Axios

Google is working on building a Snapchat rival, the The Wall Street Journal reports. Sources say Google is in discussions with several media companies, including Vox Media, CNN, Mic, the Washington Post and Time Inc. about a product called "Stamp" which could be announced as early as next week.

Why it matters: In the race to win the attention economy, tech giants are looking to optimize ways they can deliver content, and especially news content, to audiences in a mobile-first format. Facebook's mobile-first news platform, Instant Articles, is facing backlash from some publishers while Snapchat's mobile-first content platform, Discover, continues to launch more partnerships.

Sinclair Broadcast Group shares were down Friday after Bloomberg reported earlier in the week that 21st Century Fox was considering moving its local affiliate broadcast partnership from its conservative rival to Ion, a Florida-based broadcasting company less than half the size of Sinclair.

• Sinclair has been expanding its conservative footprint for months. Rumors that Sinclair was in talks with conservative heavyweights Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity to form a rival network to Fox via WGN, a cable company acquired by Sinclair during the Tribune deal, intensified competition.
• 21st Century Fox declined to comment. Sinclair and Tribune did not immediately return requests for comment.
• Why it matters: Already the largest broadcaster in the country, Sinclair's $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Company this year will be expanding its reach (if regulatory approval goes through), making it an even bigger TV rival to Fox News Channel.

The U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in July, while the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.3%. Economists were expecting 180,000 new jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.3%. Three takeaways:

• Job growth for the first seven months of 2017 has averaged 167,000, slightly below the 2016 trend at this point last year of 184,00. Still, "employment growth remains strong enough to keep the unemployment trending down," 'High Frequency Economist' Jim O'Sullivan writes in a note to clients.
• Wage growth grew slightly, but according to University of Michigan's Justin Wolfers, "not enough to generate any threat to the Fed's inflation target." The Fed will likely take this report as a cue to refrain from interest rate hikes.
• The share of the unemployed who have been jobless for 27 weeks of more rose for the second straight month. The share of working-age Americans in the labor force was flat, suggesting the current healthy clip of jobs growth is not benefitting those at the labor market's outer edges.

The German discount grocer Lidl made its United States debut this June, opening 20 stores in the Carolinas and Virginia just weeks after its compatriot Aldi announced its own expansion plans in the U.S. earlier this year.

The timing could not be worse for established chains like Walmart and Kroger, which have simultaneously been digesting the news of Amazon's Whole Foods takeover. Unfortunately for Walmart, it's a move that indicates the e-commerce giant is turning its attention, and tolerance of razor-thin margins, to the lucrative grocery segment.

Battle lines: Lidl entered the market aggressively, with prices in its Winston Salem, NC, store that were 9.1% lower than the local Walmart, according to a study conducted in June by Jefferies analyst Christopher Mandeville. Given those results and Lidl's "enjoyable" shopping experience, he says Lidl could be "highly disruptive" to incumbents like Walmart.

The media and the White House went wild after Alan Shipnuck from Sports Illustrated reported that President Trump called the White House a "real dump" in front of his golf buddies in Bedminster.

In a podcast on GOLF.com, Shipnuck and colleague Micheal Bamberger talked about how they dealt with the White House's pushback, which included Hope Hicks calling them to to say: "That's a lie and needs to be retracted."

Where they heard it: Shipnuck told Hicks that Trump made the comment in front of eight or nine members and staffers of the club, and he had heard the story from two or three sources during the U.S. Women's Open in July.

CNN's Jim Acosta and top White House advisor Stephen Miller got into a shouting match at the daily press briefing on Wednesday, and partisan media quickly took sides.

Why it matters: This fight is just one more vivid example of the ongoing war between the Trump administration and main stream media as well as the vicious partisanship surrounding the Trump presidency. As usual, left-leaning media sites rushed to praise Jim Acosta as a hero and criticize Stephen Miller, while right-leaning media companies ran headlines mocking Acosta or cheering on Miller.

After publicly facing off with President Trump's senior policy advisor, Stephen Miller, Wednesday over the administration's latest push to reduce legal immigration and simultaneously implement a merit-based system, CNN's Jim Acosta said he thinks he came out on top:

• "I think what you saw unfold in the briefing room is that he [Miller] really just couldn't take that kind of heat and exploded before our eyes."
• "It's not often you're accused of a cosmopolitan bias from someone who went to Duke University wearing cufflinks in the White House briefing room," Acosta later said on CNN.
• Context: During yesterday's WH press briefing, Acosta asked whether the administration was favoring immigration from English-speaking countries. Miller shot back, "Your cosmopolitan bias is showing."

The world's second largest exporter is gearing up to compete with California's Tesla, by building its own advanced battery plant, Bloomberg reports. The wire quotes Holger Gritzka, a former steel executive who says he is organizing a consortium of 17 Germany companies to collaborate in mass-production of advanced lithium-ion batteries, to power electric vehicles and store sustainably-sourced energy.

Why it matters: The group has already won the favor of the German government, which is supplying subsidies for the project, reflecting that Germany sees mastering the technology as a national priority. China, which already has the lead in lithium-ion battery production, has also made advanced battery production a priority, lavishing government assistance on the industry. The U.S., too, is in the race, continuing to see the dividends of a $2.4 billion federal investment in lithium-ion technology in 2009, when Obama administration economic stimulus legislation seeded the U.S. advanced battery industry from scratch.

"Wall Street, Climbing Sharply, Skips Washington's 'Soap Opera,'" a New York Times front-pager by Nelson Schwartz: "[A ]market surge based on political hopes has been replaced by one more firmly grounded in the financial realm."

• "None of the soap opera in Washington matters," said Frank Sullivan, chief executive of RPM International, a Cleveland-based maker of specialty coatings and sealants like Rust-Oleum. "Nobody in business cares about who talked to who in Russia."
• "Besides steady economic growth or less regulation, investors ... have been encouraged by the loose reins of central banks like the Federal Reserve ... Inflation ... remains tame."
• Why it matters: "Dow Hits 22000, Powered by Apple ... another milestone in the long bull market as investors bet that a resurgent global economy can offset lukewarm U.S. growth," per Wall Street Journal's Akane Otani and Ben Eisen.