Two top editors at the New York Daily News have been fired after being accused of sexual harassment, per the New York Post. Both were suspended last week.
The details: The paper’s managing editor, Rob Moore, was accused last December of bullying and sexual misconduct by at least four former female employees of the Daily News, the Post reports. Sunday editor Alexander "Doc" Jones was escorted from the paper’s offices after allegations surfaced that he forcibly kissed younger staffers at off-site meetings, according to the Post.
HBO added over 5 million domestic digital subscribersacross its HBO and Cinemax services in 2017 — it's largest annual increase ever, the company announced in an SEC filing Thursday.
Why it matters: The increase is a result of a years-long overhaul of the company's content distribution strategy to broaden their subscription base so that they don't need to charge cable and satellite companies more to carry their content.
Veteran newsman Dan Rather warned that President Trump's "relentless campaign to undermine the public's trust in the press" is unprecedented and "the mark of an autocratic regime and an autocratic leader. We know from history what the dangers are."
Threat level: Rather, speaking at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles, said that we are not in Adolf Hitler territory, even in his early years, but added "there are indications that could be the direction in which we are heading."
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is helping fund India's largest online grocer, Bigbasket, with a $300 million dollar investment, reports Bloomberg. The company plans to utilize the funds for building farmer networks, warehouses, and delivery infrastructure in the more than two dozen cities it operates in.
Why it matters: India's current retail market is valued at more than $900 billion, with grocery shopping accounting for roughly $600 billion of that, Bigbasket co-founder and CEO Hari Menon told Bloomberg. But the expansion of grocery e-commerce in the country is hindered by the lack of refrigerated trucks, warehouses and fundamental logistics.
Airbnb will not go public in 2018, according to a statement from CEO Brian Chesky. The news came within an announcement that chief financial officer Laurence Tosi is leaving the home-sharing juggernaut, while legal and business officer Belinda Johnson will become chief operating officer.
Why it matters: Airbnb seemed poised to break Silicon Valley's "unicorn" IPO drought, following last week's addition of outgoing American Express CEO Ken Chenault as an independent director and news that the company will soon release its first "annual stakeholder report."
Newsweek Media Group, the publisher of Newsweek and the International Business Times, has allegedly been purchasing low-quality online traffic, a fraudulent move that helped the media company meet the requirements of a major ad buy from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with IBT, BuzzFeed reports, citing a new report released on Thursday by Social Puncher, an ad fraud watchdog.
What (allegedly) happened: Social Puncher's report claims that IBT supplemented a drop in organic search traffic to its website with paid traffic that used redirected traffic from pop-up or pop-under ads from pirate streaming sites. The vast majority of the ads for the CFPB were served this way, making it likely that real people never saw them — or immediately clicked away — while still allowing IBT to meet the buy's traffic requirements.
CBS Corp.'s board today is expected to discuss a merger with Viacom, setting the stage for a possible reunion between two companies that were split apart in 2005 by Sumner Redstone.
Why it matters: Even though we've heard this siren song before, there are two big differences this time around: A pressure-inducing trend of mega-media mergers, including AT&T/Time Warner and Disney/Fox, and declining share prices for both CBS and Viacom.
N.Y. Times Quote of the Day... Delrisa Sewell-Henry, a home health aide, on the long, haphazard commutes she and other home health workers in New York City face on public transportation:
When you make $13 an hour and you have to pay rent and buy groceries, you can’t afford an Uber. I can barely afford a seven-day MetroCard.
"Tackling the Internet’s Central Villain: The Advertising Business" — N.Y. Times "State of the Art" column by Farhad Manjoo":
[T]he online ad machine is ... a vast, opaque and dizzyingly complex contraption with underappreciated capacity for misuse — one that collects and constantly profiles data about our behavior, creates incentives to monetize our most private desires and frequently unleashes loopholes that the shadiest of people are only too happy to exploit.
Sears Holdings laid off 220 employees from its corporate headquarters in Illinois on Wednesday as part of an ongoing restructuring process that includes closing a number of stores, CNBC reports.
What's next: "Coming off a disappointing holiday season, Sears is looking for ways to drive sales and is considering further monetizing some of its other assets, including the Kenmore and DieHard brands, and Sears Home Services," per CNBC.
Total employee compensation in the U.S. rose in the fourth quarter of last year and marked the highest year-over-year gain since 2008, Bloomberg reports. Private-sector wages and salaries also rose 2.8% in Q4, continuing the upward trend.
Why it matters: "The latest year-over-year increase in compensation indicates employers are making more generous offers as they compete for workers in the tightening labor market," Bloomberg's Sho Chandra writes.
The year is 2034 — 16 years from now, writes Variety's Todd Spangler — and the way you watch sports could be quite different.
The state of play: "[N]o company is known to be making a play for the rights to the Olympics just yet. But as NBC is set to blanket the two biggest sporting events on American calendars — Super Bowl LII (Feb. 4) and the 2018 Winter Olympics (Feb. 9-25) — across screens everywhere next month, tech titans are making an unmistakable advance on sports telecasts."
Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon — the billionaire leaders of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase — sent shockwaves through the health care industry yesterday when they disclosed plans to start a not-for-profit company with the hope of reducing medical costs for their employees.
Reality check: A lot of companies have promised to "disrupt" health care, but few have succeeded. The U.S. still spends wildly on a system with poor outcomes. It's far from clear this new conglomerate, premised on a vague PR, will be able to do any better.
