For the Record

Jordan Pledges $1 Million to Support Ida B. Wells Society:

Basketball great Michael Jordan and his Jordan Brand’s Black Community Commitment has pledged a $1 million grant to the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting at the University of North Carolina, Benjamin Rappaport of Chapelboro reported Thursday. The grant from Jordan, who received his B.A. in geography from the university in 1986, "aims to increase diversity in the field of investigative journalism through outreach efforts to aspiring journalists of color." The Society (which was named for the posthumous 2020 Special Citation recipient and co-founded by such figures as 2020 Commentary winner Nikole Hannah-Jones and past Pulitzer juror Ron Nixon) "will use the money to expand its college internships program and build summer partnerships at Historically Black Colleges and Universities in North Carolina." Current partners of the organization include The New York Times, the Miami Herald, ProPublica and The Associated Press. Jordan's grant also will "help launch a yearlong high school journalism project at a majority Black and Latino public high school in North Carolina." Jordan's Black Community Commitment is a "10-year, $100 million pledge to support social and economic justice" initiated in the aftermath of national protests spurred by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In a statement, Hannah-Jones emphasized the importance of the grant. "Our democracy is in crisis as politicians are advancing a wave of voter suppression laws across the country and journalists must step up to be the firewall for our democracy," she said. "That makes the work we do as a Society and the substantial support of Michael Jordan and the Jordan Brand so critical in this moment." Jordan Brand President Craig Williams said that the organization "[looks] forward to supporting young, diverse talent, and helping to change the landscape for investigative journalism."

Gannett Launches USA Today Sports+ Service:

Gannett has "announced the launch of USA Today Sports+, a new, premium digital subscription product in select local markets that allows users to customize their experience with different immersive content options," the newspaper's Lorenzo Reyes reported Tuesday. Alongside traditional reporting and analysis, the product "will offer unique interactive features like SMS texting with reporters and columnists and live group chats." It will launch in seven markets, including Arizona, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee and Wisconsin. "The amount of work put into this project is inspiring. From my content team to the product, marketing, PR, growth, newsletters, augmented reality, podcast and video teams, along with editors and writers in local markets — the list goes on — it was a holistic collaboration unlike any I’ve seen before," Sports+ Managing Editor Alicia DelGallo said. "And the work isn’t even close to done. We have more features, more coverage and more innovation already underway." The media company's "exclusive sports betting partnership with Tipico" also will be integrated into Sports+ "through odds, gaming data and real-time NFL scoreboards." Longtime football reporter Josina Anderson also has joined the service as a "senior NFL insider." In a statement, Chairman and CEO Michael Reed commented on the product: "We are well positioned to reach our sports audience of over 53 million sports fans and capitalize on our large network of over 500 dedicated sports journalists, offering access and local perspective that is unrivaled. Our strategic agreement with Tipico, our incredible sports journalism and our USA Today Network footprint will ensure Sports+ engages our existing subscriber base, attracts new audiences as we provide exclusive content, experiences and product offerings so fans can literally fan harder." (USA Today Editor in Chief Nicole Carroll is a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.)

Vox Media Acquires Hot Pod:

Vox Media "is acquiring Hot Pod, the independent news outlet focused on the podcasting industry, as part of a bid to expand offerings from its technology site, The Verge," Brian Steinberg of Variety reported Tuesday. Under the deal, Hot Pod "will become the first paid-subscription product offered by The Verge, where executives are interested in seeing if they can offer a broader portfolio of similar editorial concepts in months to comewill become the first paid-subscription product offered by The Verge, where executives are interested in seeing if they can offer a broader portfolio of similar editorial concepts in months to come," according to Editor Nilay Patel. Senior Reporter Ashley Carman will replace founder Nicholas Quah, who is set to join Vox Media's Vulture as a podcast critic. "[We] have never made anybody pay for anything," added Patel. "We think this is the right product and the right audience and think Ashley can deliver a lot of value that is worth paying for to an audience that can trade on that information. We are looking at it as a test. We have a lot to learn." Quah, who founded the site as a "side gig" in 2014, said "he has been eager to turn it over to another party that can 'really scale it up' and grow his classified ads, subscriptions, and handful of annual events." Vox will maintain Hot Pod's $7/month subscription price "and will give all paid Hot Pod subscribers a three-month subscription to New York magazine, another company holding." Steinberg added: "Readers can expect to see Hot Pod tackle a raft of issues that are surfacing as the podcasting industry gets bigger, with major media companies jockeying with entrepreneurs for talent and consumer attention. The live audio sector is booming, says Carman, with Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces joining a fray that already involves Spotify and others."

