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Versant, the new company thats being spun off from Comcast, and which will be the new home to several of its cable networks, is building out a new, independent news-gathering operation as it disentangles MSNBC from NBC News. For decades, the two brands worked hand-in-hand, sharing reporting and resources. However, with the two entities soon to be part of different companies, they need to decouple, which includes determining where some of the companys talent will go. Thats a complicated process, and it means that MSNBC, for the first time since its inception in 1996, will rely on its own stable of reporters and correspondents, rather than the combined efforts of its staff and NBC News. And right out of the gate, the news is good for MSNBC, as it has managed to bring aboard one of NBC News’s most prominent journalists. Brandy Zadrozny is joining MSNBC as the networks new senior enterprise reporter, based in New York. She moves to the new role after serving as a senior reporter at NBC News, where she covered the internet with a focus on politics, tech, and extremism. Brandy Zadrozny [Photo: courtesy MSNBC] Zadroznys work won her an Emmy, a Webby Award for a six-episode NBC News podcast she created, and includes stories related to radicalization, vaccine skepticism, and QAnon. Im thrilled to be joining MSNBC after years of reporting alongside its journalists, Zadrozny tells Fast Company. At a moment when theres real hunger for fact-based journalism with a clear mission, Im grateful for the opportunity to keep investigating stories that matterabout disinformation and the fringe forces reshaping our politicswith the support and reach of a network that knows exactly what it stands for. Filling out the ranks Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp. announced in late 2024 that it would spin out its cable TV networks, including USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Golf Channel, into a separate publicly traded company, initially dubbed “SpinCo,” which it said at the time had generated $7 billion in 2024. The company name was revealed as Versant in May, with the spin-off expected to be completed later this year. Shares of Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) are down roughly 3% since the announcement. Zadrozny is one of several key hires that MSNBC is making, bringing in talent with diverse media backgrounds, including alumni of the Wall Street Journal, Politico, CNN, and even the upstart Crooked Media. That includes Scott Matthews, who will be MSNBCs senior vice president of news-gathering, along with NBC Newss Joey Cole and ABC Newss Erin Zimmerman, who will be in charge of day-to-day and long-term planning for the news team. Sudeep Reddy, formerly of Politico, is the networks new Washington bureau chief, and Madeleine Haeringer, formerly of NBC News and Crooked Media, is the new head of digital, audio, and long-form operations. In addition, Vaughn Hillyard will be the networks senior White House correspondent, and Laura Barrón-López (a former White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour) will be MSNBCs White House correspondent. David Noriega will be a correspondent based in Los Angeles, and Marc Santia will be an Investigative Correspondent. But thats not all: MSNBC is also welcoming a batch of correspondents and contributors, including Eugene Daniels, Jackie Alemany, Antonia Hylton, Elise Jordan, Ken Dilanian, and Erielle Reshef. Programming shifts There will also be some programming shakeups. That includes Jen Psakis show airing at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday, with Rachel Maddow holding down the slot on Monday nights. Ali Velshis program is being supersized to three hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Its expected that MSNBC will be fully independent from NBC News within a few months, and that the full spin-off of Versant from NBCUniversal and Comcast will occur by the end of the year. Versants properties will reach 70 million households in the United States. In the meantime, MSNBC and NBC News will continue the work of separating. Notably, both MSNBC and CNBC will retain their names, despite no longer being affiliated with NBCmuch in the same way that MSNBC has kept MS as a part of its branding, despite no longer being affiliated with Microsoft, which helped launch the brand in the 1990s. (Disclosure: The author of this story previously worked for CNBC.)
