Megyn Kelly apologized today to her "friends and teammates" via email regarding her comment about incorporating blackface into Halloween costumes on Tuesday's show, but her colleagues have continued to be critical of her comment despite the apology.
Why it matters: Some of her fellow "Today" show hosts believe that, while Kelly did apologize to the staff, she still needs to apologize to people of color across the country.
The U.S. is in the middle of the largest-scale terror by mail campaign since 2001, threatening to eclipse the Unabomber in a far shorter time window.
The big picture: Thankfully, no one has been hurt by the most recent incidents. But a wide swath of Democratic leaders and public servants was targeted today, which should concern all Americans.
Suspicious packages that reportedly contained functioning explosive devices were sent to the home of President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the office of President Barack Obama, CNN, philanthropist George Soros, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and Rep. Maxine Waters over the last 48 hours.
The big picture: The events — branded an "act of terror" by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — come at a time of ever-increasing polarization in the United States, when political discourse is often hijacked by the most extreme voices on both the left and the right. From the congressional baseball shooting to Charlottesville, political violence has increasingly been on the rise in America.
The Dow Jones Industrials Average fell more than 600 points, while the S&P 500 dropped 3% and the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite closed down over 4% on Wednesday.
The big picture: The Dow and S&P 500 erased all of this year's gains. The Nasdaq is officially in correction territory, which means it has fallen 10% from its high set in August.
Snapchat is replacing outgoing Chief Strategy Officer Imran Khan with 2 executives — one that will oversee ads and monetization and one that will oversee content and strategy.
Why it matters: Investors have been bearish on Snap’s ability to grow its ad business, causing its stock to decrease by more than half of its worth at the time of its IPO last March.
CNN's New York offices have been evacuated after receiving a suspicious package, forcing the cable news network's coverage to shift its broadcast to its Washington, D.C. bureau.
The big picture: Per CNN, the package was addressed to former CIA director John Brennan. Suspected explosive devices have also been intercepted at the homes of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Wednesday and the home of liberal philanthropist George Soros on Tuesday.
The most popular way for political campaigns to reach voters ahead of this year's midterm elections isn't placing ads on social media or TV — it's flooding cellphones with personalized political text messages.
Why it matters: The texts may be annoying, but they don't violate the rules. Instead of using automated bulk text messages, many campaigns are manually sending text messages to individual voters, one at a time. That means the so-called "peer-to-peer" texts aren't subject to federal limits on autodialers (like robocalls) to mobile phones.
"Today Show" host Megyn Kelly questioned whether white people dressing in blackface was offensive, asking "what is racist" about the costume and claiming, "back when I was a kid that was OK as long as you were dressing up as a character," during a discussion about inappropriate and offensive Halloween costumes.
Why it matters: Blackface is often offensive because it has been used to perpetuate caricatures and offensive stereotypes of black people for centuries. Later in the discussion Tuesday morning, Kelly discussed the Halloween costume of a character on "Real Housewives of New York" who dressed up as Diana Ross. Kelly explains, "she made her skin look darker than it really is and people said it was racist. And I don't know, I thought who doesn't love Diana Ross? She wanted to look like Diana Ross for one day."
125 Android apps have been caught up in an Android ad fraud scheme that possibly stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ad dollars, according to a BuzzFeed News investigation by Craig Silverman. A fraud detection firm, Pixalate, first caught on to the plot in June.
What happened: People sold their legitimate apps to a company called We Purchase Apps, but were quickly transferred to shell companies and the human users on the legitimate apps had their behavior tracked unwittingly. Fraudsters then programmed that information to create a bot network that would be used to generate fake traffic that effectively stole ad dollars from advertisers.
Teens spend nearly three quarters (71%) of their video consumption time with Netflix and YouTube, according to the 36th semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens survey from Piper Jaffray.
The big picture: Teens spend roughly 38% of their video time watching Netflix, more than double the time spent on traditional TV and roughly 33% of their video time with YouTube. According to the survey, Instagram has overtaken Snapchat as the first most-used social platform by teens.
Refinery29 will lay off more than 40 employees as it prepares to fall 5% short of its 2018 revenue goal, according an internal company memo from co-CEOs Justin Stefano and Philippe von Borries.
The details: The layoffs — first reported by the Wall Street Journal's Ben Mullin — will come primarily from the publisher's engineering, product and video teams. In the internal memo, Stefano and Borries say the changes are meant to "drive the business toward long-term success," and get closer to their goal of being "a next-gen media and entertainment company that powerfully connects with women around the world."
King Salman of Saudi Arabia and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), met with Jamal Khashoggi's family Tuesday to "share their deepest condolences and sympathy," the kingdom's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted on Tuesday.
Why it matters: These are striking photos, particularly of Salah Khashoggi, who was banned from leaving Saudi Arabia last year due to his father's criticism, per the AP. The Saudis are still working to save face over what happened to Khashoggi, while the world has remained widely skeptical of the explanation they gave last week — that he died when a fight broke out in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Helios and Matheson announced Tuesday its plan to spin off MoviePass, a subscription service that allows customers to attend up to three movies a month, into a new subsidiary called "MoviePass Entertainment Holdings Inc."
Why it matters: MoviePass has skyrocketed in popularity since its founding in 2011, but found itself in trouble this year when its popularity began to outstrip its profits, forcing Helios and Matheson to seek up to $1.2 billion in equity and debt securities to keep the service afloat. Per CNBC, the New York attorney general opened an investigation last week into whether the company misled investors about its financials.
Two more industrial companies, Caterpillar and 3M, disappointed with their corporate earnings as global trade concerns continue to weigh on results.
The big picture: 3M’s earnings and revenue came in way below what analysts expected, which the company blamed on the strong U.S. dollar for dragging down sales. Caterpillar’s earnings results actually beat estimates, but the construction equipment manufacturer said tariffs were pushing up its material costs.
Verizon says its media arm, Oath, which consists of AOL, HuffPost, Yahoo and other digital brands, is struggling to drive revenue.
Why it matters: When Oath was created in 2017, executives pitched its advertising business as being a serious ad competitor to Google or Facebook, but it has thus far failed to position its growth to take on those tech giants over the long-term.
A number of companies and individuals are backing away from doing business with Saudi Arabia until more answers are provided on the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who Turkish officials believe was murdered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
The big picture: Many of the world's largest prospective financial deals involve Saudi Arabia and are predicated on trust in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as a reformer. Meanwhile, there is speculation that MBS was personally involved in Khashoggi's disappearance.
President Trump's trade war with China won't bring back the jobs lost from the trade deficit with China, according to Robert Scott, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, whose work Trump cited on the campaign trail and during his presidency.
Chart: Economic Policy Institute; Chris Canipe/Axios
Why it matters: Here's an example of the trade debate's complexity. Some economists who agree with Trump that unfair trade has hurt U.S. workers don't think his tariff response will reverse the damage.
