Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
“In the latter stages of Cerna’s broadcast career, all three local network television affiliates have changed hands to corporate owners devoid of institutional knowledge of the region — with a fixation on profit that eliminates most in-depth journalism, let alone regular, focused community-affairs programming.”
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The Chicago Sun-Times will not fall into the hands of Tronc, the company that owns its crosstown rival thanks an eleventh hour intervention by a group of white knight investors that includes the Chicago Federation of Labor.
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Big media is always trying to get bigger. Rupert Murdoch and his son are making another attempt to gain control of British broadcaster Sky, formerly known as BSkyB. Sky is the United Kingdom’s largest digital subscription television company. NPI urges the British government to scuttle this deal.
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Any time you hear media executives talking about synergies, throwing around the business-babble that always accompanies these rumors, you know it’s time grab your wallet
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Bad news: Telco giant AT&T is trying to acquire Time Warner, with the apparent intent of creating a behemoth that would rival Comcast and Disney. Apparently the suits at Time Warner have not learned anything from the disastrous merger with AOL sixteen years ago. In 2000, AOL memorably bought Time Warner in what was one of the largest acquisitions in history. Time Warner eventually shed the money-losing AOL and spun it off into an independent company; it was subsequently purchased by Verizon. This rumored deal must not go through. Big media is already too big.
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“Emails and records show UW and KUOW officials worked to keep details secret about the Seattle public radio station’s intentions to buy its competitor KPLU until the day university regents approved the plan. PLU, meanwhile, insisted on not revealing that it initiated the deal,” The Seattle Times reports.
LaunchLacking all self-awareness, Fox now calling Obama obstructionist The Fox Noise Channel does revionist history better than anyone else. Once an election is over, they
LaunchVerizon’s widely mocked tech news site is now completely dead Verizon has pulled the plug on an ill-advised online news venture it created that was
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