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E-Commerce
When Plufl co-founders Yuki Kinoshita and Noah Silverman pitched their “dog beds for humans” prototype to Shark Tank in 2022, they envisioned making the plush, snuggly, memory foam beds in China and selling them at retail in the U.S. for $299. Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner invested $200,000 jointly for 20% of the company, which went on to make over $1 million in sales in 2023, selling beds on Amazon and their own website. After U.S. President Donald Trump slapped a 145% tariff on items imported from China in April, Kinoshita and Silverman sprung into action, investigating if retailers would be interested in selling a U.S. made version of their human dog beds. The retail price might go higher, but they thought a “made-in-the-USA” label might be an attractive selling point and help ease some U.S. retailers’ concerns about the impact of China tariffs. Silverman and Kinoshita had previously toured a factory in Las Vegas that could make the memory foam beds for $150 per unit compared to the $100 overall cost to make the beds in China. But that $150 manufacturing cost didnt include the faux fur lining for the cover, which would still need to be imported from Chinaadding another $100 per unit. They pitched a sub-$500 made-in-the-USA version to Costco, which it turned down, saying it couldnt stock the product this year and might revisit the idea next year. Costco did not respond to a request for comment. The duo behind Plufl are among tens of thousands of American small and midsize manufacturers facing the choice between paying steep tariffs on Chinese imports or taking on significantly higher domestic production costs. Even those willing to pay more to make goods in the U.S. are confronting another reality: retailers set prices for consumers and have been largely unwilling to budge in the face of tariffs. On June 11, when Trump announced a deal to lower tariffs on Chinese goods to 55%, Kinoshita and Silverman decided to stay the course manufacturing their human dog beds in China and maintain the $299 retail price. “We’re absorbing costs in a number of ways, such as finding shipping efficiencies by shrinking the box down more and also taking some hit on our margin,” Kinoshita said. White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the Trump administration remains committed to reviving U.S. manufacturing, citing provisions in the Big, Beautiful Bill, which passed on Tuesday with a slim majority in the Senate, such as allowing businesses to fully expense equipment investments. “These complementary policies will turbocharge growth and drive investment throughout the supply chain, he said in an emailed statement. DRINKING MARGINS Similarly, Aisha Chottani, another Shark Tank veteran, found that tariffs threaten her ability to sell her products in grocery stores. Chottani, CEO-founder of Moment, makes her healthy, stress-reducing carbonated beverages in Wisconsin, but her packager, CanWorks imports pre-formed aluminum from China, and is thus subject to aluminum tariffs which raised the price of cans from by 20%. When Chottani tried to pass on the 4 cents in additional costs to Albertsons, which carries her $3.99 Strawberry Rose beverage at about 30 locations in Texas and New Mexico, her answer was swift. “Albertsons refused any price increases,” she said and suggested she either keep the same price or leave. Albertsons did not respond to a request for comment. In February, she launched Moment beverages in Sprout Farmers Markets across the U.S., but was forced to do so with higher-priced cans. “There wasn’t enough time to shift production to factories in Vietnam or other places,” she said. For now, Chottani is keeping her wholesale price the same even as her costs have gone up. She’s raising additional cash from investors and looking to cut costs. “Even in the short term a 20% price hike is huge and is going to wipe out all your cash,” she said. BABY TARIFFS It’s not just startups that are struggling. Bugaboo, the Netherlands-based maker of expensive baby gear, owns its own factory in China and would seem to be well-prepared to weather tariffs. The company’s popular “Fox 5” stroller, which retails for about $1,500 in the U.S., is made at its factory in Xiamen, China, where 97% of strollers and car seats imported to the U.S. are made, according to ImportGenius, which tracks U.S. import, export records and shipping manifests. But when Trumps tariffs hit, Bugaboo started to reevaluate that strategy. The company had begun studying moving production to other countries in Asia to have more regional production flexibility as well as the U.S., but any move would be years away. It took Bugaboo a number of years to establish its Xiamen operations. If it had to build a similar setup in the United States, it would take the same time. “Even if we start now, it would take several years to set up operations,” said Chief Commercial Officer for North America, Jeanelle Teves. The U.S. currently lacks a specialized manufacturing footprint for baby strollers that requires advanced tooling, high-grade materials, and a skilled labor force. “It’s not just about assembling parts; it’s about engineering performance and safety,” she said. In the meantime, Bugaboo decided to pass some of those costs onto customers, raising prices $50 to $300 on several products including high chairs, play pens, and a new version the Fox 5 stroller on May 20. The increases do not fully offset the tariff, and Bugaboo is continuing to absorb part of the cost in order to minimize the impact on American families and retailers, Teves said. TAKING NOTES Pensacola, Florida-based Simplified, maker of high-end notebooks, cards and stationery, can make a day planner complete with a hard cover, gold corners, foil and color printing for about $12 in Shenzhen, China, where many U.S.