For the Record

Soapbox:

A USA Today editorial attributed to President Trump contained factual errors about Medicare-for-All proposals. However, Bill Sternberg, the newspaper's editorial page editor, defended his decision to publish the piece: "President Trump's op-ed was treated like other column submissions; we check factual assertions while allowing authors wide leeway to express their opinions," he said.

Logjam:

Blockchain-based Civil Media announced Wednesday that "it is only about a fourth of the way toward an $8 million cryptocurrency funding goal." "There's still time left in our sale, and we are feverishly working to get as many people (large and small) to complete the final steps to get their contributions in before it's too late," said CEO Matthew Iles.

"Our Pivot":

In a panel discussion with cousins Sam Dolnick and David Perpich at Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit Tuesday, New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger discussed the future of print. "I think the [print] newspaper has a much longer life than any of us suspect," said Sulzberger. "Where the three of us are totally united is that we are moving as fast as we can to get to a future in which we don’t need to rely on that newspaper at all. The time will come when this is a digital-only news organization."

Moving:

Secaucus, N.J.-based real estate developer Hartz Mountain Industries "has closed on its $54.5 million purchase of Newsday Media Group’s headquarters [...] from property owner Tribune Media Co.," the newspaper announced Tuesday. Newsday plans to move from the rented facility in Melville, N.Y. to another office on Long Island.

Shooting:

Lewiston Tribune newspaper carriers Donna and Dane Correll were shot at while completing their route near Lapwai, ID early Monday morning. Although bullets entered their vehicle, the couple was not injured. "We weren’t doing something we shouldn’t have been doing," said Donna Correll. "Whoever shot knew the car was moving. They deliberately shot at the car."

Search

Turkey said Tuesday that "it will conduct a search of Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul over the missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi." The country's foreign ministry confirmed that the Saudi government is "open to co-operation" in the matter.

"A Big Change":

Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks has been named executive vice president and chief communications officer "for a stand-alone Fox" centered around the Fox television network and its cable news properties, the company announced Monday.

Curbing Disinformation:

Politico "is undertaking an ambitious effort to identify and trace the origins of political disinformation and debunk it." The fake news database will contain crowdsourced items (including "reports, websites or social media posts") from the public in addition to material logged by the news organization's staff.

"Dignity and Freedom":

The Washington Post has dropped its paywall for columns written by dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. According to Turkish officials, Khashoggi "was killed in Istanbul" while attempting to complete paperwork for his impending marriage at the city's Saudi consulate last week.

"Goals And Interests":

A Knight Foundation study has determined that "80 percent of the accounts associated with the 2016 [election] disinformation campaign are still posting — even after Twitter announced back in July that it had instituted a purge of fake accounts." "The persistence of so many easily identified abusive accounts is difficult to square with any effective crackdown," wrote authors Matthew Hindman and Vlad Barash.