The Guardian·2026-03-17
Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith buys 27% stake in the EconomistThe Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith has bought a stake in the parent company of the Economist, held by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, in only the third significant ownership structure shake-up in its 183-year history. Smith and his family holding company, Smith Financial Corp, which owns financial businesses, including a co-ownership of the influential proxy advisory group Glass Lewis, has acquired a 26.9% stake in the Economist Group (TEG) for an undisclosed sum. Last year it was reported that the family banking dynasty’s holding in the media group, which also includes 20% of the voting shares, was worth about $537m (£402m). TEG is the parent company of the respected weekly news magazine, the Economist, which the company itself refers to as a newspaper, as well as a digital-only sister p
The Guardian·2026-03-17
US media mogul sees a big opportunity in the cuts at the Washington PostRobert Allbritton, the billionaire media entrepreneur, said he was “pained” by the Washington Post’s decision to lay off a large chunk of its newsroom in early February. But he also saw it as an opportunity to hire some of the Post’s most well-known journalists, including many who would have been hard to poach in previous years. “Opportunity knocks, and you’re going to decide if you’re going to answer the door or not,” Allbritton, 57, said. “I’m always the one that says: ‘Look, if an opportunity like this comes up, you ought to go on ahead and see what you can do with it and take it on full throttle, because these things don’t come along very often.’” On Monday, Allbritton’s digital news publication Notus – which stands for News of the United States – announced several new hires, including
Digiday·2026-03-17
The Trade Desk remains the dominant DSP but its advertisers are starting to shop aroundThe Trade Desk built its dominance by being the obvious choice. It s still the obvious choice. Just not as obviously as it used to be. On the surface, The Trade Desk is not a company in trouble. Revenue hit $2.9 billion in 2025. Margins are at 47%. There is $1.3 billion in cash on the balance sheet. The complexity of the global advertising market is not a weakness for The Trade Desk, CEO Jeff Gree
Nieman Lab·2026-03-17
NOTUS plans to rebrand and build “the next great Washington newsroom”Another billionaire-backed news organization has announced ambitions to expand into the void created by The Washington Post s layoffs. NOTUS , a nonprofit newsroom backed by Politico founder Robert Allbritton that covers government and politics with the fresh eyes of newcomers and the expertise of veterans, is rebranding and doubling its staff, as first reported by Semafor s Max Tani. In 2024, edi
Nieman Lab·2026-03-17
Four things about Yahoo News that may surprise youYahoo News has about 180 million unique visitors every month. That number is fueled by a number of habit-driven features that see users coming back day after day — to check their email , get financial info, hear the latest in sports (especially fantasy ), and crush a new daily game . It s consistently one of the most popular news sites in the country. In 2025, only CNN and Fox News had more users
Adweek·2026-03-17
Sephora’s Zena Arnold on Navigating Trends, Shaping Discovery, and Marketing at the Speed of CultureLearn how Sephora discerns which trends represent fleeting moments versus real behavioral shifts.
Adweek·2026-03-17
Compound Growth: How U.S. Bank Uses AI to Drive Revenue and ResultsBlending synthetic audiences, behavioral data, personalization, and business fluency with Michael Lacorazza.
Adweek·2026-03-17
AI Is Everywhere at SXSW, but Humanity Still LeadsExecs from 3M, Adobe, Accenture Song, Ancestry, and Monks shared insights at ADWEEK House.
Adweek·2026-03-17
98th Oscars Down Nearly 2 Million Viewers, Reaching 17.86 MillionThe 2026 Oscars take a viewership dip.