-bound paper products are made. After the tariffs hit and small businesses began feeling the pain, CEO-founder Emily Ley said many people asked why she didnt just move her manufacturing to the U.S. The United States simply does not have the infrastructure,” said Ley. The problem? Producing the same planner in the U.S. would cost $38 and thats with lower-quality materials. Ley said she keeps her manufacturing costs at 25% of the $64 retail price of the planners. She said she can’t pass on the cost of tariffs, because then her planners would cost $100. People aren’t gonna pay $100 for a paper planner, nor should they, said Ley, who has filed a lawsuit against Trump alleging that his use of emergency powers to enact tariffs was illegal. In the meantime, Ley is absorbing the cost and continuing manufacturing in China, which means cutting back on other areas like investing in growth, jbs, salaries and advertising. “You know, we’re all encouraged to pursue the American dream and create businesses, Ley said. The tariffs at any level are truly punitive. It seems kind of counterproductive to the whole point of this whole thing. Siddharth Cavale, Reuters
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E-Commerce
While shoppers will no doubt head out this July 4th holiday weekend to take advantage of the myriad sales on offer, the most high-profile sale of the summer doesnt actually start until July 8. Thats the day that Amazon kicks off its (now four-day) Amazon Prime Day sale. But one of Amazons closest competitors, Target, isnt sitting on its laurels. The retailer hopes to both steal some of Amazons sales thunder and pad its own bottom line via its Target Circle Week shopping event. Heres what you need to know about Targets answer to Amazon Prime Day. What is Target Circle Week? Target Circle Week is the Target Corporations answer to Amazon Prime Day. Target Circle Week is an annual shopping event held by Target, both online and in its physical retail stores. The sales event sees deals on hundreds of items. Similar to how Amazon Prime Day is only available to Amazon Prime subscribers, Target Circle Week is only available to Target Circle members. Target Circle is the companys loyalty and rewards program. In order to take advantage of Target Circle Week sales, youll need to be a memberbut more on that below. When is Target Circle Week 2025? This year, Target Circle Week is being held from Sunday, July 6, to Saturday, July 12. Yes, unlike Amazon Prime Day, which is actually a four-day event this year, Target Circle Week lives up to its name by being a full seven-day event. However, there is one caveat to Target Circle Weeks length. The sales event is actually an eight-day event if you are a Target Circle 360 member. Target Circle 360 is the paid version of the free Target Circle loyalty program, and if you are a member of 360, you can access the Target Circle Week deals a full 24 hours in advance, on Saturday, July 5. What are the deals during Target Circle Week 2025? Target Circle Week will feature deals on hundreds of products, available both in Targets online store and its physical retail stores. One of the advantages of Target Circle Week over Amazon Prime Day is that it includes in-store sales. You can actually head into a Target to view an item in person before you decide to buy it. This is especially helpful for items like clothes, which many prefer to try on first before buying. As for what deals are to be had during Target Circle Week 2025, Target says its top deals will include: 40% off Casaluna & Threshold bedding Up to 40% off tech & gaming 30% off tees, tanks, and dresses for all 30% off school uniforms 30% off select backpacks and school supplies 20% off Brightroom storage and organization Buy two, get one free on books, movies, and music Spend $40, save $10 on toys Buy one, get one 50% off select grocery including ice cream, coffee, tea, cereal, frozen meals, & more Buy one, get one 30% off suncare, haircare, nailcare, and vitamins Who can take advantage of Target Circle Week sales? Anyone can gain access to all the Target Circle Week deals by becoming a Target Circle member. And the good news is that, unlike with Amazon Prime, Target offers a free membership tier to its Target Circle loyalty program. (Amazon often offers free promotional subscriptions to Prime.) You can sign up for a free membership to Target Circle here. If you want, you