Media industry

Media industry

News that the Washington Post had laid off hundreds of workers and scrapped several sections of the storied paper altogether stunned the journalism community last week. The Post cut roughly one-third of its staff, reduced local coverage, and completely destroyed its sports and international departments. The paper is owned by Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder, who has a staggering net worth of approximately $250 billion, bought the Post for $250 million in 2013.

Innocent men don't pay. They go to trial, Youssef said, leading to Dershowitz accusing him of defamation. Dershowitz was the subject of a defamation lawsuit from the late Virginia Giuffre, one of the victims of convicted child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein. The lawsuit was dropped in 2022, with Giuffre admitting she may have made a mistake in identifying Dershowitz as an abuser.

Joseph H. Thompson worked for the office from 2014 to 2026, and was named its lead prosecutor by President Donald Trump from to October 2025. But he was among six prosecutors who resigned last month over the Justice Department's effort to investigate the wife of . Now Thompson will take on his former office in court as he represents Lemon, the veteran journalist arrested last month in relation to his coverage of an anti-deportation protest inside a St. Paul church.

Trade organization RAJAR, which measures UK radio usage, has released its Q4 2025 data. The headline takeaway tells us that 50 million adults (86% of the adults UK population) listens to the radio at least weekly. That usage adds up to just over one billion listening hours. On a per-listener basis, the average person hears 20-30 hours of live radio per week. These numbers do not necessarily indicate turning on an analog radio. Forty-four million 15+ UK'ers use a digitally enabled platform each week.

AI-driven search is a big part of those challenges. As of October 2025, a full third of the 15 billion searches conducted on Google (or 5 million) triggered AI Overviews, Semrush president Eugene Levin told Digiday. At the same time, a significant percentage of publishers have said their traffic is decreasing. Well over half of publisher respondents to Digiday+ Research's fourth-quarter 2025 survey said they saw traffic declines last year: 54% said their traffic decreased somewhat or significantly throughout the year in 2025.

Or, as you're searching on Google, you can click the star icon next to the Top Stories box and enter the Guardian as a preferred source there. The Preferred Sources button in Google search Photograph: Google 3. You can also click our Prefer the Guardian on Google button on any story and follow the prompts to select the Guardian as a preferred source.

The tension in the boardroom is familiar. A founder scans their search results before an investor call and realizes the problem isn't visibility, it's credibility. Despite months of marketing spend, the company's public narrative feels fragmented, shallow, or worse, indistinguishable from competitors making similar claims. Down the hall, another company faces a different reality. Its leadership team enters meetings with third-party media coverage that clearly explains what they do, why it matters, and how they stand apart in a crowded market.

The Ellison-backed media giant offered a so-called ticking fee for each month the deal fails to close. Paramount Skydance is ramping up its bid for Warner Bros Discovery by offering extra cash for each quarter the deal fails to close after this year. The CBS parent company also said that it would cover the $2.8bn termination fee if Warner Bros Discovery walks away from its $82.7bn deal for its studio and streaming assets with Netflix.

On the air, Yesi Ortiz is a warm, flirty host for a popular L.A. hip hop station. Off the air, she's a single mother of six adopted kids. Managing both roles, plus romance, is a challenge. This episode originally aired in 2015. Death, Sex & Money is now produced by Slate! To support us and our colleagues, please sign up for our membership program, Slate Plus! Members get ad-free podcasts, bonus content on lots of Slate shows, and full access to all the articles

Director of Al Jazeera Digital News Jamal Elshayyal speaks to The Take on leading Al Jazeera's next era of journalism. At Web Summit Qatar, we hear from Jamal Elshayyal, Al Jazeera's new Director of Digital News Content, on forging his own path at the network and how those lessons will guide Al Jazeera through the AI age. In this episode: Jamal Elshayyal (@jamalelshayyal), Director, Al Jazeera Digital News Content Global Episode credits:

The FCC Media Bureau's January 21 public notice to broadcast TV stations said that despite a 2006 decision in which the FCC exempted The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from the rule, current entertainment shows may not qualify for that exemption. "Importantly, the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption," the notice said.

Lewis announced his departure in a two-paragraph email to the newspaper's staff, saying that after two years of transformation, "now is the right time for me to step aside." The Post's chief financial officer, Jeff D'Onofrio, was appointed temporary publisher. Neither Lewis nor the newspaper's billionaire owner Jeff Bezos participated in the meeting with staff members announcing the layoffs on Wednesday. While anticipated, the cutbacks were deeper than expected, resulting in the shutdown of the Post's renowned sports section, the elimination of its photography staff and sharp reductions in personnel responsible for coverage of metropolitan Washington and overseas.

When Team USA entered the San Siro during the parade of nations, the speed skater Erin Jackson led the delegation into a wall of cheers. Moments later, when cameras cut to US vice-president JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance, large sections of the crowd responded with boos. Not subtle ones, but audible and sustained ones. Canadian viewers heard them. Journalists seated in the press tribunes in the upper deck, myself included, clearly heard them.

The most relevant figure to Super Bowl LX is absent from it. The game will be played in his former home stadium, in the place where his protest made him a national lightning rod and a global symbol. The social issues swirling around America's largest sporting spectacle carry distinct echoes of what prompted his actions and what led to his exile. And yet he remains outside the conversation and invisible within the confines of the NFL.

We are in what some people call the post-news media era, or in a social media era. So many people who provide information' are influencers who are focused more on getting clicks and growing an audience than they are in providing accurate information, said Tapper to CNN chief law enforcement John Miller. And that reared its head. Tapper noted comments from Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, who slammed the reckless reporting of the case at a press conference on Thursday.

Jeffrey Epstein is alive is simply a much better story than Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Dead is an ending. Alive is a franchise. Epstein's death was narratively unsatisfying to many, many people. There was no trial, no public reckoning, no parade of powerful names under oath. The story cut to black before the audience got what it was promised. Conspiracies rush in to fill that void not because they are persuasive, but because they keep the plot alive.