Vice has focused on diversifying its revenue streams in recent years, expanding its Vice Studio business; its ad agency, Virtue; and its global news gathering division. Those units have helped the company improve its financial results and achieve profitability during some quarters last year, a person familiar with the matter said.

On Thursday, Vice Media announced that it had garnered 33 Emmy nominations in the news and documentary category.

The Information reported earlier that Vice had hired advisers to explore a sale of its studio business. CNBC reported that Vice Media was exploring a sale of its entire business, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Group Black, a media company focused on Black ownership, was exploring a deal for Vice.

Vice, like many digital news companies, last year explored a plan to go public through a deal with a special purpose acquisition vehicle, which had been seen as an easier way to take a company public than a traditional initial public offering. But enthusiasm on Wall Street for SPACs waned, in part because of the poor performance of many of the companies that used them to go public, and Vice instead raised money from investors.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/business/media/vice-media-antenna-group.html

King, Garcia-Navarro and others had earlier alleged pay disparities at the organization between male and female hosts, among other issues. NPR has said that improving diversity and equity is its “foremost priority,” and pointed to competition from deep-pocketed rivals as one explanation for the departures.

Although Sanders said that “issues of equity” were a factor in his decision, he added that the choice had been largely personal, fueled by his desire for maximal creative freedom.

“I spent a third of my life in that place and it still means a lot to me,” he said. “But I wanted the time and the space to carve out an identity that wasn’t ‘Sam Sanders from NPR.’”

On the first episode of “Into It,” Sanders was lithe and sprightly, a distance runner easing into stride. Over the course of 30 minutes, he bounded through a series of games with Vulture colleagues that highlighted the week’s preoccupations: Jennifer Lopez (“a human angel here on earth”), Ben Affleck (“something dead behind his eyes”), Keke Palmer (“a breath of fresh air”).

The structure of the show, over which Sanders has wide discretion, is deliberately flexible. His long interviews are back in the mix (the first episode included a deep dive on Beyoncé with the journalist Danyel Smith) and he is leaving space for what he calls “high jinks for the sake of high jinks,” like the celebrity liquor tasting.

Mostly, he says, he wants to talk about whatever feels good, and invite others to do the same.

“I think the best thing that I can offer is a place where you can come recharge, learn, be entertained, and then go back out into the world feeling a little bit of a lift,” Sanders said. “That’s what I’ve wanted for my listeners from Day 1.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/arts/sam-sanders-npr-vulture.html

A successful entrepreneur as well as a newsman, he founded The Lakota Journal, a weekly newspaper based in Rapid City, in 2000. Nine years later, he started Native Sun News Today, another Rapid City newspaper, which he owned with his subsequent wife, Jackie Giago, and wrote for until his death.

Timothy Antoine Giago Jr., a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, was born on July 12, 1934, in Kyle, S.D., on the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of seven children of Tim Sr., who worked in a store in nearby Porcupine, and Lupita Giago, a homemaker. His Oglala name was Nanwica Kcjii, which translates to “He stands up for them.”

Mr. Giago attended the University of Nevada, Reno, before he began writing a column on Indian affairs for The Rapid City Journal in 1979, becoming the first regular American Indian voice in a South Dakota newspaper. The following year he was hired as a full-time reporter at the paper before striking out on his own.

With no precedent for a plucky, pugnacious reservation newspaper, Lakota Times was thought to have little chance of success. “Some people said, ‘I’m only going to take out a six-month subscription, because I don’t expect you to be around much longer than that,” Doris Giago recalled.

But the newspaper filled a void for Pine Ridge citizens.

“It was often the only way they could get information about what was going on,” said Rhonda LeValdo, a former president of NAJA who now teaches journalism at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan. “For us as Native people, our issues were rarely talked about in mainstream news unless it was about something affecting non-Natives.”

