For the Record

Nonprofit News Organizations and Diversity:

A survey of 117 nonprofit news organizations by the Institute for Nonprofit News (corresponding to "roughly half" of the organization's membership) conducted last winter has revealed that nearly 60 "are led by people of color and 30 are dedicated to covering underrepresented communities," according to Sarah Scire of NiemanLab. However, "more than half of all nonprofit outlets have either no people of color or 'only a small percentage' within their ranks," while the majority of organizations "do not have a single person of color in leadership at the executive level." The report concludes that "nonprofit newsrooms are more diverse than for-profit newsrooms, but still lag behind the makeup of the United States overall."

Wired Union Conducts Half-Day Work Stoppage:

The Wired Union announced a "half-day work stoppage" in a Twitter thread Tuesday to protest what they characterized as "Condé Nast’s inexcusable delays in recognizing us and their attempts to bust our union by carving out multiple groups of [...] editorial staff from our bargaining unit." A NewsGuild representative told CNN's Kerry Flynn that the union "is fighting for 70 editorial workers to be included in the bargaining union and that Condé Nast is trying to reduce the size by 10." A Condé Nast spokesperson declined to comment to Flynn.

American Public Radio CEO Steps Down:

American Public Radio President and CEO John McTaggart announced "that he has set in motion plans to step down" in an internal memo Tuesday, according to Matt McKinney and Neal Justin of the Star Tribune. The announcement "came on the same day MPR staffers sent a letter to listeners and readers saying that they had lost faith in senior leaders" amid "the dismissal of Garrett McQueen, the only Black on-air personality on MPR’s classical station, and reporter Marianne Combs’ very public resignation, in which she accused her bosses of stalling on a story about a co-worker facing misconduct allegations." The St. Paul-based organization is the second-largest producer and distributor of public radio content in the United States after NPR.

Layoffs at Lee Enterprises Newspapers:

The Tulsa World "laid off at least 10 journalists" Monday, marking the latest round of terminations at Lee Enterprises newspapers, according to Kristen Hare of Poynter. Last week, journalists were laid off at such Lee-owned newspaper as the Omaha World Herald, the Casper Star Tribune and The Free Lance Star of Fredericksburg, Va. The company "bought 31 daily newspapers" from Berkshire Hathaway for $140 million in January.

Apple Introduces Anti-Tracking Features:

Apple's latest iOS 14 update "comes with two new surprise anti-tracking features that once again have the potential to further disrupt publishers' ad businesses," Lara O'Reilly of Digiday reported Monday. The Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature "blocks cross-site tracking on Safari" and "is switched on by default for all browsers," complementing the longstanding anti-tracking features offered by Firefox and Brave. The tech company also will be disabling CNAME cloaking (a technique allowing "vendors such as Criteo and Adobe to get around Apple treating them as third-party trackers") later this year. "The impact on a given publisher is dependent on how much share of each OS they have on their site," said Paul Bannister, chief strategy officer at Cafe Media. 

L.A. Times Covers Its 'Summer of Turmoil and Scandals':

Los Angeles Times Staff Writers Meg James and Daniel Hernandez published a story about the recent tumult faced by the newspaper Monday, including the resignation of columnist Arash Markazi following plaigiarism allegations, the dismissal of Food Editor Peter Meehan "after questions were raised publicly on social media about his bullying behavior" and a labor grievance filed by 2019 Investigative Reporting winner Paul Pringle in a dispute with Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine. However, Pearlstine has retained the support of owner Patrick Soon-Shiong: "The right person will be the right person when that person shows up. To be honest, we've not found or seen that person yet."

Meredith Cuts 180 Jobs:

Meredith Corporation laid off 180 workers last week, including "130 employees from its local media group" and 50 from its national media group, "which publishes magazines such as People and Better Homes & Gardens," Tyler Jett of the Des Moines Register reported Friday. The Des Moines-based media company "has suffered in the midst of the broader economic recession because of the COVID-19 pandemic," reporting a $234 million loss in fiscal year 2020.

Trump 'Blesses' TikTok Deal as Questions Remain:

Although President Trump has signaled that he will approve a tentative deal "that would see Oracle and Walmart take a minority stake in a new U.S. company" designated to operate TikTok, "crucial questions over data security, national interest and the deal's structure remain unanswered," according to Charles Riley and Julia Horowitz of CNN. The agreement "stops well short of the full sale of TikTok that Trump originally wanted," with parent company ByteDance retaining an 80% ownership stake in the proposed TikTok Global, while the Chinese technology company also said that it had no knowledge of a $5 billion education fund referenced by Trump.

Former Charleston Gazette-Mail Journalists Open Nonprofit Newsroom:

After leaving the Charleston Gazette-Mail earlier this year, 2017 Investigative Reporting winner Eric Eyre, 2018 MacArthur Fellow Ken Ward Jr. and editor Greg Moore have launched Mountain State Spotlight, a nonprofit newsroom devoted to continuing their West Virginia-centered investigative reporting, according to Kristen Hare of Poynter. The founders "have support from Report for America with four reporters, a partnership with ProPublica and financial and business support from the American Journalism Project," which also is assisting with fundraising. "I can't say enough about the way those national figures in this movement to save journalism have tried to help West Virginia," Ward said. "It's really on us now."

TikTok-Oracle Deal Progresses:

United States regulators tentatively have approved the proposed deal between TikTok parent company ByteDance and Oracle, Brian Fung and Selina Wang of CNN reported Thursday. Under the agreement, ByteDance would remain the majority shareholder in the app, which would be spun off as a United States-based company. The United States government "would approve members of TikTok's board," with one board member would be mandated to hold a top secret security clearance and serve as an "expert in data security." This security expert also would be responsible for "chairing a security committee whose members would be U.S. citizens individually approved by the U.S. government."