12:55 PM ET, April 21, 2025
April 21, 2025
12:50 PM
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Bluesky starts rolling out blue check verification, initially limiting verification to select organizations and its moderation team
11:25 AM
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Meta is testing using AI tools in the US to detect teen Instagram users, even if they've lied about their birthday, and place them under Teen Account settings
9:50 AM
Max Tani / Semafor:
Source: WaPo has begun speaking with several candidates to become the editor of its rebooted opinion section, including Reason EIC Katherine Mangu-Ward
9:20 AM
Max Tani / Semafor:
Source: Truth Social dropped Nexstar from a defamation lawsuit after Nexstar agreed to fire a breaking news reporter at The Hill; Nexstar denies the accusation
April 20, 2025
11:00 PM
Michael Idov / New York Times:
A look at Votvot, a streamer that provides uncensored content to counter Kremlin propaganda, as its ~$2M annual budget is cut as part of Trump's RFE/RL cuts
4:00 PM
Christopher Grimes / Financial Times:
The success of A Minecraft Movie, set to hit $700M in ticket sales globally this weekend, signals Hollywood's breakthrough in adapting video games into films
April 19, 2025
7:10 PM
Julian Wyllie / Current:
A look at the public media projects at risk due to DOGE-driven NEH grant cuts, including three American Masters films and a Ken Burns-produced documentary
1:10 PM
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
A profile of Acyn Torabi, or @Acyn, who joined MeidasTouch in 2023 and is shaping the US liberal media with his fast-cut, viral video posts of political gaffes
April 18, 2025
11:05 PM
Crispian Balmer / Reuters:
Italian newspaper Il Foglio says its monthlong experiment with a four-page daily insert written by AI boosted sales, and plans a weekly AI-written section
8:05 PM
Bron Maher / Press Gazette:
How the BBC, NUJ, PPA, OpenAI, and Google have responded to the UK's AI copyright law proposals, including one giving AI companies broad copyright exemptions
5:05 PM
New York Times:
Sources: Sewell Chan's departure from CJR comes as the magazine has been running under tight budgetary constraints and was beginning a fundraising campaign
3:30 PM
Sewell Chan / Sewell Chan on LinkedIn:
Sewell Chan says the decision to fire him is “quite frankly baffling” and it came after “I had three pointed conversations with staff members in recent weeks”
2:35 PM
Charles Pulliam-Moore / The Verge:
After canceling Mythic Quest, Apple debuts an updated version of the finale to tie up loose ends and removes the original cut entirely from Apple TV+
1:15 PM
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
The Wikimedia Foundation partners with Kaggle to release a dataset of “structured Wikipedia content in English and French” optimized for AI model training
1:10 PM
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
A federal judge declines the AP challenge to the WH eliminating wire service pool slots, calling the policy “neutral” as it does not punish the AP specifically
12:10 PM
Jeremy Barr / @jeremymbarr:
[Thread] Columbia University is cutting ties with Sewell Chan, Columbia Journalism Review editor since June 2024; Betsy Morais will serve as interim director
12:00 PM
Committee to Protect Journalists:
CPJ issues a travel advisory warning journalists traveling to the US to anticipate increased questioning by border agents regarding coverage of sensitive topics
11:20 AM
Huo Jingnan / NPR:
A profile of X news broker Mario Nawfal, a favorite of Elon Musk, who has interviewed five heads of state and says it's not his job to vet posts for accuracy
10:00 AM
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
Filing: AP is expected to have a spot in the White House print pool by Sunday, after the WH made wire reporters part of the regular rotation for print reporters
9:30 AM
Hassan Ali Kanu / Politico:
In an appeals court hearing on the AP's White House access, the DOJ argued that WH spaces are akin to private spaces to which the president can restrict access
8:55 AM
Jill Goldsmith / Deadline:
Filing: Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters saw total compensation of about $61.9M and $60.3M in 2024, up from $49.8M and $40.1M in 2023, respectively
8:00 AM
Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Ted Sarandos says “as the popularity of video podcasts grows, I suspect you'll see some of them find their way to Netflix”
7:35 AM
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Ted Sarandos says Netflix talent uses “AI tools to do set references, pre-vis, VFX sequence prep, shot planning” and AI can make movies “10% better”
April 17, 2025
11:05 PM
NPR:
An interview with NPR CEO Katherine Maher on the impact of Trump's proposed budget cuts; $100M of the $121M NPR receives annually goes to member stations
9:05 PM
Paul Hiebert / Adweek:
IAB and PWC: online ad spend hit $258.6B in 2024, up 15% YoY, with 39.8% going to search, 28.7% to display, 24% to video, and $2.4B to podcasts, up 26.4% YoY