Under Mr. Giago’s leadership, the newspaper published investigative articles that “caused banks to be fined and rip-offs of the tribal government to be halted,” he wrote in the Nieman newsletter, Nieman Reports. In 1990, he spearheaded a successful campaign to get South Dakota to rename Pioneer Day, celebrated on Columbus Day, to Native American Day.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/us/tim-giago-dead.html

Still, other readers have come to the defense of Ms. Zelenska, seeing the shoot as a symbol of national pride: a means to show the world Ukrainian elegance; a reminder of the balm that can be found in beauty; and a subtle nod to shared humanity in the face of inhuman aggression. She is not, after all, in a ball gown eating cake. She is in a war zone, looking haunted.

To a certain extent, the debate simply shows how tangled our feelings about fashion still are and how entrenched the view of it as a nonserious subject remains — despite the fact that fashion is a key part of pop culture and the rare equivalent of a global language. It’s one that every politician, and public figure, employs to their own ends, whether they want to admit it or not. (That’s why, despite the risks, they keep appearing in magazines like Vogue.)

The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is a war being conducted on all fronts: on the ground, in the air, in the digital sphere and in the arena of public opinion. (See, for example, Ms. Zelenska’s appearance in Washington last week.) Vogue — and, indeed, any outlet that allows the Ukrainian people to reach different swaths of the global population and influence sentiment — is one of them. As Ms. Zelenska and her husband, who founded one of the biggest television entertainment production companies in Ukraine before getting into politics, know.

By putting Ms. Zelenska on its cover, Vogue is furthering her role as the relatable face, and voice, of the struggle; bringing her up close and personal for the watching world. And by appearing in public, and raising issues in public, when her husband cannot, she is keeping her country’s needs alive in the international conversation at a time when other crises are vying for attention. She has, essentially, weaponized Vogue.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/style/olena-zelenska-vogue.html

While advance leaks of major albums were common as the CD era gave way to digital downloads, and could devastate a new album’s prospects, a crackdown on digital piracy and the shift to a streaming-first model — along with surprise releases like Beyoncé’s — have greatly reduced that threat.

The last time Beyoncé suffered a major leak was with “4” in 2011, when she told listeners, “While this is not how I wanted to present my new songs, I appreciate the positive response from my fans.” (Representatives for Beyoncé and her label declined to comment on her release strategy, and did not immediately respond to questions about the leak.)

Behind the scenes, the luxury of having advance notice and — hallelujah! — an early promotional single can give industry gatekeepers, like radio stations and streaming services, the runway to get themselves involved before an album’s launch.

“To have anything prior to the drop is a gift,” said Michael Martin, a senior vice president of programming at Audacy, which runs more than 230 radio stations around the country. “When you have time to prepare, you can be a better marketing partner with the artist and label and management. You can have everything ready to push out at the moment the project hits the ecosystem. That’s what you want. You don’t want to scramble.”

“Break My Soul,” a throwback to 1990s dance music and the first single from “Renaissance,” was released more than a month ago. With 57 million streams and 61,000 radio spins in the United States, according to Luminate, the song currently sits at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 — its peak thus far and only the third time Beyoncé has hit the Top 10 in the last decade as a principal artist. (Her two most recent chart-toppers came as a guest: “Perfect Duet” with Ed Sheeran, in 2017, and “Savage Remix” with Megan Thee Stallion, in 2020.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/arts/music/beyonce-renaissance-rollout.html

The F.T.C. said in its request that asking for an injunction was sometimes a prelude to filing a complaint against a merger, which could embroil Meta and the agency in a lengthy trial and appeals process. A F.T.C. spokeswoman said the agency had not filed such a complaint and declined to comment further on the agency’s strategy.

Ms. Khan, 33, who was appointed by President Biden last year to acclaim from the left, has tried to make good on expansive promises to rein in corporate power. She became prominent after she wrote an article in law school in 2017 criticizing Amazon. As F.T.C. chair, she has called for regulators to vigorously enforce antitrust laws and has said she may craft sweeping online privacy rules that would implicate Silicon Valley companies.

