The Lexington Area Chamber of Commerce has acquired The Lexington News, Higginsville Advance and Santa Fe Times News from Main Street Media (MSM). The transaction closed on Jan. 28.  more

TikTok agreed to settle a landmark social media addiction lawsuit just before the trial kicked off, the plaintiff’s attorneys confirmed. more

The editor in chief said the network needs to produce journalism people want as she named a raft of new contributors from her website, the Free Press. more

Journalists who covered Ferguson reflect on what they learned — and what feels different — as unrest unfolds again in Minnesota. more

Professor Edward Malthouse enjoys looking at things from different angles. As the Erastus Otis Haven Professor at Medill and a research fellow at the Media Management Center, his research supports the larger news ecosystem and tackles misinformation. more

The Trump administration has not shied away from sharing AI-generated imagery online, embracing cartoonlike visuals and memes and promoting them on official White House channels. more

NBC 5 Chicago (WMAQ-TV) has announced six-time Emmy Award-winning journalist and popular, veteran Chicago media personality Lou Canellis has joined the NBC 5 News team as its main sports anchor. more

TEGNA, Inc. has announced the launch of new mobile apps across 50 markets — delivering up-to-the-minute coverage of news and weather stories from trusted local journalists and meteorologists. Thousands of original daily mobile videos in a scrolling vertical feed are personalized for users based on their individual preferences to keep them connected to the local stories that matter most to them. more

Egypt’s Parliament is looking into ways to regulate children’s use of social media platforms to combat what lawmakers called “digital choas,” following some western countries that are considering banning young teenagers from social media. more

French lawmakers approved a bill banning social media for children under 15, paving the way for the measure to enter into force at the start of the next school year in September, as the idea of setting a minimum age for use of the platforms gains momentum across Europe. more

Man of Many, Australia’s largest digital men's lifestyle publication, has appointed Amelia Navascues as head of Social & Production. The strategic hire drives the brand’s next phase of growth across video, social and podcasting, building on a period of significant industry recognition. more

Journalism’s next breakthrough may not come from a newsroom — but from a room full of students staring down raw data at 3 a.m. As misinformation accelerates and trust fractures, a new generation is being asked to solve problems legacy systems never anticipated. Newsmatics’ 2026 Hackathon puts real news data, real tools and real stakes in front of young technologists to see what they’ll build when the future of information is on the line. What emerges offers a rare glimpse into where journalism may be headed next — and who might lead it. more

As public media grapples with funding cuts and audiences migrating to streaming, long-standing assumptions about the role of local stations are suddenly up for debate. In this month’s column, Tom Davidson poses an uncomfortable but necessary question: what happens if national public media brands decide they no longer need local affiliates to reach listeners? Drawing on recent upheaval at PBS and shifting economics at NPR, he explores how digital-first strategies could quietly disintermediate the very stations that built public media’s reach. The implications, Davidson argues, extend well beyond public broadcasting and offer a cautionary lesson for all local media navigating a platform-driven future. more

USA TODAY Co., Inc.  announced the execution of a binding Letter of Intent with MediaNews Group, a subscriber focused media company, to acquire The Detroit News.   more

For years, social media giants have argued against claims that their platforms harm young people’s mental health. Starting Jan. 26, they will for the first time have to defend against those claims before a jury in a court of law. more

The American Journalism Project has announced $1.5 million in new support for Mission Local, fueling the nonprofit newsroom’s continued growth and expansion of neighborhood-first, multilingual reporting across San Francisco. more

TikTok users have been deleting the app at a higher rate since the company announced that its U.S. operations would be housed in a new joint venture. more

Meta plans to test new subscriptions that give people access to exclusive features on its apps, the company told TechCrunch on Monday. The tech giant said the new subscriptions will unlock more productivity and creativity, along with expanded AI capabilities. more

CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has scheduled an all-staff meeting for late Tuesday morning at which she intends to announce the strategic path she wants the troubled news division to take. more