Here are the top media industry stories we’re following this week:
The Big News:
- Ted Cruz won the Republican Iowa Presidential Caucus (The Washington Post), while Marco Rubio emerged as the party establishment front-runner (CNN)
- Hillary Clinton edged out Bernie Sanders in the Democratic caucus (Gawker), also there were coin flips involved (NPR)
- Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in five Florida counties with incidents of the Zika virus (Times-Picayune)
Evolving Media:
- Playboy’s March 2016 issue, the magazine’s first of its “PG-13” remake, became available (Mercury News)
- Nielsen’s clients continued to call for the company to adapt to viewers’ changing habits (NYT)
- Instagram launched its first thriller series, releasing 15-second clips daily through February (The Next Web), and also extended its video advertisements from 30 to 60 seconds (TechCrunch)
- The Boston Globe for the first time published content directly to Facebook using the social networking site’s Notes feature (Digiday), and also released an election-night app that refreshes results every 15 seconds (NiemanLab)
- Podcast sensation Serial put its current season’s story on hold to revisit the subject of last year’s shows as Adnan Syed gets another day in court (Observer)
- The Times of London launched a weekly news app aimed at readers around the globe (NiemanLab)
Ups and Downs:
- Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced plans to cut costs including a 15% reduction in workforce (WSJ)
- The American Society of Magazines held its 50th-annual National Magazine Awards and gave The Atlantic the top prize (Women’s World Daily)
- Harper’s Magazine has let go editor in chief Christopher Cox suddenly after only three months on the job over “editorial differences” (Gawker)
- Seventeen musical artists saw their albums suddenly go gold or platinum after The Recording Industry Association of America changed rules to include music streaming (Vulture)
- The Intercept fired staff writer Juan Thompson after discovering he had fabricated sources through fake email accounts (Gawker)
- Reports surfaced of an uneasy newsroom at The Last Vegas Review-Journal including replacing the editor and publisher with reviews of stories involving new owner Sheldon Adelson (Capital New York)
Extra Scoop:
The Cision Blog’s scoops this week include:
- HuffPo Loses Two Journalists (Cision Blog)
- Jaweed Kaleem Out at Huffington Post (Cision Blog)
- Rachel Jacoby Zoldan Out at Life by DailyBurn (Cision Blog)
- People Online Taps Lauren Mikler (Cision Blog)
- Judah Robinson Moves to NowThis (Cision Blog)
- Aemilia Madden Signs on With WhoWhatWear (Cision Blog)
- Katherine Davis Rejoins Crain’s Chicago Business (Cision Blog)
Have a great weekend!
[Image courtesy of Phil Roeder via flickr]