Axios

NBCUniversal announced it's teaming with Buzzfeed to produce a TV crime docu-series.

NBCUniversal's production arm and BuzzFeed News plan to create a crime investigation docu-series based on the mysterious death of a Mississippi teen who was set on fire in December of 2014. The series is based on investigative reporting by BuzzFeed News reporter Katie J.M. Baker, whose reports shed light on the case.

Per The Wall Street Journal, NBC says their owned networks, like USA and Oxygen, will get first dibs to distribute the co-produced content, but eventually their content could also be sold to other rival cable outlets or streaming services.

What's in it for Buzzfeed: The series will highlight Buzzfeed reporting helping it establish a reputation as a serious reporting outlet.

What's in it for NBC: True crime is a hot TV ratings bet. In 2016, FX's "The People v. O.J. Simpson," Netflix's "Making of a Murderer" and National Geographic's "Killing Reagan" all received high ratings and were nominated and won various television awards.

Verizon has reached a tentative agreement to lower the price it's paying for Yahoo's core Internet business from $4.8 billion to around $4.45 billion, according to Bloomberg. The cut comes after the revelation of multiple security breaches at Yahoo that affected tens of millions of users.

Bottom line: If $250 million is all Yahoo has to give up to get this deal done, then it must be breathing a major sigh of relief. Verizon could have tried to kill the deal entirely, arguing that the breaches constituted a material adverse event. There also could have been questions about what and when Yahoo shared information about the breaches with Verizon.

Donald Trump's critical tweets about specific companies have not caused lasting damage to those companies' stock prices, despite widespread CEO jitters that they could.

Since first being elected, Trump has hurled 140-character barbs at companies that he believes are being unfair toward him (NY Times), his family (Nordstrom), American workers (GM, Toyota, Rexnord) or American taxpayers (Boeing, Lockheed Martin). Axios has examined the relevant tweets, and found:

Short-term: Shares in five of the seven targeted companies were down in the first 30 minutes of post-tweet trading.

Long-term: Shares in six of the seven targeted companies are trading higher today than they were prior to the tweet.

Data: Twitter, Google Finance; Chart: Lazaro Gamio / Axios

Months before Snapchat's parent company publicly filed its IPO documents on Feb. 2, it confidentially sent a draft version to the Securities and Exchange Commission for review.

Why? Because Snap is an example of what the SEC classifies as an Emerging Growth Company, a category created by the JOBS Act of 2012 to ease the IPO process and make stock markets more accessible to more companies.

NBC is partnering with Euronews, a network with journalists in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, to expand its news gathering capabilities. NBC and Euronews will collaborate and co-brand their digital products and coverage. NBC also announced that Deborah Turness will be named the first president of NBC News International and Noah Oppenheim will become President of NBC News.

The numbers: According to The New York Times, NBC spent roughly $30 million for a 25% stake in the company.

What's in it for Euronews? NBC will provide editorial resources and strategic guidance to Euronews. Euronews will be digitally co-branded with NBC and will gain access to NBC's digital resources to improve their online coverage.

What's in it for NBC? NBC will expand its reach to 277 million new households in thirteen languages across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Access to Euronews' international reporting gives NBC, and its' cable news channel, MSNBC, an edge in competing with CNN's international coverage, spearheaded by CNN's International channel.

Note: NBC is an investor in Axios and Andy Lack is a member of the Axios board.

1. CNN anchor Jake Tapper's debut novel, "The Hellfire Club," is slated for publication in the summer of 2018, per AP. The thriller is set in 1954 in D.C., where main character Charlie Marder — a newly appointed young New York congressman —navigates the dangerous waters of the era and the capital with his wife, Margaret, a zoologist with ambitions of her own.
2. The WSJ is closing its paywall loophole, per Digiday's Lucia Moses: "[I]t's turning off Google's first-click free feature that let people skirt the Journal's paywall ... [T]he Journal turned it for off four sections for two weeks, resulting in a dramatic 86 percent jump in subscriptions."
3. The WSJ's top editor, Gerard Baker, is defending his paper's coverage of Trump, per N.Y. Times' Sydney Ember: "Facing tough questioning at a town-hall-style meeting with the staff, [Editor in Chief Gerry Baker] suggested that other papers had discarded objectivity, and that anyone who wanted to work at an organization with a more oppositional stance toward the administration could find a job elsewhere."
4. Disney Cuts Ties With YouTube Star, per WSJ's front page: "Felix Kjellberg, a top star with 53 million subscribers to his 'PewDiePie' YouTube channel ... has posted nine videos that include anti-Semitic jokes or Nazi imagery [since August] ... On Monday after the Journal contacted Disney about the videos, the entertainment giant said it was severing ties ... Kjellberg is a top earner on YouTube, making roughly $14.5 million last year."

Who specifically in the media does Trump tweet about? We ran the numbers since election day and found Trump hates on the New York Times most of all... with CNN coming in a close second. (His Fox tweets are pretty pleasant by comparison.)

Janet Yellen begins today the first of two days of testimony before the new Congress, where she will likely be asked to defend the Fed's interest rate policy and the central bank's record on banking regulation. She'll be coy concerning the next rate hike, but offer a full-throated defense of Dodd-Frank. Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Economics also predicts Yellen will "gently suggest" that fiscal stimulus is not needed, an argument sure to warm the hearts of budget hawks.

Wilbur Ross doesn't divest: The billionaire, incoming Commerce Secretary has declined to divest himself of interest in 11 different companies, though he is selling his ownership in 80 more, the Wall Street Journal reports. The ownership stakes he is retaining however, have already prompted conflict-of-interest accusations. For instance, Ross will retain ownership of shipping concerns, even though the Commerce Secretary has broad powers over issues like international trade, which greatly affect industry profits.

S&P 500 cracks $20 trillion: The overall value of the S&P 500 grew to more than $20 trillion for the first time ever Monday — driven by a combination monetary stimulus, a stable recovery, optimism about the American economy, and solid corporate profits. Investors, however, should use the occasion to question whether the market has gotten ahead of itself, given the many risks—like the threat of trade wars—loom over the global economy.