Los Angeles Times employees voted 248-44 to unionize Friday, after a year of tumultuous staffing and leadership drama. Later that afternoon, it was reported that publisher Ross Levinsohn would be taking unpaid leave after The Times' parent company, Tronc, launched an investigation into his "questionable behavior" reported by NPR.
Why it matters: The news occurred after many staffers signed a letter to Tronc's board of directors calling for Levinsohn's removal. The letter and union push are symbolic of The Times' employees' resistance against the new Tronc leadership.
Starz, a cable and satellite entertainment company,on Friday petitioned the Federal Communications Commission step in to resolve its carriage fight with Altice, a global telecom company that distributes the channel to American cable subscribers.
Why it matters: It's doubtful the FCC will do much to help Starz in this situation, as the agency often refrains from intervening in private negotiations.
Home security giant ADT raised $1.5 billion in its IPO, pricing fewer shares than planned at a much lower price than expected.
Why it matters: The 2018 IPO market appears to have fumbled its opening kickoff, even if ADT owner Apollo Global Management booked a strong paper profit on the first stage of its quick flip.
Robust public transportation infrastructure proved key to making the first, top-20 cut in the red-hot competition to host Amazon's second headquarters, according to a study of the company's search.
What happened: Cities like Detroit and Phoenix, which were widely expected to be short-listed, were hurt by their lack of public transportation and high congestion, says Jason Horwitz of Anderson Economic Group, a consulting firm.
Shares of telecom company Avaya began trading yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange, more than a decade after an $8.2 billion private equity takeover whose debt-load helped drive the company into bankruptcy early last year.
Jim Chirico, who took over as CEO last October after previously serving as chief operating officer, still has some hard feelings over the balance sheet imbalance:
It was like driving a car with the parking brake on.
HuffPost, the left-leaning website that skyrocketed to success as "The Huffington Post" under the George W. Bush administration, announced Thursday that it's shutting down its popular 2005 Opinion Bloggers program that featured over 100,000 contributors.
Why it matters: The original opinion-blogging program was an instrumental part of HuffPost's growth, but is now outdated in the age of social media. In a blog post announcing the change, Editor in Chief Lydia Polgreen noted that too many open platforms can lead to more noise and false information.
A new Pew survey on global attitudes toward the news media finds strikingly divergent attitudes among developed countries.
78% of Canadians and 82% of Dutch people believe their country’s media does at least “somewhat well” at reporting the news accurately, for example.
Just 22% in Greece and 36% in South Korea do.
Why it matters: This question — essentially, do you trust what you see, hear and read about your government and the world around you — is of enormous significance. In the U.S. and much of the world, the answer for millions of people is “no.” In many countries, though, faith in the press remains high.