Vice Raises $135 Million as Potential SPAC Offering Fades:

Vice Media's "dreams of going public appear to be on hold for the time being, with the company choosing instead to raise $135 million from some of its existing investors, including James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems, TPG and TCV, as well as Sixth Street and Antenna Group," according to Alex Weprin of The Hollywood Reporter. The funding will be used to ballast "growth initiatives, including expanding Vice’s direct-to-consumer offerings, content licensing opportunities, commercial and experiential expansion, as well as [mergers and acquisitions]," the company said Thursday. Under the terms of the funding round, Shane Smith (an early employee often characterized as a co-founder) will continue to serve as executive chairman, a role he has held since stepping down as chief executive in favor of former A&E Networks CEO Nancy Dubuc in 2018. Although Vice last raised money at a $5.7 billion valuation in 2017, "it is not immediately clear what the company is valued at today" amid tectonic shifts in the digital media landscape. "We believe we are in a stronger position today than ever before and we look forward to taking this business to the next level with this additional investment," said Dubuc. "Management and our investors believe strongly in the intrinsic value and strong prospects of Vice — now and in the future. We have worked closely with them to develop and put in motion a comprehensive strategic and financial plan to continue moving Vice forward, and we are confident that this is the right step for the company at this time." 

Rushdie Pivots to Substack Serialization:

Salman Rushdie has revealed that he will "publish his next work of fiction as a serialized novella on Substack" in a new interview with Shelley Hepworth of The Guardian. "I got very attracted to the idea recently, in this strange year and a half, of trying out things I’ve never done before," said the Indian-born British-American novelist and essayist, who also intends to explore his penchant for film criticism on the newsletter platform. "It's to do with this enforced condition we’ve all been in of being pushed inwards […] I published this book of essays [which was] the 20th book and I’m already writing the 21st book, which is a novel. I just thought: do something else. And exactly the moment I was thinking that this project cropped up." The novella manifested after the platform sent an inquiry to Andrew Wylie, Rushdie's literary agent. Although he initially equivocated, he was swayed by the presence of other littérateurs, including poet/memoirist/musician Patti Smith and the Israeli short story specialist Etgar Keret. "I've been looking at [Keret's] Substack and it’s so witty and enjoyable, and he’s clearly having a wonderful time doing it, I thought, 'maybe I could do that,'" he said. Alongside the novella and criticism, the Substack page also will feature short stories and non-defamatory "literary gossip." Entitled "The Seventh Wave," the 35,000-word novella "is about a film director and an actor slash muse written in the style of [French] New Wave cinema, with 'disjunctions and crash cuts and gangsters.'" Although serialization was a mainstay of 19th century European and American fiction (as exemplified by Charles Dickens' "The Pickwick Papers," much of the oeuvre of Henry James and the 1873-1877 run of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" in The Russian Messenger), the form fell out of favor for most of the 20th century. In the 1970s, the publication of the first five volumes of Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" series and Cyra McFadden's Marin County satire "The Serial" in San Francisco Bay Area newspapers augured a notable revival of the practice, culminating in the publication of the "very public first draft" of Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities" in Rolling Stone from from July 1984 to August 1985.

Carroll: USA Today Newsroom Now Majority Female, More Diverse:

Women "now make up the majority of the newsroom at USA Today," comprising 51.7% of all journalists according to its latest survey on staff diversity, Editor-in-Chief Nicole Carroll announced Wednesday. The newspaper also has "made strides in the percentage of Black (13.6%), Hispanic (10.1%) and Asian American (7%) journalists," with 34% of the newsroom comprised of journalists of color. "Our goal is to reflect the diversity of the U.S. by 2025, so while we've made progress, we still have work to do," said Carroll, a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board. "To be able to fully and accurately report the stories of our country, we must reflect it." Holly Moore, the planning director for the USA Today Network, reflected on the evolving milieu: "It matters because the news industry records history and for a very long time that history has been written from a male gaze. People in newsrooms are making decisions about what's covered, who's interviewed and the language we use to tell stories. Having more women in those conversations is key to presenting the most accurate version of history." Maribel Perez Wadsworth, publisher of USA Today and president of news for the USA Today Network, echoed Moore's sentiments: "It's a source of pride that, in an industry where top female news executives remain notable exceptions, we have a long track record of recruiting and promoting women. Our news report is no doubt enriched and strengthened by their perspectives, as it is by our overall commitment to inclusion."

Pace Named Associated Press Executive Editor:

Washington journalist Julie Pace will succeed Sally Buzbee as executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press, President/CEO Gary Pruitt and Executive Vice President/COO Daisy Veerasingham announced Wednesday. The appointment is effective immediately. Pace, 39, "has been the AP's Washington bureau chief since 2017, guiding reporting on the Trump administration, national security, politics and the new Biden White House." She succeeds Sally Buzbee, who replaced Marty Baron as executive editor of The Washington Post in June, and is the third consecutive woman to oversee the AP's worldwide news operation. "This is a very exciting time for the AP — we’re a 175-year-old news organization with a new CEO and a new executive editor," said Pruitt, who is retiring and will be succeeded by Veerasingham at the end of the year. "Julie Pace has a vision for AP's future that is in line with our long-standing values but also forward-thinking. She will do an excellent job.” Added Pace: "We are in a position where we have an opportunity to really modernize our news report. We have an opportunity to take all of the fantastic journalism that we do across formats and think of ways we can make it more digital-friendly, to make it more social-friendly." Pace, who "joined the organization in Washington in 2007 as a video producer and rose to chief White House correspondent," also is a frequent on-air analyst at various television networks, including CNN, ABC and Fox. 50 external and internal candidates were interviewed for the job, according to Veerasingham. (AP Vice President/Editor at Large for Standards John Daniszewski is a co-chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board.)

