venerable evening newscast, which has been on the air since 1970 and hasn’t undergone a significant overhaul of its graphics since Brian Williams sat in the anchor chair. The new presentation will move away from traditional colors associated with evening news programs in favor of purple and a warm blue, says Marc Greenstein, senior vice president of design and product for NBC News and MSNBC. Also on tap: a new “N” that can be used in innovative fashion on the many new screens on which Nightly plays in the era of digital video.

Fox News Wednesday notified Tucker Carlson’s lawyers that the former prime-time anchor violated his contract with the network when he launched his own Twitter show on Tuesday, according to a copy of a letter obtained by Axios. A breach of contract claim sets Fox News up to explore potential legal action against Carlson, a move that would intensify the already thorny public battle between the two parties. Carlson’s lawyers told Axios that any legal action by Fox would violate his First Amendment rights.

Meta is preparing to block news for some Canadians on Facebook and Instagram in a temporary test that is expected to last the majority of the month. The Silicon Valley tech giant is following in the steps of Google, which blocked news links for about five weeks earlier this year for some of its Canadian users in response to a controversial Liberal government bill. Bill C-18, which is currently being studied in the Senate, will require tech giants to pay publishers for linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.

Facebook parent company Meta is threatening to remove news content on its platforms Instagram and Facebook in California if the state legislature passes a new proposal that would make tech companies pay publishers for news content. “If the Journalism Preservation Act passes, we will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram rather than pay into a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers,” reads a statement posted to Twitter by Meta spokesperson Andy Stone.

Bret Baier, chief political anchor at Fox News Channel, will moderate the third installment of The Senate Project series, which features senators from different ends of the political spectrum debating key issues. Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) are featured. It takes place Monday, June 12, at 11 a.m. ET at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston. The event will run live, commercial-free on Fox Nation and will air on Fox News Channel Sunday, June 18, at 10 p.m. ET.

CNN will shift the bulk of its operations behind its Spanish-language efforts to Mexico City, scaling back production of content for linear television in favor of work aimed at reaching a younger audience that favors mobile video. The move is likely to mean the elimination of jobs in Miami and Atlanta, but will also result in a ramp-up of jobs in Mexico and Los Angeles, where CNN will aim to add more than staffers, according to a person familiar with the plans, which were disclosed to employees Thursday afternoon.

The media start-up’s new backers include Henry Kravis, a founder of the private-equity giant KKR, and Jerry Yang, a Yahoo founder.

The company’s high-volume approach to digital publishing has led to duplicated stories and alienated some of its journalists. At least one editor has already resigned.

The findings in two new reports raise fresh concerns over how artificial intelligence may transform the misinformation landscape online.

Just weeks after benchmarking the number of AI-generated news and information sites at 49, NewsGuard has updated the figure to 125 — a 155% increase, according to a new report published by the news and information ratings service. “The number of AI-generated content farms continues to proliferate,” NewsGuard states, adding a new classification of “unreliable AI-generated news site,” or UAIN to the lexicon of questionable news and information content being tracked by the service.

Kyle Rogers, news director of Gray Television’s Local News Live, explains how the streaming news service has upped its game and its polish since its relocation to Washington, D.C., and settling into a more conventionally anchored approach to stitching together local reports from around the U.S. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

Vice Media Group, popular for websites such as Vice and Motherboard, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday to engineer its sale to a group of lenders, capping years of financial difficulties and top-executive departures. Vice said that the lender consortium, which includes Fortress Investment Group, Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital, will provide about $225 million in the form of a credit bid for substantially all of the company’s assets and also assume significant liabilities at closing.

Amid continued erosion of the cable bundle (and therefore the reach of cable news channels), NBC News is embarking on a fresh pitch for its NBC News Now streaming offering. The free, ad-supported streaming service (which the company says is profitable) launched four years ago, but NBC News EVP Janelle Rodriguez, who oversees News Now, thinks there is more to do. “We want to keep reintroducing ourselves to new audiences who are seeking out that kind of 24-hour news accessibility,” she says.

Puck News co-founder and CEO Joe Purzycki is leaving the company, according to an internal note sent from co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly to staff Monday obtained by Axios. Purzycki exits as Puck looks to finalize a new financing round. In his note to staff, Kelly acknowledged that Purzycki was “incredibly gifted at operationalizing start-ups during the incredibly fraught zero-to-one stage,” and that now the company is looking for a chief executive who can lead Puck through its “next phase of execution.”

Staffers at NBCUniversal Local’s experimental unit LX News got word Wednesday that they’d be shutting down. Some worry that it bodes darkly for news innovation that will connect with new generations of viewers.

Ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson is seen on newly revealed video bashing the network’s streaming service, which he produced a bevy of content for during his tenure at the company.

Kate O’Brian, president of Scripps News, explains how the bulk of its weekday broadcast hours will go to live as of May 1 and how the network manages its complex web of collaborations between its own reporters fanned out across the U.S., Scripps’ local stations, its hubs in Denver and Washington, D.C., and Scripps-owned Court TV. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

Vice News Tonight celebrated its 1,000th episode this past March, and now the award-winning weekly news program is being canceled. The cancellation, which will officially take place in May, comes as Vice Media Group begins layoffs within its Vice News unit.

Comcast has natively integrated 21 FAST (free, ad-supported TV) channels into its Xfinity Stream app. Stream users now have free access to NBC News Now, Sky News and 19 Xumo-branded channels spanning comedy, crime TV, black cinema, lifestyle, reality TV, game shows, kids and more. These channels are now integrated natively into the Stream UX and are available to all Comcast subscribers, regardless of whether they pay for Xfinity TV.

FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver is exiting ABC News as Disney ramps up layoff. ABC News will hold onto the FiveThirtyEight brand with plans to streamline the statistics-driven news and analysis site. The network plans to create a more efficient structure for FiveThirtyEight leading into the 2024 presidential election and beyond. Silver sent a message to his team in a company Slack channel warning that the Disney layoffs would impact FiveThirtyEight, and that Silver is not planning to return after his contract ends.