Axios

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.

Per Politico, WSJ editor Gerri Baker defended the paper's coverage of President Trump in a town hall meeting Monday.

Key Takeaways:

• The paper's Editor-in-Chief Gerry Baker told staff that anyone who accuses the paper of not being critical enough of the President is peddling "fake news"
• Baker reportedly told employees who are unhappy with the paper's coverage that they should work somewhere else
• Staffers had rising concerns for months about the direction of the paper's coverage

Why it matters: WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who blasted Trump during the primaries for "embarrassing his friends" and the whole country. It appears as though they have since made amends. Axios previously reported a list of instances that show how the Murdoch/Trump relationship has evolved since the campaign.

President Trump continues to argue that the real number of unemployed Americans is much higher than economists claim. He places the true number of unemployed at 96 million, or every American over the age of sixteen who doesn't have a job, even if he doesn't want one.

Bloomberg reports that Trump's unemployment exaggerations resonate with many of today's unemployed, who are often held back by geography, disability, felon status, or age discrimination. The official unemployment rate might be at an historically low 4.9%, but broader unemployment measures have stayed relatively high, with many Americans being shut out of the labor force altogether.

Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics

What's coming next: Structural forces like the aging of the workforce and the increasing importance of education will likely push this number lower, whatever the policies coming out of Washington.

AP's Carolyn Thompson describes how teachers, from elementary school through college, are now telling students how to avoid fake news. Their lessons focus on how to distinguish between factual and fictional news — and why they should care that there's a difference. Tips on distinguishing fake news from the real thing:

1. URL look odd?
2. Does it make you mad?
3. If it's real, other news sites are likely reporting it.
4. Caps lock and multiple exclamation points don't have a place in most real newsrooms.
5. It might be satire.

The Washington Post will be the first content partner to provide breaking news updates throughout the day on Snapchat Discover.

How is this different? The Post will be the first publisher to update its Snapchat content multiple times per day, vs. other news providers that publish once or twice per day. The paper says it's building out a separate team to manage the new product, which will include video and motion graphics experts.