Digiday·2026-03-17
After WPP reckoning: The case for and against principal mediaSubscribe: Apple Podcasts Spotify It has been more than 10 years since the Association of National Advertisers published its bombshell principal media and transparency study. As of late, however, the topic has once again become the industry s current zeitgeist. Look no further than the recent WPP whistleblower filings that s dominated headlines. In the filings, a former WPP exec critiqued GroupM s
Digiday·2026-03-17
Ad Tech Briefing: The industry is rethinking its foundations as a new world order is establishedNews flash: The ad industry is entering a period of profound transition as artificial intelligence reshapes how media is created, distributed, and monetized — the problem is, it s not really clear how that s going to play out. As the industry s 2026 conference season pauses, the consensus among many attendees of gatherings such as CES or the IAB s annual leadership meeting is likely to be that few
Digiday·2026-03-17
‘I’m not selling you hours’: PMG’s push beyond agenciesAdvertising s identity crisis has reached the corner office. Nobody who runs an agency wants to be called an agency anymore. On WPP s full-year earnings call last month, CEO Cindy Rose declared her company was no longer a holding company.” It is now, apparently, a trusted growth partner for clients in the era of AI. Over at Omnicom, John Wren s boilerplate has quietly shifted too: the company now
The Guardian·2026-03-17
Kyle Sandilands sacked and top-rating radio show cancelled as host vows to fight to return to airKyle Sandilands has been sacked by ARN Media and his top-rating Kyle and Jackie O Show cancelled, but he says will fight to save his $100m contract. ARN Media said in a statement on Wednesday it had issued a notice of termination of contract to Sandilands and his company Quasar Media, over a dispute that began with an on-air argument last month between Sandilands and his co-host Jackie ‘O’ Henderson. “As a result, the Kyle and Jackie O show will no longer be presented,” the statement sent to the ASX said. It said two weeks ago ARN had provided written notice to Sandilands and Quasar “stating that it considered Mr Sandilands’ behaviour during the broadcast of 20 February 2026 to constitute serious misconduct and a breach of ARN’s services agreement with Quasar Media, under which Mr Sandilan
The Guardian·2026-03-17
Lisa Nandy vows to give BBC permanent charter to prevent political interferenceThe government is to put the BBC’s charter on a permanent footing for the first time, after the corporation said the change was needed to protect it from political interference. In a significant change to the governance of the BBC, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said she wanted to grant the corporation’s demand for a permanent charter. She said she wanted to protect it from repeated “culture war” attacks. BBC executives had argued that the current system in which the broadcaster’s charter had to be renewed every 10 years created a rolling existential threat. That threat has become more acute with the rise of Reform UK, an arch critic of the BBC that has vowed to end the licence fee. Speaking at the Society of Editors conference in London, Nandy said the BBC was “one of the two most imp
The Guardian·2026-03-17
CBS News workers hold 24-hour walkout for new contractWorkers at CBS News walked out for 24 hours on Tuesday after a new contract agreement was not reached following the expiration of the contract last week. About 60 workers at the streaming service CBS News 24/7 are represented by the Writers Guild of America East. The union is holding rallies and walkouts at the CBS News broadcast center in Manhattan, New York, and at KPIX-TV CBS News Bay Area in San Francisco, California. The union contract expired on 9 March, and the union delivered a strike pledge to management on 10 March after 95% of the unit signed the pledge and 2,900 union members and supporters signed letters to management to reach a contract with the union. “CBS News 24/7 journalists are walking off the job on both coasts today because management refuses to agree to a new contract
Nieman Lab·2026-03-16
Reluctantly learning from my boyfriend’s favorite news creatorOk I have a wild suggestion was the text I got from my boyfriend on Feb. 22. Dylan wanted us to attend a carnival featuring the journalist/documentarian/news creator Andrew Callaghan in Medford the following Saturday. Dylan, one of Callaghan s 3.46 million YouTube subscribers, learned about the tour from watching one of the 28-year-old Channel 5 host s latest videos. I, the journalist in this rela
Nieman Lab·2026-03-12
Journalist Julia Angwin files class action lawsuit over Grammarly’s AI “sloppelgangers”Grammarly will face a class action lawsuit over its Expert Review feature that dispensed writing advice using the names of prominent journalists, academics, and authors, Wired reported on Wednesday. Technology journalist Julia Angwin is the only named plaintiff on the original filing. Angwin s lawyer, Peter Romer-Friedman , said on Thursday morning that he s since heard from 40 to 50 people who ob
Reuters·2026-03-11T07:06:55Z
Canal+ taps Google's AI for video production, content recommendationFrench media group Canal+ on Wednesday said it had struck a multi-year partnership with Alphabet's Google Cloud to deploy generative artificial intelligence across its production operations and streaming platform.
