Axios

BuzzFeed will lay off 15% of its staff, or about 250 employees, according to an internal memo first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by Axios.

Why it matters: Like other venture capital-backed digital media companies, BuzzFeed has struggled to increase revenue to meet growth expectations, although sources tell Axios that the company is profitable.

The phrase "future of retail" conjures images of cashier-less groceries, super-fast drone delivery and interactive shopping. But it's instead set to look very different depending on where you live — some Americans will have an array of choice and convenience while others will live in zones barren of retail.

Why it matters: The future of retail will worsen inequality. The affluent will stroll through beautifully designed brick-and-mortar shops injected with state-of-the-art tech. Meanwhile, consumers in lower-income areas and in smaller towns face a future of big-box retailers and basic dollar stores as their local malls decay.

Hulu is steering customers toward its ad-supported, on-demand streaming package by lowering the price.

Why it matters: When the digital ad market fell to Google and Facebook, there was a rush by streamers and publishers make money off of subscriptions. But Google and Facebook haven’t really penetrated the digital TV ad market yet, so now everyone else is racing to get a piece of it.

Viacom agreed to buy Pluto TV, a Los Angeles-based free internet TV service, for $340 million in cash.

Why it matters: It's a sizable bet against the growing wave of paid subscription content. Plus, it's a sizable payout for early Pluto TV investors, who in 2014 bucked conventional wisdom that TV viewership would be decimated by social media and mobile content.

While some had suggested China could cut its purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds as a way to retaliate or escalate its trade war with the U.S., Fang Xinghai, the vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said such a move is unlikely.

Reality check: It was always a low probability event, as it would endanger China's economy as much or more than the U.S.

Companies around the world are changing their tunes and addresses — uprooting supply chains and moving their headquarters to get ahead of unsettled global chaos.

Driving the news: Dyson said Tuesday it would move its headquarters from the U.K. to Singapore — not because of Brexit, according to its founder, leading Brexit advocate Sir James Dyson, but to "future-proof" the business.

A study from Pew Research Center out last week finds that a vast majority of Republicans (73%) feels that news organizations don’t understand them. This stands in stark contrast to the percentage of Democrats (40%) who say they feel the same way.

Republicans vary little across various demographics in saying they are misunderstood by the media. Republicans with a college degree, for example, are just as likely, if not slightly more likely, to say they're misunderstood than those with a high school education or less. Similar patterns follow gender and age lines.

The U.S. job market is brushing up against its best performance in a half-century, but certain occupations are in greater demand than most — those involving new or particularly human-led skills that seem least subject to automation.

In its latest quarterly index, provided first to Axios, Cognizant reports that “jobs of the future” — occupations like cyber calamity forecaster, career counselor and solar engineer — jumped 68% in 2018, vastly outperforming the market as a whole.

Viacom announced Tuesday that it has agreed to buy Pluto TV — one of the fastest-growing free, ad-supported TV streaming services in the U.S. — for $340 million in cash.

Why it matters: It's the latest digital technology company that Viacom has acquired over the past year to bring its brand, which consists mostly of legacy TV networks, into the digital future.

The NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations division has signed a multi-year contract with Comscore to provide measurement for the 40 local broadcast networks owned and operated by NBC and Telemundo.

Why it matters: It's the latest local broadcast deal to close with Comscore amid pressure to explore new types of TV measurement that extends beyond linear TV consumption that has been traditionally measured by Nielsen. Gray, Nexstar and Scripps have all also signed with Comscore in the past few months.

Vox Media is acquiring The Coral Project, an open-source publishing platform that is housed within the Mozilla Foundation. Deal terms have not been disclosed.

Why it matters: The deal underscores Vox Media's push to sell software as a service (SaaS) technology as a standalone revenue stream. It will also help The Coral Project grow faster by selling its technology to more newsrooms through Vox's sales team.

Truck shipments' year-over-year growth fell in December for the first time since 2016, data from the Cass Freight Index showed.

Why it matters: Truck shipments are thought to be a leading indicator as they're very sensitive to market fears. When things are good, suppliers load up, but in hard times the oversupply of trucks and weak demand from shippers can lead to quickly declining rates and a prolonged downturn for the industry, often coupled with more widespread economic malaise.

An urgent desire for societal change and a chaotic media environment is driving a renewed interest in fact-finding, according to Edelman's 2019 Trust Barometer. That effort is leading to a rise in the consumption and sharing of information from traditional news media outlets.

Why it matters: This is a huge difference from the same survey's results from one year ago, when most people said they were turning away from traditional media because they thought it was biased and driven by clickbait.