7:05 PM
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Samsung TV Plus now has nearly 700 FAST channels in the US, more than any of the other major FAST platforms, and almost 100 exclusive channels
5:05 PM
Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter:
Zachary Young, a Navy veteran who won $5M in a defamation suit against CNN in January, sues Puck and the AP for their allegedly defamatory reporting on the case
4:40 PM
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Netflix says co-founder Reed Hastings has left his post as executive chairman to become chairman and non-executive director of the company
4:15 PM
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix reports Q1 revenue up 12.5% YoY to $10.54B, vs. $10.51B est., net income of $2.89B, and stops reporting subscriber numbers on a quarterly basis
3:15 PM
Financial Times:
RedBird is drawing up plans to be the “sole-control owner of the Telegraph Media Group” to bring an end to the media group's protracted two-year sale
2:45 PM
Natalie Jarvey / The Ankler:
With Kid Cowboy, Nickelodeon becomes the first TV network to debut an original series in full on YouTube, bowing to YouTube's supremacy among kids
1:15 PM
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Chris Matthews is reviving Hardball on Substack with new episodes on Mondays at noon; Matthews abruptly retired from MSNBC in March 2020
12:45 PM
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
In an X post, the FCC chairman suggests Comcast may be violating its licenses and accuses it of “news distortion” after MSNBC didn't air a WH press hearing
12:10 PM
Axios:
The DOJ and 17 US states that brought the antitrust case seek to force Google to sell off its “network” ad business, which is ~12% of Alphabet's total revenue
11:55 AM
@newsfromgoogle:
Google says “we won half of this case and we will appeal the other half” of the US antitrust ruling and “disagree[s]” with the decision on its publisher tools
11:40 AM
Bloomberg:
In her ruling, Judge Brinkema says Google did not meet the monopoly definition for tools used to buy display ads, but did for ad exchanges and website ad tools
11:00 AM
David McCabe / New York Times:
A US judge says Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising tech, the second time in a year a court found Google acted illegally
9:35 AM
Melanie Goodfellow / Deadline:
Palestinian photojournalist and artist Fatima Hassouna has been killed in an Israeli airstrike on her family's home in Gaza City
8:45 AM
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Similarweb: total desktop social referral traffic from Facebook grew 75% YoY for 68 top English-language news sites due to algorithm changes in January 2025
7:15 AM
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Smashing, an AI-powered news and social media posts aggregation app by Goodreads co-founder Otis Chandler, shuts down, citing its inability to grow quickly
6:05 AM
Reuters:
MoffettNathanson: a US recession may result in $45B in lost ad spend in 2025 and ad budgets shifting from traditional TV to alternatives like streaming services
5:35 AM
Devin Leonard / Bloomberg:
A profile of Hipgnosis founder Merck Mercuriadis, who stepped down in July 2024 after accusations of mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and accounting issues
5:00 AM
Julian Sancton / The Hollywood Reporter:
Breakthrough Prize Foundation cut Seth Rogen's criticism of Silicon Valley's Trump support from a “full” YouTube video; a spokesperson blamed the event's length
4:15 AM
Jennifer Maas / Variety:
Q&A with Phil Spencer on A Minecraft Movie, potential IP for future movies, Microsoft's Hollywood goals, Fallout Season 2 and the Minecraft TV series, and more
2:25 AM
Max Goldbart / Deadline:
Study: in South Korea, active YouTube users spent 210 minutes per day on the service in Q4, while Netflix subscribers spent 96 minutes per day on the streamer
April 16, 2025
10:15 PM
Bloomberg:
The FTC challenges ex-Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg over past emails; she called Google+ a “real” competitor in 2011 and discussed blocking its Facebook ads in 2012
5:50 PM
Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter:
A US appeals court temporarily blocks Sony from taking over distribution of syndicated game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune from CBS
5:00 PM
Mark Stenberg / Adweek:
Henry Blodget launches Regenerator on Substack, to provide a “rolling analysis” of broad, timely subjects, with plans to add staff and debut a freemium model
3:30 PM
Financial Times:
Sensor Tower: Temu and Shein cut their ad spending on platforms including Meta and X an average of 31% and 19%, respectively, so far in April, compared to March
3:10 PM
Reuters:
Deezer says ~18% of songs uploaded to the service are AI-generated; 20K AI-generated songs are uploaded daily, nearly twice the number reported four months ago