The lawsuit drew praise from Ms. Khan’s allies. Sandeep Vaheesan, the legal director of the Open Markets Institute, a liberal think tank, said in a statement that the lawsuit was a “step toward making building, not buying, the norm for Facebook.”

But tech industry allies assailed Ms. Khan’s actions. Adam Kovacevich, the chief executive of Chamber of Progress, an industry group funded partly by Meta, said that with the new lawsuit, “the agency is more focused on getting headlines than results.” He said Meta “isn’t any closer than pickleball or synchronized swimming are to locking up the fitness market.”

Meta said in a blog post that the F.T.C. would fail to prove that the Within deal would “substantially lessen competition,” which is the bar that is typically set to block a deal under federal antitrust law.

In its lawsuit, the F.T.C. said that if Meta bought Within’s Supernatural, it would no longer have an incentive to improve Beat Saber, the virtual reality fitness game it already owns. But Nikhil Shanbhag, an associate general counsel for Meta, said in the blog post that the games weren’t competitors.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/technology/meta-facebook-vr-ftc.html

Beyond the economic tumult, Meta faces its own particular set of challenges. Last year, Apple made privacy-related changes that hampered Meta’s ability to measure and deliver its advertising on Apple-made mobile devices. (Meta makes the vast majority of its advertising revenue from smartphones.)

It is also staring down the barrel of one of its toughest competitors in TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app that has captured the attention of more than one billion people in just a few years. Mr. Zuckerberg has begun to shift his company’s products to mimic TikTok’s offerings, including making sweeping changes to Instagram and Facebook.

At the same time, Mr. Zuckerberg has been spending big on his vision for the metaverse. He has told investors, technologists and others that the effort may take years to come to fruition and that the endeavor will be costly. Some investors are skeptical that the investments will pay off in the long term.

Still, there were bright spots in Meta’s earnings report. The company said its “daily active people,” its term to describe users across its family of apps — which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — increased to 2.88 billion, up 4 percent from a year ago. That exceeded analysts’ expectations that the company was losing visitors. The Facebook app also saw user growth within the United States, an area that some believed was saturated.

Mr. Zuckerberg said he was encouraged by other areas of Meta’s business that are driving growth and engagement, like the Reels video product, a feature within Instagram that is similar to TikTok’s video offering. Investments in artificial intelligence recommendation algorithms have also driven more people to use the service and for longer periods, the company said.

His goal, he said, was to eventually make more money from Reels, which is not as lucrative for Instagram as the app’s other advertising formats. Part of the challenge was to push through a “cannibalization” effect, where more people use the new Reels product and shift away from viewing more valuable ads displayed in between the photos and stories portions of the app. Mr. Zuckerberg said he believed it was only a matter of time before Meta figured out how to better make money from Reels.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/technology/meta-earnings-revenue-decline.html

But while the show was struggling to find its footing behind the scenes, it continued to generate excitement — and ratings — with a series of star contestants. Within just one season, four new champions were added to the show’s all-time leaderboard, fueling plenty of theorizing among fans about what was behind the new streak of winning streaks. For a while, the growing celebrity of the winning contestants — including Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach — offered a welcome distraction from the lack of clarity around who would become the permanent face of the show.

Jennings remains the champion with the highest number of consecutive wins (74) and the highest amount of money won in regular-season games ($2.5 million) in the show’s history. Bialik, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience and is best known for her role as a scientist in the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” has made clear from the beginning that she is interested in getting the job permanently, though she has had to balance it with the demands of her sitcom “Call Me Kat,” and faced criticism for endorsing a “brain health supplement” for a company that settled a lawsuit accusing it of false advertising. Jennings has also received criticism for old social media posts, apologizing for tweeting “unartful and insensitive things” after he was initially revealed as a “Jeopardy!” guest host following Trebek’s death.

After Richards’s departure, Davies, a veteran game-show producer who developed the original American version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” took over temporarily as executive producer — and that job, too, soon became permanent.

