Journalism

The former Nexstar and NBC executive will also hold the title of executive vice president of Allen Media, the parent company of Entertainment Studios and The Weather Channel.

ABC News has signed star anchor George Stephanopoulos to a new, four-year contract that will keep him with the company through the 2020 presidential election, a network source confirmed Tuesday.

The NBC O&Os are making audience inroads on platforms where many other station groups have feared to tread. Digital chief Lora Dennis says early moves on Instagram’s IGTV and voice platforms like Amazon and Google have been promising, and bilingual digital collaborations with its Telemundo stations are also proliferating.

Lara Logan, the journalist who gained wider renown covering war-torn spots in the Middle East for CBS News, is no longer with the network and has not been for several months. The split was disclosed as the result of Logan making an appearance over the weekend on a podcast with Mike Ritland in which she suggested news consumers ought to get information from both liberal and conservative outlets, calling the news “mostly liberal.”

Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday called for the Supreme Court to reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 ruling interpreting the First Amendment to make it hard for public officials to prevail in libel suits. He said the decision was the product of unprincipled “legal alchemy” that had no basis in the Constitution as understood by the people who drafted and ratified it.

Patti McGettigan, news director of Cox’s Memphis Fox affiliate, died Feb. 16 after a long battle with cancer. McGettigan had beaten the deadly disease twice. She was 53 years old.

WAVY, Nexstar’s NBC affiliate in Portsmouth, Va., is in the fortunate position of having its own news helicopter on the premises as well as a drone. But deciding when to use either is a fine art. “So we see what fits best, the drone or the helicopter, and some days, we have them both out,” said Jeff Myers, WAVY’s news operations manager and chief photographer.

The Knight Foundation says it will invest $300 million in local journalism over the next five years. Among the beneficiaries are the American Journalism Project, which provides grants to local nonprofit news organizations; the investigative site ProPublica; Report for America, a service organization that pays for the hiring of local journalists; and PBS’s Frontline, the documentary program that’s making its first foray into local news.

There is no “free time” in the typical newsroom today. Adding new activities without eliminating other tasks is a surefire way to sabotage a promising innovation. It’s also intellectually dishonest. When push comes to shove, the new and extra lose out to the demands of the day and the urgency of the now. That’s why smart managers start their innovation process by brainstorming a “Stop Doing” list before they generate a “Start Doing” list. They create capacity for innovation first.

NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo will air the first Democratic primary debate in June, and CNN will show the second event in July, the Democratic National Committee announced on Thursday.

Former Reuters executive editor of digital Dan Colarusso is tapped to be the cable news channel’s new senior vice president of business news. Colarusso will report directly to CNBC Chairman Mark Hoffman, and will be working closely with svp and executive editor of CNBC digitalJay Yarow, as well as CNBC SVP of international news and programmingJohn Casey.

“There’s a saying in politics that personnel is policy,” Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters, said on a recent afternoon. “The people who surround principals in the political world can have a lot of influence.” Gertz, 34, is best known for tracking Donald Trump’s Twitter account for clues about his well-reported habit of watching Fox News. On Twitter and via a Media Matters video archive, Gertz flags when Trump’s posts seem tied directly to programming—on Fox & Friends, Hannity and Lou Dobbs Tonight.