His marriage to Kathleen Conniff in 1960 ended in divorce in the early 1990s. He married Ms. Mitchell in 1995, when she was the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, the two having met when she was the Moscow bureau chief for Newsday.

In addition to Ms. Mitchell, he is survived by his first wife; four children from his first marriage, John, Kevin, Michael and Laura Clines; and a sister, Eileen Lawrence. Another sister, Peggy Meehan Simon, died.

There are many ways to deflate pomposity, which is one reason Mr. Clines relished covering the State Legislature in Albany. Beyond the drumbeat of new laws and proposed taxes, he dissected the mores of lesser-light legislators with a Celtic sense of the absurd: their overblown rhetoric about public service, their crude eating habits during debates, their losing bouts with the mother tongue — all were fair game and duly reported.

“I think he was the best newspaper writer of our time,” Charles Kaiser, a former Times reporter, said in a recent email. “His success said more about the paper’s commitment to beautiful writing than anything else could.”

Mr. Clines once wrote a column on Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet, that might have been a kind of self-revelation, saying: “He fights to keep things basic, to remind himself of the simple wisdom of Finn MacCool, Ireland’s mythic national hero, that the best music in the world is the music of what happens. In his ‘Elegy,’ dedicated to Lowell, Heaney reminded himself:

‘The way we are living,

Timorous or bold,

Will have been our life.’”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/11/business/media/francis-x-clines-dead.html

Joe Zagacki, one of Mr. Goldberg’s producers at WIOD, recalled in a phone interview a day when “Hank had an argument with a caller — he had one of his volcanic explosions — and I said, ‘My goodness, you just hammered that guy. You’re ‘Hammering Hank Goldberg.’”

The nickname stuck. After he started at ESPN in 1993, Mr. Goldberg began banging a mallet on a studio desk to express his disagreement with a colleague or his disdain for a sports figure. He referred to himself as “Hammer.”

He initially appeared on ESPN2, which was new at the time and was attempting to reach a younger audience with anchors who dressed in a casual, cool style. Not Mr. Goldberg, who was definitely not cool but brought a quirky, brassy personality to the network — although it was more congenial than his in-your-face radio demeanor.

“Hank could fit into any genre; he could fit anywhere,” said Suzy Kolber, a longtime anchor and reporter at ESPN who worked with Mr. Goldberg on ESPN2 and in Florida. “Plug him into the horse-racing crowd or the ESPN2 bunch. He fit right in.”

Henry Edward Goldberg was born on July 4, 1940, in Newark and grew up in South Orange, N.J. His mother, Sadie (Abben) Goldberg, was a homemaker; his father, Hy, was a sports columnist for The Newark Evening News. Hy Goldberg frequently took his wife and children to the Yankees’ spring training in Florida, where young Hank became friendly with Joe DiMaggio, who called him Henry, Ms. Goldberg said in an interview.

At 17, Mr. Goldberg went to the racetrack for the first time and won $450 when he hit the daily double at Monmouth Park in New Jersey. When he brought his winnings home, he recalled, his father told him, “Oh, you’re in trouble now.” In an interview this year with The Las Vegas Review-Journal, he added, “He knew I’d never get over my love for the races.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/09/sports/football/hank-goldberg-dead.html

Still, Wish, which is run by a parent company called ContextLogic, did well early in the pandemic, as stay-at-home mandates stifled competition from physical retailers. But last year, as shoppers were venturing out more and becoming less engaged on Wish, digital advertising was also becoming more expensive, causing the company to scale back its spending. (It said it planned to pick up the pace this summer.)

Pressure also built internally at Wish for years.

Managers were constantly shifted around — like chess pieces, one employee said — which resulted in high turnover among workers fed up with the upheaval. Many employees complained that the company was not equipped to handle the orders that poured in early in the pandemic, and colleagues burned out under the intense stress and long hours.