Under Davies, the show has worked to expand beyond its traditional structure and to cater to its passionate fans, announcing daily statistics for each contestant and, on Wednesday, a new podcast.

And there are more specials coming. Bialik will host “Celebrity Jeopardy!,” which debuts on ABC in September, while Jennings will host the first Second Chance Tournament, as well as the upcoming Tournament of Champions. In his announcement, Davies hinted that there could be more spinoffs ahead, noting that Bialik would also host a couple of new tournaments, in addition to the college championship.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/arts/television/jeopardy-ken-jennings-mayim-bialik.html

The highlight of the set, though, was “Both Sides Now,” a song that a 23-year-old Mitchell wrote in 1967, the same year she played Newport for the first time. Back then, some critics scoffed at the lyrics’ presumptive wisdom: What could a 23-year-old girl possibly know about both sides of life? But over the years, the song has revealed itself to contain fathomless depths that have only been audible in later interpretations.

When she was 57, Mitchell rerecorded a lush version of “Both Sides Now” on her 2000 album of the same name, backed by a 70-piece orchestra. Her voice was deeper, elegiac and elegantly weary. “It’s life’s illusions I recall,” she sang at the end of the song, “I really don’t know life at all.”

That version was considered a tear-jerker (and used to this effect in a classic scene from the movie “Love, Actually”), but then again, it’s easy to find pathos in getting older. Aging inherently brings suffering, debilitation and loss — this is not news. What Mitchell’s 2022 performance of the song asserted was that it can also bring serendipity, long-delayed gratification and joy. Ever an expert re-interpreter of her own material, Mitchell breathed new meaning into some of her most famous lyrics. “I could drink a case of you, and I would still be on my feet,” she sang with Carlile, the line becoming not only a challenge to a lover, but a survivor’s boast to life itself.

Part of what is so heartening about Mitchell’s recent pop cultural revival, like Bush’s surprise chart resurgence, is that it allows a beloved if somewhat underappreciated artist to receive her laurels while she’s still living. (Wynonna Judd, still grieving her mother Naomi’s death, was also onstage with Mitchell and wept openly throughout “Both Sides Now” — a visual reminder of a crueler fate and the inherent dichotomy of the song.) In a culture that excessively scrutinizes women as they age, or simply renders them invisible and erases their influence, it felt like a quietly radical act to honor Mitchell in this way. Younger artists got the chance to pay earnest homage to their elder; a mature woman who was not yet finished reinterpreting her life’s work reclaimed the stage.

Surrounded by an adoring crowd of friends, fellow musicians, and admirers — many of whom were not yet born when Mitchell wrote “Both Sides Now” — she seemed to sing it this time with a grinning shrug: I really don’t know life at all. As if to say: You never know — anything can happen. Even this.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/arts/music/joni-mitchell-performance.html

In October, he elevated a longtime friend and colleague, Andrew Bosworth, who is known as Boz, to chief technology officer, leading hardware efforts for the metaverse. He promoted other loyalists, too, including Javier Olivan, the new chief operating officer; Nick Clegg, who became president of global affairs; and Guy Rosen, who took on a new role of chief information security officer.

In June, Sheryl Sandberg, who was Mr. Zuckerberg’s No. 2 for 14 years, said she would step down this fall. While she spent more than a decade building Facebook’s advertising systems, she was less interested in doing the same for the metaverse, people familiar with her plans have said.

Mr. Zuckerberg has moved thousands of workers into different teams for the metaverse, training their focus on aspirational projects like hardware glasses, wearables and a new operating system for those devices.

“It’s an existential bet on where people over the next decade will connect, express and identify with one another,” said Matthew Ball, a longtime tech executive and the author of a book on the metaverse. “If you have the cash, the engineers, the users and the conviction to take a swing at that, then you should.”

But the efforts are far from cheap. Facebook’s Reality Labs division, which is building augmented and virtual reality products, has dragged down the company’s balance sheet; the hardware unit lost nearly $3 billion in the first quarter alone.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/technology/zuckerberg-meta-facebook-earnings.html