Digiday·2026-03-04
How creator talent agencies are evolving into multi-platform operatorsThe legacy agency model, long overdue for a reckoning, is finally being rebuilt from the ground up — with creators at the center. The old agency model — brokering deals, manually sourcing talent and running slow, service-heavy operations that treated creators like traditional talent — came of age in a fragmented market. But that model is giving way to something faster, more scalable, and built aro
Digiday·2026-03-04
Future of TV Briefing: How Paramount’s and Warner Bros. Discovery’s ad tech stacks stack upThis week’s Future of TV Briefing breaks down Paramount’s and Warner Bros. Discovery’s ad tech stacks now that the companies seem set (finally) to combine. Streaming stacks Netflix’s exit, WBD’s town hall, CNN’s future and more Streaming stacks Paramount plans to combine its and Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming services after Paramount+’s owner completes its acquisition of HBO Max’s parent. But
Adweek·2026-03-04
Havas Bets on AI Veteran Sharona Sankar-King to Lead Proprietary Tech PushHavas Media Network North America has hired data and AI veteran Sharona Sankar-King as chief data and product officer to lead its Converged.AI platform.
Digiday·2026-03-04
‘The conversation has shifted’: The CFO moved upstream. Now agencies have to as wellCFOs are demanding more from marketing — and not in the usual way. The familiar playbook of squeezing costs and investing in performance spend is still in motion, driven by an uncertain economy and an unpredictable geopolitical backdrop. But CFOs now are asking harder questions driven by a better grasp of how marketing actually works, and a sharper instinct for where it doesn t. For example, Vayne
Nieman Lab·2026-03-04
AI-powered search is fueling a wave of Epstein Files transparency projectsThe Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) requires that the millions of documents collected by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about Jeffrey Epstein be shared with the public in a searchable and downloadable format. In practice, though, the searchability of the DOJ releases has been crude at best. Keywords may turn up individual links to PDFs, but users have reported major search malfunctions and
Adweek·2026-03-04
Ad Agencies Are Embracing ‘Vibe Coding’ to Build GEO Products for ClientsFrom two-hour builds to full SaaS platforms, agencies are using Anthropic's Claude to create custom tools that track how brands show up in AI-generated answers.
Adweek·2026-03-04
Netflix Taps Amazon’s Shopping Data to Sharpen Ad TargetingThe move pairs Amazon’s shopping signals with Netflix’s new Conversion API as the streamer courts performance budgets.
Adweek·2026-03-04
A+E Turns Brands Into Lifetime Movies as It Looks to Compete in Upfront PitchA+E Global Media announces new content and brand creative studio.
Digiday·2026-03-04
Why one brand reimbursed $10,000 to customers who paid its ‘Trump Tariff Surcharge’ last yearThis story was originally published on sister site, Modern Retail. Dame is refunding customers who paid its “Trump Tariff Surcharge” last year, becoming one of the first brands to proactively return money tied to President Donald Trump’s now-invalidated tariffs. The sexual wellness company began adding a visible $5 line-item fee at checkout in 2025 as the Trump administration’s trade war pushed up
Nieman Lab·2026-03-03
Newsonomics: Will national news shrink even faster than local news did?Anderson Cooper may be running out of lily pads. Just two weeks ago, he announced his decision to leave CBS’s 60 Minutes, after almost 20 years of multitasking. Over time, he arrived at the pinnacle of the TV news profession as a CNN anchor, growing his gravitas as a cascade of crises consumed our world while contributing to the most storied newsmagazine of the entire TV era. He’d seen enough of t
Nieman Lab·2026-03-03
X will demonetize users who post AI-generated videos of war (but not other kinds of disinformation)On Tuesday Nikita Bier , head of product at X, announced that users who post AI-generated videos of an armed conflict without disclosing they were AI-generated will suspended from the site s revenue-sharing program for 90 days, with repeated offenses leading to a permanent suspension from the program: Today we are revising our Creator Revenue Sharing policies to maintain authenticity of content on
Nieman Lab·2026-03-02
New York Times runs in-house ad asking listeners to “support any news organization dedicated to original reporting”The New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger has voiced a new ad encouraging listeners to support any news organization dedicated to original reporting — even if it s not the Times. It s Sulzberger s first-ever advertisement, the Times confirmed, and it ran for the first time on Monday. A New York Times spokesperson said the publisher wanted to call attention to the shrinking of the news industry.
