Free Republic

CNN and the Des Moines Register have scrapped the planned release of a key poll on Saturday, less than two days before the Iowa caucuses after concerns that an apparent coding error left one of the leading contenders out of at least one survey. The media outlets decided to nix a planned live televised release of the survey after a supporter of former Mayor Pete Buttigieg received a call from the pollsters — and Buttigieg’s name was not one of the options offered. The New York Times first reported the network’s decision to cancel the poll’s release. The Des Moines...

Founded in 1881, The Buffalo News will have its third owner in its nearly 140-year history, thanks to a sale to Lee Enterprises. Spectrum News reports that the sale, for $140 million in cash, includes the Berkshire Hathaway Media Group publications with print and digital operations of 30 daily newspapers and more than 49 paid weekly publications and 32 other print products. Lee has managed the BH Media Group since the summer of 2018. For The Buffalo News, the sale announced Wednesday morning signals the end of a 40-year ownership by Warren Buffett. Lee Enterprises will be the third owner...

During a rally yesterday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke to a crowd in Derry, N.H., a town that many miners call home. He acknowledged the economic setbacks and job insecurity that coal miners face these days, and gave them some advice: learn to code. According to Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, Biden said, “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well... Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!” According to Weigel, the comment was met with silence from...

God only knows where Biden got the idea that coal mining consists of throwing the stuff into a furnace. That’s not how it works, but I digress. Biden’s recommendation is stale stuff. It’s the kind of rhetoric that will only sway voters whose ideal president is a machine that spits out a white paper from 1998 every time someone pushes a button. Re-training programs for workers in precarious industries have been with us for a long time.So has a specific fixation on the tech industry, as though it’s a cure-all for rural poverty. But 1998 was a long time ago....

Explaining his bold prediction, Meyer pointed at the changes introduced to the way delegates are designated in the Democratic Party. He said the elimination of superdelegates and winner-take-all primary contests adds up to bad news for the former vice president, even though he now leads in national polls. Meyer said in states where Biden is ahead he holds only small leads, meaning that candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will also be picking up delegates there. He said once Warren or Sanders drop out of the race, their delegates will switch to support the other. "If you look...

During a rally yesterday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke to a crowd in Derry, N.H., a town that many miners call home. He acknowledged the economic setbacks and job insecurity that coal miners face these days, and gave them some advice: learn to code. According to Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, Biden said, “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well... Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”

Saagar Enjeti argues why Joe Biden is still falling into the same trap Hillary Clinton fell into during the 2016 election.

Former Vice Preisdent Joe Biden made clear at Thursday night’s Democratic presidential primary debate that he’d sacrifice economic growth due to a boom in oil and natural gas production and potentially risk displacing hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers in order to combat climate change. Moderator Tim Alberta asked: “Three consecutive American presidents have enjoyed stints of explosive economic growth due to a boom in oil and natural gas production. As president, would you be willing to sacrifice some of that growth, even knowing potentially that it could displace thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers in the interest...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Freelance writers and photographers on Tuesday filed the second legal challenge to a broad new California labor law that they say could put some independent journalists out of business. The law taking effect Jan. 1 aims to give wage and benefit protections to people who work as independent contractors. While the public focus has been largely on ride-share companies such as Uber and Lyft, the lawsuit brought by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Press Photographers Association says the law would unconstitutionally affect free speech and the media. The lawsuit filed by...

Key Points: Hundreds of Vox Media freelancers will lose their jobs in the coming months. Vox Media is preparing for a California law, Assembly Bill 5, which goes into effect in 2020 and forbids nonemployees from submitting more than 35 articles per year. SB Nation said Monday that it will move its California team blogs, which rely on contractors, to a new system run by SB Nation employees. ========================================================================= Hundreds of freelance writers at Vox Media, primarily those covering sports for the SB Nation site, will lose their jobs in the coming months as the company prepares for a California...

While the Trump Economy is working great for most people, one industry hasn't been enjoying the boom: the media. According to Business Insider, the media industry is continuing to cut jobs this year. The media industry continued to execute cuts in December and November as Gannett, Highsnobiety, and the CBC reduced headcounts. The cuts followed large rounds of layoffs earlier in the year from companies including BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media.The massive cuts this year represent a recent trend in media that has seen upstart companies and newspapers alike shrinking and disappearing. It's not just print media that's not...

California presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris has been campaigning in Iowa and apparently been telling the local poli-sci majors to "learn to code...." The scene is a beauty parlor, so it may well be that she told one of its Millennial denizens upset at her low-skill job after graduating from college with a useless major to learn code if she wants a better-paying job. The problem, of course, is that it's a dismissive sort of advice to throw out to someone who might just be unsuited to learning code and, in any case, clearly had dreams of doing something else......

The American media will be hit with nearly 12,000 job cuts in 2019, the highest number since the economic crisis of 2009. “The consultancy Challenger Gray & Christmas reported this week media companies, which include movies, television, publishing, music, and broadcast and print news, announced plans to cut 15,474 jobs so far this year, of which 11,878 of which were from news organizations” reports AFP. This is a huge increase over 2017’s 4,062 media job cuts and, according to the article at least, this is primarily happening due to paywalls and ad revenue. A number of media outlets are installing...

The struggling US media industry is facing its worst year for job layoffs in a decade as news organizations continue to cut staff and close shop, according to a new survey. The consultancy Challenger Gray & Christmas reported this week that media companies, which include movies, television, publishing, music, and broadcast and print news, announced plans to cut 15,474 jobs so far this year, of which 11,878 of which were from news organizations. That is nearly three times more than the 4,062 cuts announced in the media sector in 2017 and the highest total since the economic crisis in 2009....

On 27 April, before he burst into a San Diego synagogue and opened fire, killing one worshipper and injuring three more, the gunman said goodbye to the community that radicalised him. “It’s been real dudes,” he posted on the far-right politics board, /pol/, on the image-posting site 8chan. “I’ve only been lurking for a year and a half, yet what I’ve learned here is priceless.” The story was familiar. Six weeks earlier, a 28-year-old had killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Before starting his attack, he, too, had posted on 8chan’s /pol/ board. “It’s been a...

April Ryan, the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks and a CNN analyst, said Friday she has to fight for her "survival" asking questions at the White House. CNN host Wolf Blitzer was leading a discussion about regimes around the world that suppress and even kill journalists when Ryan made her comment. Blitzer asked specifically about President Donald Trump joking with Russian President Vladimir Putin "about so-called fake news" at the G-20 summit in Japan. "Wolf as someone who has to fight everyday for her survival for asking questions at the White House, it's atrocious," Ryan said. Ryan,...

Two reporters fired amid widespread industry-wide layoffs this year are launching a nonprofit organization to protect other journalists from a similar fate as big tech companies continue to threaten the industry's viability. Laura Bassett, a former culture and political reporter at HuffPost, and John Stanton, a former BuzzFeed News Washington bureau chief, founded the Save Journalism Project. It aims to save the industry from the "monopolistic power of big tech companies," according to a news release. According to the Save Journalism founders, firms like Google and Facebook dominate the digital advertising market, distributing news content without paying to produce it...

It seemed to be more "Do as I say, not as I do" leadership from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On Wednesday, the New York Democrat enthusiastically threw in her support for Uber and Lyft drivers ahead of a worldwide strike, but campaign finance records indicate her team has spent nearly $2,000 on ride-hailing services this year alone. The boycott was organized in response to Uber’s anticipated initial public offering this Friday for more than $90 billion – a figure drivers say comes at the cost of reduced wages and job security.THE BIGGEST WINNERS FROM UBER'S IMPENDING IPOIn a Wednesday afternoon tweet,...

I think it’s safe to say the entertainment industry – including the music industry - isn’t exactly friendly to conservatives and Republicans.Indeed, since 2008, the music industry has directed at least 80 percent of its annual campaign donations to Democrats, while the entertainment crowd as a whole donated over $8 million to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016, compared to less than $300,000 to Donald Trump.And yet…Two music industry giants – the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) are now practically camped out on President Trump’s Department of Justice doorstep, hat in hand,...

The Newhouse family sold the 182-year-old daily The Times-Picayune and its website, nola.com, to a scrappy New Orleans competitor, and the entire staff is being laid off. That has stirred worries across the other papers in the family’s Advance Publications empire. A total of 161 staff members are being laid off, according to a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) notice filed with the Louisiana Workforce Commission, which listed 65 reporter and editor jobs in the bloodbath. John and Dathel Georges, the husband-and-wife team that owns the rival New Orleans Advocate, are buying The Times-Picayune from Newhouse’s Advance Local,...