Employees said their peers were often ignored or made to wait after raising concerns about quality control issues, such as the lack of standardized product sizing for merchants. Listings for weapons and other illegal products were often not removed, they said. Neither were many misleading listings, like one that appeared to offer a refrigerator for $1 but was actually selling the magnets shown in the photo of the appliance.

Four employees said Wish ran an experiment involving raffle-style flash deals that required customers to pay small amounts to bid on items. For losing bids, the employees said, the company gave out only some refunds, and then only to the customers who requested them. Customers who stayed silent were not refunded for months — a delay that set off several internal complaints.

Four employees said Wish’s long delivery times grew even lengthier during the pandemic, amid supply chain disruptions. Without informing customers, the company began to extend its delivery deadline on orders that were running late to avoid having to pay out refunds, the employees said. One internal document cited an example of a customer who waited for a missing order for more than three months before a request for a refund would be honored.

Wish has recently announced more accountability measures for merchants. Existing sellers will be evaluated on metrics like customer reviews, with perks like greater exposure for top performers. New merchants (which the company said now include more sellers from outside China) must qualify to join.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/business/media/wish-online-dollar-store.html

Ms. Freeman made the game for this month’s Triennale Game Collection, part of the Triennale Milano International Exhibition, the show in Milan dedicated to architecture and design. The select group of game designers who were invited to participate in the collection includes others who specialize in the offbeat: Fern Goldfarb-Ramallo, Llaura McGee, Akwasi Afrane, and the team of Yijia Chen and Dong Zhou.

Ms. Freeman creates her games in a home office filled with her collections of Japanese manga books, Disney Tsum Tsum stuffed toys, and vintage board games including “Squirt” and “Contack.” She and Mr. Jefferies live with their two mini dachshunds, Auron and Kimahri, named after characters in “Final Fantasy 10.”

The house has an under-furnished, just-moved-in quality. During much of the pandemic, the couple had been living with Mr. Jefferies’ parents nearby, after having left Portland, Ore. Ms. Freeman said they chose to live in Frederick, a city in western Maryland with a population of roughly 70,000, not only because it was close to family, but also because it was an affordable place for self-employed artists.

She said she made a modest living by selling her games through sites like Steam and Itch; she also earns money as a host on the streaming platform Twitch. On her Twitch channel, which has roughly 12,000 followers, she spends hours at a time in her home office interacting with fans while playing a range of games, including action-heavy hits like “Rise of the Tomb Raider” and “Elden Ring.” She still has a genuine love for those games, she said, although she has no interest in making that kind of thing herself.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/04/style/nina-freeman-video-games.html

Radio remains perhaps the most influential conduit for right-wing thought, despite the rise of podcasts and social media. Tens of millions of people nationwide, especially older Americans and blue-collar workers, listen to it regularly. Misinformation experts warn that talk radio channels, many of which air political commentary 24 hours a day, receive far too little scrutiny compared with other mass media. Talk radio is also uniquely difficult to analyze and harder to moderate, because the on-air musings from hosts usually disappear over the airwaves in an instant.

“Liberals or even most moderates never listen to it, they don’t pay attention to it, they don’t see it, they don’t hear it,” said Lewis A. Friedland, a professor who studies radio at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So you don’t know it exists, you don’t know how widespread and how powerful it really is.” In Wisconsin, he said, local radio stations play “extreme right-wing propaganda” five or six hours a day.

Asked about the false statements, Mr. James, the host of “The Charlie James Show,” and other conservative radio hosts and their networks defended them. Many pointed to examples of voter fraud in the past or raised conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. They said bleak polling results for the Democrats raised alarms about the integrity of the midterm elections.

“I think a host, guest or caller on talk radio might be forgiven wondering if ‘cheating’ might not be needed to win,” said Tom Tradup, the vice president of news and talk programming at the Christian and conservative Salem Radio Network.