can also choose to join Target Circles paid membership program, which is called Target Circle 360. A paid Target Circle 360 membership sees members get additional benefits like same-day delivery from Target, free two-day shipping, and no-rush returns. A Target Circle 360 membership is $10.99 a month or $99 a year. You can sign up for Target Circle 360 here. If you are a Target Circle 360 member, youll be able to access Target Circle Week deals a day early this year, on July 5. How does Target Circle Week help Target? The main benefit Target sees from Target Circle Week is in helping combat customer flight to Amazon. Target generally tries to hold its Target Circle Week during or near Amazons Amazon Prime Day sales event. Of course, Target also hopes that the sales event doesnt just help the company retain consumer marketshare but also increases its bottom linesomething the company needs to do. In May, Target Corporation reported its first quarter results, in which it saw sales fall 2.8% to $23.85 billion. Numerous factors were behind the sales decline, including increasing consumer uncertainty and boycotts from some groups due to the companys rollback of its DEI initiatives. The companys sales challenges have hurt its stock price this year, too. Since the beginning of the year, Targets stock (NYSE: TGT) is down over 23% to just under $104 per share as of yesterdays close. Over the past 12 months, TGT shares have declined almost 29%.
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E-Commerce
In a case seen as a challenge to free speech, Paramount has agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump over the editing of CBS’ 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris in October.Paramount told media outlets the money will go to Trump’s future presidential library, not to the president himself. It said the settlement did not involve an apology.Trump’s lawyer said the president had suffered “mental anguish” over the editing of the interview by CBS News, while Paramount and CBS rejected his contention that it was edited to enhance how Harris sounded. They had sought to get Trump’s lawsuit dismissed.There was no immediate word from the White House about the settlement of the case, which Trump filed in Amarillo, Texas.The case has been closely watched by advocates for press freedom and by journalists within CBS, whose lawyers called Trump’s lawsuit “completely without merit” and promised to vigorously fight it after it was filed.In early February, 60 Minutes released a full, unedited transcript of the interview.Under the settlement reached with help of a mediator, Paramount agreed that 60 Minutes will release transcripts of future interviews of presidential candidates, “subject to redactions as required for legal and national security concerns,” CBS News cited the statement as saying.Trump, who did not agree to be interviewed by 60 Minutes during the campaign, protested editing where Harris is seen giving two different answers to a question by the show’s Bill Whitaker in separate clips aired on 60 Minutes and Face the Nation earlier in the day. CBS said each reply came within Harris’ long-winded answer to Whitaker, but was edited to be more succinct.The president’s lawyer, Edward Andrew Paltzik, said that caused confusion and “mental anguish,” misleading voters and causing them to pay less attention to Trump and his Truth Social platform.Paramount and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone were seeking the settlement with Trump, whose administration must approve the company’s proposed merger with Skydance Media. CBS News President and CEO Wendy McMahon and 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens, who both opposed a settlement, have resigned in recent weeks.The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a media advocacy group that says it is a Paramount shareholder, has said that it would file a lawsuit in protest if a settlement was reached.In December, ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit by Trump over statements made by anchor George Stephanopoulos, agreeing to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library rather than engage in a public fight. Meta reportedly paid $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the company over its decision to suspend his social media accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Associated Press
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E-Commerce
