Go back in time to 2016: BuzzFeed, Vice Media, and Vox Media are supposed to be the future of media. Now back to present tense: Vice filed for Chapter 11, Vox is breaking up, and BuzzFeed just sold itself for a fraction of its former value. Meanwhile, many of the companies the digital upstarts were supposed to replace - big publishers and TV companies - are still here.
While he didn't dream up the concept of cable TV or even launch its first culturally significant network - HBO gets that honor - Turner, an outsider who built his empire from Atlanta instead of New York or Hollywood, had an almost dogmatic belief in the industry's potential to break up the monopoly that the Big Three broadcast networks had maintained for decades.
Digital revenues for Reach plunged by 8.1% in the first three months of 2026, primarily due to a significant drop in referral traffic from Google, which worsened throughout the quarter.
There's nothing subtle here. It's a multi-pronged pressure campaign to discourage independent reporting. Trump's frustration may betray anxiety about the Iran war's unusually low public approval ratings or about how the war itself is actually going. The image of President Trump pressing a finger to his lips and telling an ABC reporter to be quiet landed like a gut punch, with CNN's Brian Stelter framing it not as a one-off temperamental moment but as the visible tip of a coordinated wartime pressure campaign.
The battle for WBD played out amid a pivotal backdrop for Wall Street: a period investment banks hope will mark a full-throated M&A rebound, in which just landing a role on a deal of this size is as useful for one's street cred as actually winning it. Even advisers on the losing side will walk away with hefty fees, boardroom credibility, and proof they belong on the biggest mandates of the coming year.
The Rebootings Brian Morrissey delivered the sharpest indictment. He listed the proximate causes editorial drift, scale addiction, poor leadership then dismissed them: He bought this asset 13 years ago and has had more than enough time to figure out a path. Morrissey compared Bezos unfavorably to Elon Musk: Say what you want about Elon Musk, he'd have taken his sleeping bag out a while ago. Bezos, by contrast, acted like he acquired a series of car dealerships after watching some passive income influencer's YouTube videos.
For four days this month, Williamsburg will again become home to "the Coachella of podcasts" as On Air Fest returns to Brooklyn with one of its most ambitious lineups yet. Running from Feb. 23 to 26, On Air Fest 2026 will span three walkable neighborhood venues: the Wythe Hotel, Arlo Williamsburg and The XX Venue. The event will feature live podcast tapings, intimate interviews, performances, panels and industry conversations that explore how audio, media and culture intersect and evolve.
Every weekday, Mediaite's team of media-savvy writers and editors will sift through the dozens of media newsletters and curate all of the day's best content in easily-digestible fashion complete with insider knowledge and smart takes, all delivered to your inbox. Yes, we will sort through all the unique takes (and sort out the aggregation) and become your ultimate meta media newsletter, the single place you need to stay on top of everything in the media/politics newsletter world.
This is a new daily, five-minute briefing on what the dozens of media newsletters are actually saying the scoops, arguments, and fault lines shaping the media in real time. Not just aggregation. Interpretation. The goal is simple: one place, one newsletter, to see the media conversation behind the headlines who's driving it, who's missing it, and why it matters.
The Drum Awards for Online Media celebrate the original, clever and thought-provoking work of editorial teams and media owners whose skill and commitment keep the public informed. Spriha Srivastava, the UK bureau chief and executive editor of Insider, chaired the jury for our 2023 awards and was joined in the judging room by experts from NBCUniversal, HuffPost, The New York Times Magazine, Channel 4 and many other major media organizations.
However, this year, the pendulum has swung violently in the opposite direction. Essentially, leadership told many of us to "reword or avoid any mention of DEI," be leery of explicitly mentioning the communities most harmed by inequality or inequity in our work, and avoid citing who is committing the harm out of fear of retribution. Many of us knew the backlash to the media industry's embrace of DEI during the pandemic was brewing.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