Other hosts and radio networks declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

Liberal commentators have also claimed Republicans cheated or will cheat again, but to a far lesser extent. After Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia, lost in 2018, Democrats raised doubts about the election’s integrity, citing voter suppression. A petition that received nearly 60,000 signatures after the election was titled: “Don’t Let Georgia Republicans Cheat and Steal the Governor’s Mansion From Stacey Abrams.”

As Ms. Abrams campaigns for the office again this year, conservative radio hosts have painted her efforts to improve voter access, particularly for historically disenfranchised groups, as a way to enable cheating.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/business/media/on-conservative-radio-misleading-message-is-clear-democrats-cheat.html

Moviegoing in May was down 26 percent from May 2019, for instance. April was down 44 percent.

June benefited from a mix of movies. “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount) collected more than $535 million in North America since arriving on May 27, while “Jurassic World Dominion” (Universal) has sold about $315 million in tickets over the last three weeks. The animated “Lightyear” (Disney-Pixar) has chipped in about $100 million since its June 17 release, while “Elvis” (Warner Bros.) has taken in nearly $50 million since arriving a week ago, a very sturdy total for a musical biopic. “The Black Phone” (Universal), a low-budget horror movie, has generated about $35 million over the same time frame.

And the zany indie “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24) continues to chug away at art houses, collecting an impressive $66.4 million since late March.

After years of delaying releases and rerouting films to streaming services, studios are stocking the multiplex shelves again. This month, 11 wide releases are planned, one more than in July 2019, according to Mr. Gross. The lineup includes “Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Where the Crawdads Sing,” “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” and Jordan Peele’s “Nope.”

“We have consistently stated that a steady stream of diverse, compelling new film content, along with improving moviegoer sentiment, would be driving forces behind the re-ignition of theatrical exhibition,” Sean Gamble, the chief executive of Cinemark, one of North America’s largest multiplex operators, said in an email. June was Cinemark’s highest-grossing month since the start of the pandemic.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/business/media/movie-theaters-june.html

“I just think there has to be a way to figure this out,” he added.

The Banner, which charges for a subscription, is already one of the largest in a raft of local news start-ups that are trying to fill the void left by the closing and downsizing of thousands of newspapers around the country since the rise of the internet. More than 360 local newspapers closed between late 2019 and May alone, according to a report released this week by Northwestern University’s journalism school. And Mr. Bainum has plans to build The Banner to a newsroom of more than 100, eclipsing the size of The Sun, and has promised to contribute or raise $50 million over the first four years.

The bold entry is a test of whether a subscription model for digital-only local news can be sustainable beyond the initial philanthropic capital, and whether there’s an appetite for a second large news publication in cities where competition used to be commonplace. There are also several smaller digital news outlets in the region, including Baltimore Fishbowl, Baltimore Brew and Baltimore Witness. Axios plans to expand its local newsletters to the city this year, and Baltimore Beat, a Black-run nonprofit, plans to resume publishing after a hiatus during the pandemic.

“If you’re really going to take on an established media entity in this kind of economic climate, you better go in like a samurai,” said Josh Tyrangiel, a former Bloomberg Media and Vice executive who grew up in Baltimore and provided informal advice to Mr. Bainum.

“Don’t tread softly, go in forcefully, and expect that you’ll have to spend a lot of money on the product and to market the product,” Mr. Tyrangiel said. “The people of Baltimore are now conditioned to expect very little from their newspaper.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/business/media/baltimore-banner-the-sun.html

This can be seen in, for instance, the company’s marketing budgets. In 2019 — when Disney+ and Apple TV+ were just getting started and HBO Max did not exist — Netflix spent $2.6 billion on marketing. In 2021, when competition greatly increased, it spent $2.5 billion.

Most shows on Netflix still appear on the service with relatively little outside promotion. And the streamer’s movies still receive only nominal theatrical releases. For instance, “The Gray Man,” an expensive, summer blockbuster-style film starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, will debut in select theaters on July 15 before becoming available on Netflix a week later.

