Category: media

Between 2011 and 2018, the 264 independent local NPR stations (plus 150 unaffiliated) added 1,000 full-time and part-time journalists, having started that timeframe with just over 2,000 journalists. At the same time, newspaper newsrooms were shrinking to half their peak size and local digital startups, with a few exceptions, are making do with well-focused but tiny staffs. – Poynter

Here’s the deal: It’s a movie that laughs at the Nazis and laughs at Hitler. “The controversy — or, at least, the orchestrated illusion of it — is built into the film’s faux outrageous aesthetic, its whole thumb-in-the-eye-of-the-monster, satire-is-resistance! brand. It’s a movie that actually counts on a divided reaction, because the key question Jojo Rabbit is asking its audience isn’t, ‘Are you willing to laugh at hate?’ The key question is, ‘Are you cool enough to get it?'” – Variety

The director says, “At the end of the day, what we really want people to know is the movie is about love and friendship, the veterans that served in the Vietnam War and especially the dogs that were with them. … We never want to lose that emphasis and this [social media reaction] becomes a distraction of what the story is about.” Unh hunh. Who could have predicted this backlash? (Hint: Almost anyone.) – The Hollywood Reporter

Was it kids? Maybe, if they truly love music. It was shiny, with a ton – a ton – of celebrity appearances, as befits, well, a show that’s on HBO. That’s a problem: “The celebration is also slightly dulled by the fact that the once widely accessible show is getting harder to access.” – Los Angeles Times

Remember how Carrie Fisher (RIP, General) used to punch up scripts? It’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s time now. She’s the second woman – only the second – to get a writing credit on a Bond movie on the six-decade franchise. She says she wasn’t trying to fix the, shall we say, anti-feminist message of many early Bond films: “They were just looking for tweaks across a few of the characters and a few of the storylines.” – BBC

Because the language isn’t “foreign” enough – it’s English. The Academy is changing what the category is called – Best International Film instead of Best Foreign-Language Film – but it hasn’t changed the rules. “Lionheart, then, is ineligible for the Best International Film category, despite being an international movie shot in the most populous country in Africa.” – The Atlantic

That means 90 of the 879 series regular characters on ABC, CBS, the CW, Fox and NBC this season are LGBTQ, up from 75 last season. (Additionally, there are 30 LGBTQ recurring characters on broadcast this season.) The 10.2% number, up from last year’s 8.8%, follows records highs in 2016, 2017 and 2018. And it stands as a new record high in the 24 years that GLAAD has tracked LGBTQ representation on the small screen. – Los Angeles Times

Hengdian World Studios, built in the 1990s on farmland in China’s southeastern Zhejiang Province, claims to be the world’s largest outdoor film studio and features full-scale replicas of the Forbidden City and Beijing’s Old Summer Palace, along with dozens of palaces, gardens, and streetscapes. – Wired

Two visual-effects companies will apply CGI to surviving film footage and photographs of the actor, who was killed in a car crash at age 24 in 1955, to create “a realistic version of James Dean” for a live-action Vietnam War-era drama titled Finding Jack, planned for release on Veterans Day 2020. – The Hollywood Reporter