Penske Characterizes SPACs as 'Fad' Amid Slowdown, Vice Layoffs:

The digital media industry has "reached a strategic crossroads" as the once-booming special purpose acquisition vehicles (SPACs) market (enabling companies to bypass traditional IPOs) has reached a "near-standstill" following a spring SEC crackdown on accounting practices, Alex Sherman of CNBC reported Saturday. Although "issuance has plummeted, remaining SPACs are aggressively hunting for deals," he added, with July posting the "second-highest month of SPAC transactions ever on record." Bustle Media Group CEO Bryan Goldberg remains committed to the mechanism and will continue to pursue a SPAC offering for his company later this year or in early 2022. “Broadly speaking, SPAC mania has gone sideways, but that doesn’t apply to the digital media world," he said. "There's been a shift from growth to value. That should help digital media founders. What Wall Street normally considers a bargain may be an attractive multiple to media CEOs." However, Vice's long-gestating "efforts to go public via SPAC have stalled as so-called PIPE (private investment in public equity) investors balked at the company’s valuation." After announcing a pivot to video-based content, the Brooklyn-based publisher "laid off more than a dozen employees" Friday, "many of them writers and text editors," according to Katie Robertson of The New York Times. In contrast, Penske Media Group (which has acquired Variety, Women's Wear Daily and Rolling Stone in recent years) has expressed circumspection toward the mechanism, rejecting offers from eight SPACs. "We haven't pursued or entertained such discussions, as we believe it is a short-term game to provide liquidity for opportunistic/greedy investors or fledgling companies who cannot get public through a traditional IPO process," a spokesperson said. “We remain focused on long-term shareholder value, not on the latest investor fad." 

Axel Springer Acquires Politico:

German digital publishing house Axel Springer has agreed to buy Politico, "expanding the German publisher’s portfolio of U.S.-based media holdings," Dave Sebastian of The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. According to Lauren Feiner and Alex Sherman of CNBC, the deal is " worth about $1 billion." The company also will "acquire the remaining 50% share of its current joint venture Politico Europe, as well as tech news site Protocol from Robert Allbritton, founder and publisher of Politico and Protocol," the publishers announced Thursday. Founded in 2007, Politico "reshaped Washington coverage with its blanket reporting on all things political, rapid-fire blog posts, morning email blasts and in-depth tracking of elections and legislative happenings," setting the stage "for a move toward events and high-price subscription services." In 2014, Axel Springer and Politico founded the Brussels-based Politico Europe as a joint venture. The preexisting editorial and management teams at Politico, Politico Europe and Protocol "will continue to operate their publications separately from Axel Springer's other U.S.-based brands," Sebastian added. "It became steadily more clear that the responsibility to grow the business on a global scale, to better serve the audience and create more opportunities for our employees, might be better advanced by a larger company with a significant global footprint and ambitions than it could be by me as owner of a family business," Allbritton said. Axel Springer's U.S. holdings include Business Insider and Morning Brew.

National NewsGuild President Discusses Organizing, Local Journalism Sustainability Act:

In an interview with Seattle Times Free Press Editor Brier Dudley, national NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss "shared his outlook for legislation to sustain the free pres [and] explained a resurgence of media labor organizing" dovetailing with his tenure, which commenced in 2019. Prior to assuming the role (which "represents around 25,000 journalists in the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada, plus some workers at nonprofits and court interpreters"), the Washington, D.C.-based Schleuss was a data and graphics journalist at the Los Angeles Times. "There’s definitely a lot of fear of losing a job, a lot of uncertainty," said Schleuss of the union's recent growth. "That I think is a huge reason why a lot of people form unions, they want some kind of security. My first full-time journalism job was at the Northwest Arkansas Times. Two months into my job it was merged with our competition. I remember finding out 500 people were going to lose their jobs in kind of a mixture of the two and it was devastating. The first entry for a lot of journalists is potentially seeing their job be lost or the publication shut down, so a lot of people want certainty." The labor leader also believes that the long-gestating, bipartisan Local Journalism Sustainability Act may pass in a reconciliation package. "There are edits that I think are necessary, making sure it applies to actual journalists, to really focus on local journalism," he said. "My favorite part is tax credits for jobs, to ensure we can stabilize journalism jobs we currently have and potentially build them back up, because we’ve lost so many over the last decade. I do think it could potentially spur the creation of more jobs and a lot more news publications." Schleuss added that the local emphasis of the bill has resonated with Republicans: "Places like Arkansas, which has four Republican members of Congress and two Republican senators — they want publications in Arkansas speaking for folks in Arkansas. Because at the end of the day a large publication like The New York Times or The Washington Post or even Fox News, they parachute into these communities, they can't cover local news the way local journalists can."