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Amyklobuchar

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Save your work. Index your sources. Learn the freelance business.

There are more pillars of being a good journalist but these three things are what every reporter should keep top of mind. News media layoffs have been the norm since the Great Recession and while discussions around new business models and funding sources are important, being able to pivot quickly is essential right now, as former NBC and post-acquisition HuffPost employees can attest.

While saving your stories as PDFs and Excel’ing your sources is easy, freelance can be tricky but there are people who will help, like Sonia Weiser and Nicole Clark, who has a spreadsheet tracker that even includes freelance tax advice.

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti says more losses are expected. Meanwhile, there are rumors about a Buzzfeed merger with a SPAC named after the fictional ‘Avengers’ mansion ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Zooming out on news media, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN) is on our radar as chair of the Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights. She just reintroduced a bill on collective bargaining for publishers. Brian Fung reported that Klobuchar plans to hold multiple tech-related antitrust subcommittee hearings, including standalone hearings on app store policies and news publishing, while other hearings will cover consolidation in agriculture, cable and transportation.  This comes as Facebook vies for dismissal of FTC and other antitrust lawsuits. Pay special attention to President Joe Biden’s appointments of Tim Wu and Lina Khan. Wired reports the duo can finally put their antitrust theories to work.

Elsewhere on the Movers & Shakers front, here’s a list of writers for hire that were with HuffPost, where female leadership has at least temporarily ended. Some more moves of note this week:

One last sort of Mover is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who is now on Twitter. Before you try to become a super follower or make fan payments to Facebook impersonators, she says her best stuff is on Medium.

 

Megan Kashtan contributed to this intelligence briefing.

Baz Hiralal

Managing Editor, Thought Leadership