X, the company formerly known as Twitter, will no longer allow advertisers to promote their accounts within the platform's timeline to attract new followers, according to an email to advertising clients obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: Promoted accounts — or "Followers objective" ads — generate more than $100 million annually in global revenue for X, a source familiar with the company's business told Axios.

• The source told Axios the change was driven by X's product group, not the revenue side of the company.
• The company's client team was given little time to communicate the change to clients ahead of time, the source said.

Between the lines: Promoted accounts are one of the oldest ad formats offered on the platform, and they're very easy to sell.

• But they don't leverage any of the multimedia tools, like video, that X is trying to lean into.

Details: In a note to clients on Aug. 10, an X representative said the company planned to start "deprecating the Followers objective" ad unit beginning as soon as last Friday.

• The representative wrote that the change "comes as part of a larger effort to optimize the X experience by prioritizing content formats."
• Asked for comment, X acknowledged that the company was deprecating the ad unit and said it's made recommendations to clients to try other types of ads.

The big picture: The hurried product change is the latest in a larger effort by X to prioritize new content formats and products, regardless of their short-term business impact.

• Followers objective ads represent a small portion of X's overall ad revenue, but the company is cutting them at a time when reports suggest it's lost a significant amount of ad revenue.

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Members of the New York Times' union on Monday evening briefed several dozen staffers from the Washington Post union about best practices they learned from the Times' union walkout last December, three sources familiar with the meeting told Axios.

Why it matters: The meeting suggests the Post's union, which has grown in recent months following layoffs, is seriously considering a walkout as it continues to negotiate with management over a contract.

• Those negotiations have dragged on for more than a year.

Catch up quick: More than 1,100 members of the Times' union, which includes mostly editorial and some business staffers, walked out last year, a move that gained nationwide attention.

• The union reached a contract deal with management in May after more than two years of tense negotiations.

Details: During the meeting, Times union staffers explained to Post union staffers that their focus on three core objectives — wages, health care and retirement — helped the union gauge broad-based support needed to make the walkout impactful.

• They also walked the Post union staffers through the tactics they used to drive support for a walkout within the union.
• The Washington Post Guild, which is part of the Baltimore-Washington News Guild, represents more than 1,000 employees at the Washington Post.
• In April, hundreds of Washington Post employees in D.C. and around the country stepped away from work for a brief period to push the Post's management on union talks.

What they're saying: "When The Post is stuck proposing minimum salaries of $34k, we of course want to learn how our union siblings at The Times negotiated a contract with a much higher salary floor of $65k," the Post Guild said in a statement to Axios.

• "By working together, we can raise the standards for everyone in our industry," the statement added.

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Fantasy Life, the fantasy sports and sports betting media company founded by NBC Sports analyst Matthew Berry, has closed a $2 million friends and family round from a slew of big-name investors, including John Legend, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, and more.

Why it matters: The star power involved with Fantasy Life's raise speaks to the popularity of fantasy and sports betting among the establishment class in sports and tech.

• It also underscores the power of Berry's network. Berry is considered the most popular fantasy sports analyst in America.

Details: The round included investments from well-known athletes, investors and technologists, including LRMR Ventures (the family office of Lebron James and entrepreneur Maverick Carter), YouTube co-founder and former CEO Chad Hurley, Miami Marlins co-owner Roger Ehrenberg, Casey Wasserman, and more.

Between the lines: Several investors, including Carter, Hurley and Wasserman, have joined Fantasy Life's board in addition to a slew of media entrepreneurs with specific expertise in building newsletter businesses.

By the numbers: Berry launched Fantasy Life as a daily email newsletter in 2020. It has since evolved into the anchor of a sizable media business, with 350,000 email subscribers and more than 2 million unique visitors visiting fantasylife.com per month.

• Today, Berry told Axios, Fantasy Life is profitable and brings in seven figures of revenue annually. The company has been bootstrapped to date.
• The firm, which has 13 full-time employees and several contractors, makes most of its money selling ads and sponsorships.
• "Right now, our mantra is free," Berry said. "We will always be majority free, but there may be a premium offering later on."

Catch up quick: Berry left ESPN for NBC Sports in 2022 in part to be able to continue building Fantasy Life as a stand-alone media company.

• "One of the primary reasons I came to NBC Sports was their promise to allow me to continue to operate Fantasy Life, and they've been incredible from the start," Berry said in a statement.

What's next: Berry told Axios that the new funds will be used to expand the company's product offerings and headcount and to begin paid marketing campaigns to acquire more users.

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Broadcast and cable usage fell below 50% of total TV usage for the first time last month, the lowest linear total to date, according to Nielsen's latest viewership data from its monthly survey, The Gauge.

By the numbers: Both broadcast and cable saw all-time usage lows last month.

• Cable's share specifically fell below 30% for the first time.
• Streaming, meanwhile, saw a record 38.7% of total TV usage in July.

The big picture: Entertainment giants now need to wrestle with what to do with their linear TV assets, given the pace of cord-cutting in the U.S.