And, according to two people familiar with the talks between Netflix and exhibitors, there are no active negotiations regarding other potential theatrically exclusive releases. The much anticipated “Knives Out” sequel, scheduled to be released this year, will appear on Netflix after its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. An exclusive extensive theatrical launch appears unlikely. Netflix declined to comment on its theatrical strategy.

But company executives have become much more sensitive to bad reviews, which have lately been appearing in high frequency as Netflix struggles to find a new hit on a par with “Stranger Things” or “The Crown.” (Newer content like the film “Spiderhead” and the series “God’s Favorite Idiot” have been critically derided.) A producer who works with Netflix said the word “quality” was being bandied about much more often in development meetings.

Emily Feingold, a Netflix spokeswoman, disputed the idea that focusing on a show’s quality was somehow a change in strategy, referring to such disparate content as “Squid Game,” the reality television show “Too Hot to Handle,” and movies like “Red Notice” and “The Adam Project.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/business/media/netflix-streaming-business.html

You’ll never hear the name TikTok on “Dancing With Myself.” (“We didn’t want to be ‘the TikTok show,’ because we thought this movement was larger than that,” Irwin said.) But TikTok culture, shined up for television, shapes many aspects of its format.

The 12 contestants on each episode learn a series of routines that resemble social media dance challenges in their brevity and relative simplicity. They perform in square “pods” that suggest the boxed seclusion of phone screens, unable to see each other for most of the challenges. Like many TikTok dance creators, Jonas, Koshy, Kostek and Shakira are not experienced choreographers, but all demonstrate and help teach the show’s routines. Though judges have opportunities to save favorite dancers, “likes” are the currency of the competition, with winners determined by audience votes that are animated onscreen as showers of hearts.

The “Dancing With Myself” approach to casting is perhaps most in line with TikTok’s ethos. “On the app, what leads to success is not necessarily good dancing, but, really, the personality of the performer,” Boffone said.

Though some “Dancing With Myself” contestants are gifted and highly trained dancers, the show makes a point of including charismatic competitors of all skill levels. Many are already TikTok standouts: the dancing flight attendant, the dancing police officer, the dancing dentist. (And the dancing TikTok scholar. Boffone, who posts routines with his students on Instagram and TikTok, was cast as an alternate for the show’s fifth episode.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/arts/dance/dancing-with-myself-nbc.html

“Champion were obsessed with sweet and sour, they called it,” StoneBridge, now 60, recalled via phone from his studio in Stockholm. He dialed his Korg M1 synthesizer to the next preset, landing on Organ 2, and replayed his bass line. That was the bouncy, sweet part. The sour was the grinding sound that opens the song, a product of his DX100 Yamaha synth, which he played in the red to distort it. He dusted it all, as well as Robin S.’s vocal, with some delay. The result was minimal like early house music out of Chicago, but shimmering with novel sounds. StoneBridge was not sure about his concoction, but deadline compelled him to turn it in.

When Robin S. heard it, it blew her away, she said in an interview last week. Finally her song was complete.

She had recorded her vocal years before in one take (not counting the ad-libs) while suffering from the flu, she recalled over the phone from her home in Atlanta. She was initially unimpressed by the song; and then, years later with StoneBridge’s revision, its popularity exploded on a global scale. “Show Me Love” was not the first house song to feature the M1 Organ 2 sound, but it hit bigger than any that came before it.

Earlier last week, Robin S. got a call from her son informing her that she was trending on social media as a result of the apparent “Show Me Love” reference in Beyoncé’s song, which replicates that M1 Organ 2 sound (in a different rhythm). She and StoneBridge both said they had no idea what was coming. StoneBridge discovered the connection while searching for his name on Twitter.

“I didn’t know whether to laugh, to cry,” Robin S., 60, said. “Out of all the songs she has access to, out of all the songs her team has access to, she chose mine.” The singer said she was particularly touched because she’s felt that dance artists like her “don’t get their props” despite their hard work.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/27/arts/music/beyonce-break-my-soul-robin-s-show-me-love.html