We keep an eye out for the most interesting stories about Labby subjects: digital media, startups, the web, journalism, strategy, and more. Here’s some of what we’ve seen lately.
April 21, 2024
“The portrait that emerges is of a media organization in the throes of a dramatic reorganization that has tanked employee morale and baffled some faculty members and alumni of American University, which operates WAMU…As one staffer puts it, WAMU has ‘a garbage mess’ on its hands.” —
Washingtonian / Andrew Beaujon
/ Apr 21“The bipartisan plan offers a statewide total of $30 million in credits each year for three years (a $90 million total commitment) that can be used to cover half of a journalist’s salary, up to $50,000 per year. Publishers are only allowed to use the credits, which are part of the state’s 2025 budget, if they both hire new reporters and keep their current staff.” —
The Wrap / Stephanie Kaloi
/ Apr 21“The publisher says its current revenue run rate is $5m per year, which it hopes to increase to $12m per year in 2025. [COO Ryan] Alberti said: ‘95% of our revenue so far has been from pure programmatic ads, I mean we didn’t even have a sales team until this month. But that is not our long-term model, our newsletter subscribers are.'” —
Press Gazette / Clara Aberneithie
/ Apr 21“More than 29 million — about a quarter of domestic paying streaming subscribers — have canceled three or more services over the last two years, according to Antenna, a subscription research firm. And the numbers are rising fast…a third of them resubscribe to the canceled service within six months, according to Antenna’s research.” —
The New York Times / John Koblin
/ Apr 21“The kidnappers, identified as Shia Hezbollah militants of the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon, beat him, blindfolded him and kept him chained in some 20 hideaways for 2,454 days in Beirut, South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.” —
The New York Times / Sam Roberts
/ Apr 21“It took only days from Uri Berliner’s publishing his fiery essay about his employer, NPR, to his suspension, to his resignation in a blaze of bad-faith glory. ‘You knew the martyrdom was coming,’ was how journalist Issac Bailey put it. And that’s a shame, because every news organization — National Public Radio included — could benefit from more self-scrutiny, more openness to criticism, more willingness to change.” —
The Guardian / Margaret Sullivan
/ Apr 21“I love a gadget, but guys, I lived through the era of camera companies trying to convince us that we all needed to carry a compact camera and our phones everywhere. Phones won. Phones already come with powerful processors, decent heat dissipation, and sophisticated wireless connectivity. An AI gadget that operates independently from your phone has to figure all of that out.” —
The Verge / Allison Johnson
/ Apr 21“The members of the jury are meant to be anonymous. But that effort has been undermined, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said from the bench, by media reports that mentioned potentially identifiable information about the jurors — ranging from their physical appearances to their occupations.” —
The Washington Post / Will Sommer
/ Apr 21“As police and paramedics rushed to the scene, as some people screamed and others stood in stunned silence, Coates launched seamlessly into a narration of the horror, her authoritative cadence never faltering.” —
The Washington Post / Amber Ferguson
/ Apr 21New York Post 1, Truth Social 1, New York Daily News 0. —
The New York Times / Charlie Smart
/ Apr 21
