“The company, which runs the most widely used podcasting app in the industry, is discussing launching a new subscription service that would charge people to listen to podcasts, according to people familiar with the matter. Such a service could pose a threat to Spotify, SiriusXM, Amazon and other big companies that have in the past couple of years swallowed up podcasting production firms in an effort to gain more control of the podcast ad market.”

Signal — once a niche messaging service for the privacy-minded (including many journalists) — is currently the most downloaded app in the United States. “Signal’s growth in popularity also came as numerous tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, began deplatforming Trump and his followers and trying to prevent their technologies from being used in service of further violence. Parler, the right wing’s social media alternative, was also booted from the internet; Google and Apple banned it from its app stores and Amazon Web Services stopped hosting the app on its servers.”

The team will be editor Mike Zapler and journalists Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, and Tara Palmeri. (Guess Thursday was the last time we’ll see Ben Shapiro take the reins.) “I want to bring some of the old Playbook back,” said Palmeri. “That flavor that, when I was working at the New York Post, it felt like I had to watch what was popping on Playbook at all times.”

The company’s flagship publication, USA Today, does not currently have a paid digital subscription option, but CEO Mike Reed said one is under consideration. Gannett reached the 1 million subscriber mark in the second half of 2020.

“The Navajo Times, based in Window Rock, Arizona, is the only newspaper focussed on reporting the news of the Navajo Nation—which covers an area larger than West Virginia and is home to more than a hundred and seventy thousand people. Many residents of the reservation don’t have Internet service, so the paper is vital to the community in a way that is increasingly rare these days, as local-news outlets around the nation are withering, sometimes supplanted by social media and sometimes by nothing at all.”

“The company debuted Spotlight in November and is ‘distributing over $1 million USD every day to Snapchatters,’ a spokesperson said … Katie Feeney, 18, a high school senior in Olney, Md., said she has earned over $1 million from Snapchat in the past two months … Feeney said the cash has opened up new opportunities already. Colleges that she wasn’t planning to apply to because of financial concerns are suddenly on the table.”

“Making us ‘the enemy of the people’ has made it hard … In the Tea Party days, they didn’t really like us either, [but] they didn’t treat us like the Trump people do, or the anti-mask people do, or the militia people … They just come right at us, like, ‘Who are you with?’ and ‘What do you think you’re doing here?,’ [They] attack us, which is something totally new to me in my career.”

“Glose’s 20 employees, most of whom are based in Paris, will join Medium. Glose CEO Nicolas Princen will become vice president of books at Medium. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.”

“We should create a new ‘PBS of the Internet’ to strengthen our civic infrastructure and ensure a strong online supply of trustworthy, nonpartisan scientific and election information.”

“Legum said he looks for angles to stories that he thinks media outlets are unlikely to pursue. Last week, he and his research assistant spent four days finding the corporate donors for senators who objected to the election results, then contacted all 144 companies for comment. ‘My guiding principle is to find something that’s so monotonous and boring that it’s unlikely to be duplicated,’ he said in an interview.”