Media organizations that once needed staff time, designers, contest managers, and weeks of coordination to run a “Best Of” program can now launch one with almost no internal labor. Elite Insights today announced the industry’s first fully self-serve Best Of platform, giving publishers a turnkey way to generate new SMB advertisers, capture incremental revenue, and engage the community — even with limited staff and shrinking budgets. more

The TV communications ranks have lost a beloved longtime member: Robert Pietranton, most recently SVP Publicity & Communications for the Warner Bros. Television Group, died suddenly Nov. 19 at his Los Angeles home. He was 56. more

The outcome of the sale could alter the trajectory of the entertainment business. more

CherryRoad Media and Ogden Newspapers have entered into a services partnership centered on CherryRoad’s circulation and distribution platform, LocalRoad. more

Hearst Newspapers and USLege have unveiled Capitol Confidential Pro, a first-of-its-kind platform for policy and government professionals. Powered by USLege, the new product combines Capitol Confidential’s trusted statehouse reporting with the cutting-edge, AI-driven policy intelligence technology developed by USLege. more

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday asked for a stay of a federal court’s order that the company restore journalists’ health care coverage, pending an additional appeal it said it will make — for a rehearing of a recent related ruling in the journalists’ favor by the same court in the long-running Pittsburgh news strike. more

Cameron Joseph will join POLITICO next month as a Politics editor. He is a longtime senior author and editorial board member of the Almanac of American Politics. more

CEO David Plotz says the company, in 13 cities and with a staff of around 90, is at a transition point. more

The Federal Communications Commission has taken the axe to another 21 rules and requirements, totaling 2,927 words and covering seven pages in the Code of Federal Regulations. The move is part of FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s ongoing “Delete, Delete, Delete” proceeding. more

OPB and KMHD are welcoming two new leaders in December. Amanda Green will serve as OPB’s chief financial officer and Gillian Flaccus will serve as OPB’s news director. more

Joe Kloc joins The New York Times as an editor for Opinion’s print report. more

Jerry Brewer, an award-winning national sports columnist, is joining The Athletic as a senior columnist. more

Beckey Bright joins as manager, video production planning. more

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, addressed for the first time a schoolyard insult that President Trump lobbed at a Bloomberg News reporter last week. more

To document how the Big Tech lobby operates, this transnational team did what investigative journalists do best. We created a methodology and painstakingly put together a database of 2,977 lobbying actions between 2019 and 2025 across 11 countries and the European Union to create this dashboard. more

For a sense of Bari Weiss’s approach to leading CBS News in her first weeks on the job, consider a phrase the new editor in chief has used as a rallying cry in meetings with colleagues: “I wanna blow this up.” more

Independent news outlet Status Coup reported that federal immigration agents threatened its reporter, Jon Farina, with arrest for following and filming them, despite well-established First Amendment protections for newsgathering and, specifically, for recording law enforcement. more

When The Duquesne Duke first hit campus newsstands in 1925, radio was still young, television didn’t exist, and reporters filed stories on typewriters in smoky rooms overlooking the Monongahela. One hundred years later, Duquesne University’s student journalists are covering a far more complex media world — where algorithms compete with ethics, and artificial intelligence is the newest newsroom disruptor. Yet, amid all the change, one thing hasn’t shifted: The Duke’s commitment to community storytelling. As faculty and students celebrate a century of student journalism, they’re also reaffirming the same core lesson that shaped the paper’s first edition — that meaningful reporting begins not with technology, but with listening. more

As the media landscape shifts under the weight of digital disruption and AI innovation, 5280 Magazine CEO and Publisher Charity Huff believes the key to success lies in asking one deceptively simple question: Where do you have the right to win? In this edition of Shoptalk, Huff explores how her team is reimagining the editorial process, reshaping organizational roles and redefining their audience relationships to keep readers — not products — at the center of everything they do. Her message to publishers is clear: sustainable growth requires courage, clarity and a willingness to rethink what winning really means. more

The Seattle Times has named Ryan Blethen publisher and current President Alan Fisco, chief executive officer, effective Jan. 1. These moves reflect organizational change with the retirement of Frank Blethen following 40 years as Seattle Times publisher and CEO. more