E.W. Scripps is purchasing ION Media for $2.65b with the help of a $600m preferred-equity investment from Berkshire Hathaway. Scripps already operates 60 local TV networks, Court TV, and Newsy. The deal will add ION's television network and other properties to Scripps' portfolio, which has expanded its presence in TV after selling several of its newspapers as well as podcast entity Stitcher.

More:

• Berkshire will receive a warrant to buy up to 23.1 million Class A Scripps shares at a fixed price of $13 each.
• Shares in Scripps jumped more than 30% immediately following the news.
• Berkshire hadn't made any major media investments this year and had sold its newspapers in January to Lee Enterprises for $140m.

The Justice Department has officially proposed amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 to remove certain forms of legal immunity from tech companies based on the content on their platforms. Specifically, Attorney General Bill Barr is proposing that platforms can be sued for enabling content that promotes stalking, trafficking, or other criminal activity, and would require platforms to explain why content is being moderated.

Why Section 230 became so important:

• Section 230 is largely credited with the development of the modern internet, as it shielded companies like Facebook and Twitter from being held liable for the content posted by users.
• As an example, if someone on Facebook makes an unfounded accusation against you that results in you losing your job, you can sue that person for libel, but you can't sue Facebook. They aren't currently held responsible – just as a company that makes cork boards isn't responsible for an offensive photo someone puts up on one with a thumbtack.
• It's likely that, without this law, social media companies wouldn't have been able to grow so massively. However, there have also been persistent concerns about how the law shields companies that are slow to remove harmful content. For example, should 8chan be held liable for hosting the El Paso shooter's racist manifesto?

Trump's personal grievances:
The current push to amend Section 230 may largely be due to President Trump's personal animosity toward platforms that moderate him. In May, he signed an executive order that opened the door for federal agencies to reinterpret Section 230. This happened just two days after Twitter first added labels to two Trump tweets which falsely claimed that mail-in ballots are "substantially fraudulent." Twitter's labels linked to information about how mail-in ballots are generally considered safe and effective, and are "rarely linked to voter fraud."

The liberal newsletter Discourse Blog announced this week it is leaving Substack to launch its own website with publishing platform Lede. Discourse Blog says it's joining with Lede-owned Alley – which helped launch Defector this year – to "realize our goal of having a sustainable, independent, worker-owned and operated publication."

More:

• Discourse Blog says existing paid subscribers won't have to do anything and will keep their current subscription benefits.
• The blog promises more content, a greater ability to comment and converse with writers, and better search functionality to find old posts.
• Discourse Blog publisher Aleksander Chan told the NYT that the group found it difficult to attract readers via Substack and is looking for "more detailed data on their readers."
• Those comments came in a NYT article about how a number of journalists and bloggers have left major media publications to start their own newsletters on Substack.

British editor and publisher Harold Evans died Wednesday in New York at 92. He edited The Times of London until being forced out by Rupert Murdoch in 1982. After moving to the U.S., Evans became a book publisher, served as editorial director at U.S. News & World Report, was the founding editor at Condé Nast Traveler, and served as an executive at The Atlantic Monthly and Fast Company.

More:

• In his later years, Evans lamented the state of investigative journalism, which he said in 2009 had "vanished" in many places.
• Editor of The New York Times Book Review Pamela Paul called Evans "a lovely, thoughtful, endlessly curious and inspiring person."
• British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted that Evans was "a true pioneer of investigative journalism."
• Read more remembrances of Evans from The Guardian, The New Yorker, and author Peter Jukes. 

The Tribune Publishing Company has apologized for a fake email sent to employees promising a bonus of up to $10,000 that didn't exist. The email was part of an attempt by Tribune to test employee susceptibility to phishing scams. But, Tribune employees and the unions who represent them called the email "tone-deaf." Baltimore Sun crime reporter Justin Fenton said the company needed to "fire everyone involved." 

More:

• Those who clicked on a link in the email were sent to a page that read: "Oops! You clicked on a simulated phishing test!"
• In a statement sent to WaPo, Tribune said it didn't mean to offend employees, and acknowledged "the topic of the email was misleading and insensitive."
• A spokesperson said the subject of a bonus was used as "bad actors use this type of language regularly."
• Caroline Glenn, a reporter for the Tribune-owned Orlando Sentinel, called the email "disgusting," considering that Tribune enforced pay cuts and unpaid furloughs during the pandemic.

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the chair of the board of the New York Times, is retiring at the end of the year. He will be replaced by his son, A.G. Sulzberger, the NYT's current publisher.

More:

• Sulzberger Jr. joined the NYT as a correspondent in 1978 and replaced his father as chairman in 1997.
• The NYT was awarded 61 Pulitzer Prizes during his time as the newspaper's publisher.
• A member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family has served as the NYT's publisher since Adolph S. Ochs purchased it in 1896.

The Library of Congress has launched Newspaper Navigator, a searchable database of 1.5 million newspaper photos taken between 1900 and 1963. The database builds on the LoC's existing Chronicling America project, enabling users to search an archive of old newspapers by image. Newspaper Navigator utilizes a machine learning model to differentiate between live action photographs, cartoons, and maps. The photos in the database come from searches of more than 16 million historic newspaper pages.

QUICK HITS

• Op-ed columnists are criticizing Fox News' Chris Wallace for not including climate change among the topics to be discussed at the first presidential debate on Sept. 29.
• Wolfgang Blau is leaving his job as Condé Nast's COO to join Reuters as a Visiting Fellow with a focus on increasing "journalism's capacity to cover climate change worldwide." Jennifer McGuire is also joining Reuters as a Visiting Fellow – she has been editor-in-chief of CBC News since 2009.
• YouTube is rolling out a fact-checking feature in the U.K. and Germany.
• Studies show constantly following political news is bad for our mental and physical health, but it does inspire us to take action.
• Brands see 18.5% of e-commerce revenue from SMS marketing. See 6 top SMS campaigns here.*

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