digital news

Dotdash Meredith, the publishing giant that owns publications including People, InStyle and Better Homes & Gardens, and is one of the largest digital publishers, said on Thursday that it would cut 7% of its staff (274 people), the latest media and tech company to do layoffs.

Famed statistics guru Nate Silver and his website FiveThirtyEight are on the “chopping block,” as ABC News looks to cut costs. A decision on the future of the famed politics, economics, and sports analysis website is set to be made by the summer when Silver’s contract is up, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation.

The latest of the CBS hyper-local streaming news services debuts on WWJ and the CBS News Detroit streaming channel at 6 p.m., giving WWJ its own full-scale local news department for the first time since becoming a CBS Television Network-owned station in 1995. Above (l-r): Sports anchor Ronnie Duncan, news anchors Jeff Skversky and Shaina Humphries and meteorologist Ahmad Bajjey.

After Vice Media secured a new round of financing in 2017 that valued the company at $5.7 billion, Shane Smith, one of its founders, teased the potential for “hockey stick” growth and a “sexy” stock market debut. But that once-grandiose talk at Vice has run into reality. The company, which has undergone several rounds of staff cuts in recent years, is putting itself up for sale in a rocky media market — where it will almost certainly fetch much less than executives had once hoped for.

The BBC’s head of digital journalism has quit after just four months, prompting further anxiety about the UK broadcaster’s plans to merge its international and domestic news channels. Saeed Ahmed has left the BBC after joining from NPR last October. He was based in Washington and was tasked with overseeing the U.K. broadcaster’s digital news content aimed at U.S. audiences.

LX News, the streaming news network of NBCUniversal Local, has introduced a daily program that takes viewers on a cross-country journey of the latest news from NBC local stations. Hosted by Eric Alvarez, the condensed format is akin to the popular NFL RedZone concept, whipping from story to story while providing viewers with context and background – all in a succinct city-focused format. LX News Zone comes from LX News’ mission to explore ideas and experiment with news formats.

The tech site CNET sent a chill through the media world when it tapped artificial intelligence to produce surprisingly lucid news stories. But now its human staff is writing a lot of corrections.

MSNBC announced Tuesday that Senior Vice President of Content Strategy Rebecca Kutler will now oversee all of MSNBC’s non-linear editorial efforts — streaming, digital and audio. She effectively replaces Catherine Kim, who is now focusing on editorial oversight across all of NBC News.

The tech mogul’s company has hired Whisper Advisors, an advisory firm, to find potential buyers for the digital publication.

Meanwhile, Chris Jansing will get two hours on the cable news outlet’s weekdays while layoffs have hit the news division of the TV network.

The Scripps Florida 24 Network, which covers local and state news in Miami, Tampa, West Palm Beach, Tallahassee and Fort Myers, will add coverage from Cox’s stations in Jacksonville and Orlando later in the first quarter.

The long-running PBS NewsHour, which has its roots in broadcast-TV coverage of 1973’s Watergate hearings, is preparing itself to tell stories in some very new media frontiers, which include places like TikTok and YouTube.

The incident began late on Tuesday night and has affected parts of the U.K. company’s technology infrastructure, with staff told to work from home. There has also been some disruption to behind-the-scenes services.

A former CNBC journalist hits viral home runs with his globetrotting, selfie stick-wielding reportage. He shares how he’s built a following of two million across social platforms by hitting some key beats with every post. Above, journalist Uptin Saiidi brings his audience on a search for answers in the world of tech, travel and luxury.

WWJ will offer both streaming and linear newscasts beginning in January. Jeff Sversky and Shaina Humphries moved from rival Philadelphia stations to share the anchor desk at WWJ. WWJ is the rare Big Four station without local news. “It’s the 14th-largest television market in the country, and the fact that there was no news really stood out glaringly to me,” Adrienne Roark, president of CBS Stations, said. “It’s a strong news market, and the opportunity to imagine this in a totally innovative way really was too hard to pass up.”

Catherine Kim, a senior NBC News executive who has played a significant role in the evolution of the company’s digital efforts, will now have more say over some of its TV work as well. Kim, who has been SVP of digital news for NBC News and MSNBC, was named SVP of NBC News editorial on Wednesday, charged with oversight of editorial units across both digital and TV.

WKMG, Graham Media’s CBS affiliate in Orlando, Fla., changed its traditional weekday 5:30 p.m. newscast entirely to feature original digital content. On the first day, the program doubled its audience

News, technology and media futurists from The Washington Post, NBCUniversal Local, E.W. Scripps, CBS News New York and Bitcentral frame out how they’re envisioning, testing and implementing changes to longstanding news conventions in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum event at the New York Hilton on Dec. 13. Register here.

Andrew Craft, senior digital journalist with Fox’s LiveNOW streaming channel, shows TVNewsCheck’s Michael Depp how to multitask as producer, director and anchor while on the air for hours at a time.

Protocol, the upstart technology news website launched by former Politico owner and publisher Robert Allbritton in early 2020, will shutter later this week and lay off dozens of staffers, people familiar with the matter told CNN.

Tegna’s Verify investigative team has won a following of 100,000 and growing on TikTok, where a younger demographic has been drawn to its simple reportorial mission and authentic voice. TVNewsCheck’s Michael Depp talks with Verify’s Ariane Datil and Casey Decker about the dos and don’ts of making TikTok work for news. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

Our America: Lowballed was triggered by the story of how one Black family “whitewashed” their home — stripped it of family photos, artwork, even toiletries — and had a White friend stand in during an appraisal. The appraised value of their home jumped nearly $500,000 from the previous one.

Fox Weather celebrates its first anniversary this week, and TVNewsCheck’s Michael Depp talks with meteorologist Amy Freeze about a year that saw $15 billion in storm damage across the U.S., lessons she and her colleagues have learned in covering major weather events and how climate has become an important part of the reporting narrative. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

Athan Stephanopoulos, a digital entrepreneur who had previously been president of an upstart news company that aims for younger consumers, will take the reins of CNN as its new chief digital officer. The role is a critical one at the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed outlet, where the parent company recently scuttled plans for a new subscription-based streaming hub CNN+ — leaving CNN’s efforts to attract a new generation of digitally-savvy news aficionados unclear.

The cable industry-backed C-SPAN is making sure cable and broadband subscribers have plenty of access to important political action in their states. With only two weeks before arguably one of the most important midterm elections in recent memory, C-SPAN is airing and streaming coverage of more than a dozen debates among candidates for governors, U.S. senators and representatives over the next week.