For the Record

Bustle Rebrands, Reaffirms IPO:

Bustle Digital Group "is formally rebranding to BDG" ahead of an anticipated IPO through a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company), Sara Fischer of Axios reported Tuesday.  The media company, which was founded by CEO Bryan Goldberg in 2013 as a digital women's magazine, " has since expanded into several different verticals across nine sites, including tech and fashion." Fischer added that Goldberg did not dispute a past report indicating that the company "is aiming for an IPO of at least $600 million, including debt." In contrast to other digital media companies, Goldberg plans to "double down" on advertising and bring related technologies in-house. "We view digital advertising as being a business that's worth $1 billion for us before the end of this decade," he said. "Our goal is within the next two years to have as little third-party ad tech on our sites as possible. To be the best at what we do, we need to own as much of the ad stack as possible."

Versha Sharma Named Teen Vogue Editor:

Condé Nast announced Monday that Versha Sharma, a managing editor at the news website NowThis, will be the next editor in chief of Teen Vogue effective May 24, according to Katie Robertson of The New York Times. "Versha is a natural leader with a global perspective and deep understanding of local trends and issues — from politics and activism to culture and fashion — and their importance to our audience," said Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and the chief content officer of Condé Nast. Sharma "was named to the job nearly two months after Alexi McCammond, a former Axios journalist, resigned after more than 20 Teen Vogue staff members publicly condemned tweets she had posted a decade earlier." A member of the board of the Online News Association, Sharma previously worked for TalkingPointsMemo, MSNBC.com and Vocativ.

SPAC Insurance Slowdown Affects Digital Media IPOs:

A slowdown in SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) issuance, driven by new accounting guidance by the Securities and Exchange Commission, "has forced many digital media companies to reassess their timeline on going public," Alex Sherman of CNBC reported Saturday. Although BuzzFeed "is still expected to find a SPAC partner later this year," Vice has stalled its advanced talks with 7GC & Co Holdings, while Bustle "has spoken with several SPACs but has no plans to go public alone at the moment." A SPAC "raises capital in an initial public offering as a so-called blank check company without a target acquisition in mind." The investors "use the cash to take a private company public, with additional funding from institutional investors, known as a PIPE — private investment in public equity."

Trump Justice Department Obtained Washington Post Phone Records:

The Trump-era Justice Department "secretly obtained Washington Post journalists’ phone records and tried to obtain their email records over reporting they did in the early months of the Trump administration on Russia’s role in the 2016 election," the newspaper's Devlin Barrett reported Friday. In three letters dated May 3 and addressed to Post reporters Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, and former Post reporter Adam Entous, the Justice Department confirmed that they received toll records associated with the journalists' work, home and cellphone numbers from April 15 to July 31, 2017. "We are deeply troubled by this use of government power to seek access to the communications of journalists," said Cameron Barr, the publication's executive editor. "The Department of Justice should immediately make clear its reasons for this intrusion into the activities of reporters doing their jobs, an activity protected under the First Amendment.”

Washingtonian Staff Refuses to Publish:

In response to an opinion piece about the future of remote work by Washingtonian Media Chief Executive Cathy Merrill, staffers at the company's namesake magazine have refused to publish online Friday. “If the employee is rarely around to participate in those extras, management has a strong incentive to change their status to ‘contractor,’” Merrill wrote in The Washington Post, referring to informal job duties such as mentoring junior employees or celebrating colleagues' birthdays. “We are dismayed by Cathy Merrill’s public threat to our livelihoods," staffers wrote in an open letter.

Broadway to Reopen in September:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that Broadway shows "would start selling tickets for full-capacity shows with some performances starting Sept. 14," nearly four months after the state plans to ease most pandemic restrictions, according to Michael Paulson of The New York Times. Although producers need time to market shows, reassemble casts and transition to safety protocols, Paulson said that the decision "is more gut-based: individually and collectively, [producers] are trying to imagine when large numbers of people are likely to feel comfortable traveling to Times Square, funneling through cramped lobbies and walking down narrow aisles to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers." Broadway theaters, which are defined as the 41 professional venues with 500 or more seats in Manhattan's Theater District and Lincoln Center, drew 14.5 million attendees and ticket revenue of $1.8 billion in 2019. Tom Hulce, a producer of the Temptations-inspired jukebox musical “Ain't Too Proud," said: “We basically are starting from zero advance, as most shows are, and now we need time to reach out and build back up.”

Billboard, Twitter Launch Trending Chart:

Billboard will publish "a ranking of the most popular songs in the U.S. based on a brand new metric: Twitter conversations," Lucas Shaw of Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The music magazine will update the chart (known as "Billboard Hot Trending Powered by Twitter") on a daily basis in addition to publishing stories and videos based on the data "that will appear on both its website and Twitter." Advertisers will be able to sponsor the chart itself or purchase sponsorships within the related content. Shaw added that "the top song in a given day [on Twitter] might not be the most popular on the radio or Spotify, but it could be trending because of an anniversary or a performance on 'Saturday Night Live,'" as evidenced by Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" returning to the Top 20 in 2020 following its use in a viral TikTok video.

Novellas, Tomes and Those in Between:

In a recent essay for the Substack-based Counter Craft, Lincoln Michel reviewed the immense variations in book length over the last 200 years, from long, Victorian-era works to the halcyon era of short fiction (spurred by the development of pulp magazines) and the eventual resurgence of longer works amid the development of supermarket paperback racks. According to Michel, recent decades have been characterized by another divergence between longer works of popular fiction and shorter works of literary fiction: "In recent years, short novels have become more and more common. Some acclaimed literary books are as short as 50k or 40k or even under 30k(!). These books simply aren't called novellas because the American reader wrinkles their nose at the term." He added: "Books do tend to end up the length they want to be. As writers, we can choose to devote times to projects that seem more likely to be published or bring in income. We can work on that novel draft instead of short stories, or that book we think is an award contender rather than the one that's too experimental to get published. But an individual work of fiction has its own desires and demands."

Facebook Oversight Board Upholds Trump Ban:

A Facebook-appointed oversight board "of journalists, activists and lawyers ruled on Wednesday to uphold the social network's ban" of former President Trump, "ending any immediate return by Trump to mainstream social media and renewing a debate about tech power over online speech," according to Mike Isaac of The New York Times. The panel "also said that the platform's "penalty of an indefinite suspension" following the January 6 storming of the United States Capitol was "not appropriate," giving the company an additional six months to determine the final status of Trump's account. "This case has dramatic implications for the future of speech online because the public and other platforms are looking at how the oversight board will handle what is a difficult controversy that will arise again around the world,” said Nate Persily, a professor of law at Stanford University.

Twitter Expands Spaces Feature:

Twitter Spaces, the platform's new live audio rooms feature, will roll out to any account with 600 followers or more on iOS and Android devices, Sarah Perez of TechCrunch reported Monday. The company "also officially unveiled some of the features it’s preparing to launch, like Ticketed Spaces, scheduling features, reminders, support for co-hosting, accessibility improvements and more." Although Spaces will be available to all users in the future, the 600 follower threshold was chosen because "followers tend to have a good experience hosting live conversations" due to a larger existing audience. A reminder feature (patterned after a similar upgrade at rival app Clubhouse) and support for multiple co-hosts will be introduced over the next few weeks.