Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• The Financial Times | The US is losing its battle to break up Big Tech (6 min read)
• The New York Times | New York Times Case Against Pentagon Will Move Quickly (2 min read)https://
• Digiday | Why publishers are building their own creator networks (9 min read)
• ArsTechnica | News orgs win fight to access 20M ChatGPT logs. Now they want more. (5 min read)
• Axios | The year big events came back (2 min read)
• The New York Times | Corporation for Public Broadcasting Votes to Shut Down (1 min read)
• CJR | What the Dissolution of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Means (5 min read)

Ten must-read digital media industry news stories you may have missed during the holiday break, curated by DCN, the only trade association that exclusively serves media companies.

• The Financial Times | The relentless rise of YouTube (13 min read)
• Politico | How budget bickering and Dolly Parton politics warped California’s Google news deal (13 min read)
• AP | A rough year for journalists in 2025, with a little hope for things to turn around (5 min read)
• Wall Street | The Year the Newsletter Business Reached a Fever Pitch (4 min read)
• The New York Times | They Seek to Curb Online Hate. The U.S. Accuses Them of Censorship. (4 min read)
• The Guardian | More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds (5 min read)
• The Deadline | Streamer Report Card: Streaming Reached A Profit Turning Point In 2025, But Major Players Still Wonder How To Measure Success (14 min read)
• ProPublica | Our Reporters Reached Out for Comment. They Were Accused of Stalking and Intimidation. (7 min read)
• Semafor | What media leaders got wrong in 2025 (21 min read)
• Digiday | A timeline of the major deals between publishers and AI tech companies in 2025 (5 min read)

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• The Wall Street Journal | Behind the Deal That Took Disney From AI Skeptic to OpenAI Investor (6 min read)
• The Hollywood Reporter | Oscars Bolt from ABC to YouTube Starting in 2029 (5 min read)
• The New York Times | Elon Musk Taunts Europe and Tests Willingness to Enforce Online Laws (5 min read)
• Axios | FCC chair suggests agency isn’t independent, word cut from mission statement (2 min read)
• The New Yorker | Why Video Podcasts Multiplied Beyond the Man Cave (8 min read)
• Business Insider | What smart people are saying about Disney’s licensing deal with OpenAI (6 min read)
• The New York Times | Trump Files $10 Billion Suit Against BBC Over Documentary (3 min read)
• Variety | While Diversity in Streaming Television Slips, Underrepresented Stories Increase Share, Finds UCLA Hollywood Report (3 min read)
• Digiday | Publishers are hunting for AI prompt data — now they’re starting to get it from third-party companies (5 min read)

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• The Wall Street Journal | What Netflix Gains From Buying Warner Bros. (3 min read)
• The Financial Times | EU opens probe into Google’s use of online content for AI models (2 min read)
• The Verge | A pay-to-scrape AI licensing standard is now official (2 min read)
• The Wall Street Journal | Ad Spend to Grow More Than Expected in 2025 as Tariffs Sting Less and AI Gives a Leg Up (2 min read)
• The New York Times | New York Times Sues A.I. Start-Up Perplexity Over Use of Copyrighted Work (3 min read)
• The Hollywood Reporter | As Pay TV Collapses, Sports’ Streaming Wars Kick Off (8 min read)
• Bloomberg | AI Browsers Aren’t Smart Enough Yet to Take Over the Internet (8 min read)
• The Ringer | The Elephant in the Tube (10 min read)

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• The Wrap | Media Goes on Offense as Trump Steps Up His War on Journalism (10 min read)
• Digiday | From lawsuits to lobbying: How publishers are fighting AI (6 min read)
• The Wall Street Journal |
• The Verge | Google is experimentally replacing news headlines with AI clickbait nonsense (3 min read)
• The Financial Times | Taming the four horsemen of the infocalypse (4 min read)
• The Associated Press | A lost generation of news consumers? Survey shows how teenagers dislike the news media (5 min read)
• The Washington Post | Trump ramps up reporter attacks with White House media bias tracker (3 min read)
• Digiday | How AI’s hit to publisher traffic is quietly rewiring media M&A (8 min read)
• NBC News | Leading AI companies’ safety practices are falling short, new report says (2 min read)
• The Wall Street Journal | The New, In-Demand Job Skill: Being a TikTok Influencer for Your Company (5 min read)

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• The New York Times | What the Look of Your Favorite Podcast Is Trying to Tell You (16 min read)
• Bloomberg | Trump Urges Congress to Block State-Level AI Regulation (2 min read)
• CJR | The Plan to Bring Down a Giant (8 min read)
• NiemanLab | A bipartisan group of former FCC commissioners wants to take away Brendan Carr’s biggest weapon against journalism (7 min read)
• The New York Times | Who Will Win Hollywood’s Big Prize? (6 min read)
• The Local | Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era (19 min read)
• Barrett Media | The Disney vs YouTube TV Spat Had a Hidden Message to the Cable News Industry (3 min read)
• CJR | How to Make TikTok Journalism Not Cringey? The EU Might Have an Answer. (5 min read)