• Disney CEO Bob Iger made it clear to investors last week that Disney is seriously rethinking its commitment to the traditional TV business. And for the networks he does plan to keep, new considerations will be made to ensure the numbers work out.
• After years of contemplating a move into sports betting, ESPN finally announced a betting joint venture with casino operator Penn Entertainment last week that will give ESPN $1.5 billion in cash payments over 10 years, as well as $500 million of stock.

Go deeper: Barstool's Dave Portnoy beat the house

• How Barstool's controversies pulled legs out from Penn's stock

The abrupt departure announcement from CBS News co-president Neeraj Khemlani on Sunday marked the latest in a string of chaotic leadership shake-ups at TV news networks in the past year.

Why it matters: With ratings and revenues in terminal decline, television networks are left scrambling to rearrange the deck chairs on linear TV's sinking ship.

• Executives with experience managing streaming and distribution deals are being elevated to manage the distress, including more women and people of color.

Driving the news: Wendy McMahon, who was CBS News co-president with Khemlani, was promoted Monday to president and CEO of CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures. McMahon oversaw CBS News' streaming expansion to more than a dozen cities.

• Veteran news executive Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews has been named president of CBS News, reporting to McMahon. She is the first Latina to hold the position, per the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
• CNN on Monday also announced a new programming lineup that elevates two women of color to prime-time news anchor positions.
• The shake-up at CNN marked the first major change at the network announced by its new leaders, who took the helm following the dramatic exit of former CEO Chris Licht. CNN has been without a solid prime-time lineup since Chris Cuomo was fired in late 2021.

The good news: Beyond McMahon and Ciprian-Matthews, women and people of color now overwhelmingly run the country's biggest TV news operations.

• NBCUniversal News Group is chaired by Cesar Conde. Rashida Jones is president of MSNBC. Kimberly Godwin is president of ABC News. Suzanne Scott is CEO of Fox News. Amy Entelis and Virginia Moseley are running CNN alongside David Leavy and Eric Sherling.

Courier Newsroom, a local news group with a progressive perspective, is launching a new newsroom in Nevada Tuesday, and it's planning to launch two more newsrooms in Texas and New Hampshire in the coming months, said its publisher Tara McGowan.

Catch up quick: Courier is part of a public benefit corporation — launched by McGowan in 2021 that's backed by billionaires Reid Hoffman and George Soros — that aims to tackle disinformation by funding openly partisan newsrooms.

Details: The expansion will bring Courier's network to include 11 local newsrooms by the end of the year.

• There are currently over 60 people who work across the current eight local newsrooms full time.
• Each local newsroom has its own newsletter and website. The company has 420,000 free newsletter subscribers across its portfolio.

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Sports Illustrated publisher The Arena Group has agreed to sell a majority stake to entrepreneur Manoj Bhargava's Simplify Inventions, Axios' Kerry Flynn and I write.

Why it matters: The investment gives Arena Group a $50 million cash influx, which the company said it will use to reduce its debt load.

• Last year, The Arena Group earned around $220 million in revenue, up from roughly $53 million in 2019. It's expanded organically and through acquisitions.

Details: Simplify Inventions will acquire about a 65% stake in the company. It also will give Arena Group a five-year guaranteed ad commitment of $60 million from brands owned by Simplify.

• Bridge Media Networks — a subsidiary of Simplify Inventions that owns two national TV networks, NEWSnet and Sports News Highlights, and automobile and travel brands, Driven and TravelHost — will be added to The Arena Group.

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CoinDesk, the crypto media company that broke the story that led to the fall of crypto exchange FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, is eliminating positions, according to an internal note from its CEO to staff obtained by me and Axios' Brady Dale.

• A source told Axios that roughly 40% of CoinDesk's editorial team, or 18 people, are being let go.

Why it matters: The expected cuts are part of a broader effort meant to help the company curb costs to facilitate a sale.

• CoinDesk's parent Digital Currency Group is trying to finalize a deal to sell CoinDesk to an investor group for $125 million.
• DCG has been hit hard by the downturn in the cryptocurrency industry.

A police department in Marion, Kansas, was accused Sunday of violating First Amendment protections after officers raided a local paper and the home of its owners, Axios' Rebecca Falconer and I write.

Driving the news: The Marion County Record's publisher told Axios on Monday that he plans to file a federal lawsuit over the raid, which the paper said contributed to the death of its 98-year-old co-owner Joan Meyer.

• Over 30 major news organizations and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press wrote a letter to the chief of the Marion Police Department on Sunday, saying there "appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search."

Why it matters: The media coalition and other press freedom groups argue the raids infringed on the paper's rights and may have violated federal law that restricts law enforcement's ability to conduct newsroom searches.

• Eric Meyer, the paper's co-owner and editor, said in an email Monday morning he plans to file a suit "to establish a clear precedent that this sort of behavior cannot be tolerated."

Zoom out: Tensions between local newsrooms and local law enforcement officials have escalated in recent years, per data from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

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