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• NiemanLab | “Biased,” “boring,” “chaotic,” and “bad”: A majority of teens hold negative views of news media, report finds (5 min read)
• The New York Times | A.I. Sweeps Through Newsrooms, but Is It a Journalist or a Tool? (7 min read)
• The Athletic | Illegal streaming: Research reveals rise in piracy and desire for scrapping of 3pm blackout (5 min read)
• Engaget | Meta is killing off the external Facebook Like button (1 min read)
• Wired | Welcome to Big Tech’s ‘Age of Extraction’ (8 min read)
• The Financial Times | EU readies fresh investigation into Google over news publisher rankings (2 min read)
• NiemanLab | BBC resignations are a symbol of mounting pressure on public broadcasters in the Trump era (5 min read)
• .coda | The Werewolf game: an interview with Google’s former news chief Richard Gingras (41 min read)
  

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• CJR | How AI Browsers Sneak Past Blockers and Paywalls (4 min read)
• Bloomberg | Box-Office Duds Are Becoming Streaming Hits (7 min read)
• NiemanLab | Hundreds of thousands of videos from news publishers like The New York Times and Vox were used to train AI models (11 min read)
• The New York Times | White House Limits Reporters’ Access to Press Secretary’s Office (4 min read)
• The Atlantic | The Company Quietly Funneling Paywalled Articles to AI Developers (10 min read)
• Nieman Lab | Journalists are souring on social media platforms, an analysis of 11 years of Nieman Lab predictions suggests (6 min read)
• Follow the Money | How Google fooled Brussels: the tech giant’s playbook exposed (11 min read)
• The Financial Times | It’s time to build the intention economy online (4 min read)

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• Bloomberg | Warner Bros. Discovery Sale Pits Billionaires Against Each Other (10 min read)
• PBS News | Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to allow it to fire head of U.S. Copyright Office (2 min read)
• The Hollywood Reporter | Why Podcast Advertisers Are Holding Back Close to $1 Billion (3 min read)
• NiemanLab | News creators get more attention in countries where traditional media struggles (4 min read)
• The New York Times | Under Trump, Voice of America Is Down but Not Out (12 min read)
• Harper’s | Why Doesn’t Anyone Trust the Media? (33 min read)
• The New York Times | Radio Free Asia Will Halt News Operations Amid Shutdown (4 min read)
• Pew Research Center | Many Americans say they often come across inaccurate news – and have a hard time knowing what’s true (2 min read)

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• Digiday | AI royalties for small and midsize publishers: collective licensing’s next big play (6 min read)
• The Hollywood Reporter | The (Academic) Case Against the Netflix Episode-Release Strategy (3 min read)
• The New York Times | OpenAI Unveils Web Browser Built for Artificial Intelligence (2 min read)
• Reuters | AI assistants make widespread errors about the news, new research shows (2 min read)
• NPR | Hollywood pushes OpenAI for consent (4 min read)
• Axios | Independent newspapers disappear as private investment firms take over (3 min read)
• Shelly Palmer | AdCP (Ad Context Protocol): A Real Attempt To Make Agents Buy Media (5 min read)
• NiemanLab | In Medill’s latest State of Local News report, a “festering, 20-year-old problem” looms larger than ever (9 min read)

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• The New York Times | How the Pentagon Is Blocking Out News Organizations (3 min read)
• The New York Times | Inside Hegseth’s Effort to Limit Press Access at the Pentagon (5 min read)
• Deadline | Media Outlets, Ranging From The Atlantic To Newsmax, Refuse To Sign New Pentagon Press Policy — Update (4 min read)
• AP | Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules (5 min read)
• The Wall Street Journal | How Google Is Walking the AI Tightrope (5 min read)
• The Verge | OpenAI wasn’t expecting Sora’s copyright drama (7 min read)
• Derek Thompson | Everything Is Television (12 min read)
• The Hollywood Reporter | YouTube Just Ate TV. It’s Only Getting Started (29 min read)
  

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

• The New York Times | U.S. v. Google: What Each Side Argued for Fixing Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly (4 min read)
• Pew Research Center | Relatively few Americans are getting news from AI chatbots like ChatGPT (2 min read)
• Digiday | From walls to frameworks: Publishers and tech giants push weekly talks on AI content use (7 min read)
• The Financial Times | Have we passed peak social media? (4 min read)
• The Wall Street Journal | Corporate Anxiety Is Fueling a Multimillion-Dollar Industry of Gen Z Translators (5 min read)
• CJR | Reddit Is Winning the AI Game (5 min read)
• CNN | Pentagon charges ahead with press restrictions ‘designed to stifle a free press,’ media orgs say (4 min read)
• NiemanLab | Bari Weiss’s CBS News and MSNBC both just laid out their new journalistic principles — and they’re fascinatingly different (5 min read)