For over a decade, Canva has made design and publishing accessible to anyone. Now, the company is wrestling with how to harness AI while staying true to its mission of empowering individual creators. Cofounder and COO Cliff Obrecht reveals how Canva is navigating this shiftand why the stakes are so high when it comes to AI-adoptation in the creative industry. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I wanted to ask you about AI. Everybody is talking about it. There’s thisI don’t want to say conflictbut there are creatives who are like, “I want to create my stuff, thank you very much. The algorithm cannot do what I do.” And then there are folks, Canva among them, that say, “No, technology can democratize access to creativity,” and some of the more pure creators might push back on that. How do you think about that issue? I’ve got a couple of strong thoughts, and I’ve got some evolved thinking on that as well. So at Canva, when we launched, a lot of designers said, “Canva, we hate you. You are ruining our industry. You are like letting everyone design.” And then we kind of said back, “Why is a designer, why is that professional, that skill set, defined by being able to use a set of really, really difficult tools?” And so over time, it didn’t take long, within four years, designers didn’t feel threatened by Canva. They saw it as actually a way to do the high value work, and then essentially democratize their work throughout the rest of the organization, so they weren’t stuck 80% of their time doing spell changes, or changing the name on a business card, or creating yet another social media post. They could do the high value brand campaign stuff. We really see AI as just another step in that evolution. I mean, it’s here and it’s here to stay. What I really believe, though, is that the creatives that the models have been trained on really need to be compensated, and that model is still being figured out. We have our creators program at Canva, where we pay out well over $100 million a year in revenue to our template creators, and that’s evolving into how we pay the creators that we train our models on. I think the industry at large is still figuring that out, though, and I don’t think that creatives have got the full value of the corpus of work that these models have been trained on. But I do think creatives need to embrace this new technology. Not embracing AI as a creative is, you can see where it’s going. It seems folly. Yeah. You have to. I mean, I was talking with someone from Google yesterday about their Veo 3 tool. We integrated that into Canva like two days ago. I mean, it’s amazing, though, what it can do. Incredible. Now, it does make it feel like, oh, anybody can be an auteur, which of course is what we want, and maybe it opens things up, but it could also have people push back against it. Well, I think it’s like, with AI, there’s going to be a huge proliferation of content. And I think to cut through that noise, you’re going to have to create something unique and different. And I think that’s what creatives bring to the table, that’s what designers bring to the table, that ability to stand above the pack. If everyone can create this, then a good creative can create something elevated. And I think it’s going to lift the baseline, absolutely. But I think the best creatives are going to be elevated beyond that and celebrated even more. Yeah. As we’re talking, Im reminded, I had a conversation, this is several years back, with Ben Affleck. And I was asking him, “Listen, so many people are watching the movies that you make on their phones. Do you start to think about creating them differently, because so many people are looking at them on a smaller screen?” And he was almost insulted at the idea that, no, no, no. It’s got to be for the big screen. It’s got to be for the big screen. But now I wonder whether you could. AI can do some of those things that make the big screen distinctive, without having to have the same budgets around it. It’s going to be incredible. And we’re about to start running competitions for student creatives. What can you create as a 10-year-old or a 15-year-old, and create your five-minute masterpiece? I think it’s going to really evolve to, I have a daughter, so how can we create her a beautiful custom story that features her doing all the things she loves? It’s going to be creative, and what’s currently movie-quality creative, down to the individual, which is really just going to see so much more creative, and I think it’s a great thing. Also, I’m dyslexic, so I can read, but I don’t read well. I read fast, but I blur things up. So I hate being a rote learner when it comes to reading text. I’m a very visual learner, and a learner that wants to learn by doing. I think what AI is doing is really, it’s allowing, particularly when it comes to education, bifurcating the way people learn and giving them the method that they resonate with most. So for example, you can create a document in Canva, but you can say, “Create this as a presentation,” or you can say, “Create this as a movie,” or, “Create this as a podcast.” And then people can learn and people can consume the way they want to consume. Yeah. Sometimes I think, too, we pigeonhole people. You’re either a creative or you’re not. And some people are like, “Oh, I’m not creative,” but we all are creative if we are given the tools that work for us, right? That’s such a good comment, because when we launched Canva, the comment we would hear time and time again is, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” That’s because the tools were so difficult to use. That’s why we worked so hard and so long on the product, because it couldn’t be daunting. It had to be simple, and we had to make it a game. So our first onboarding, we had a monkey in the canvas, and the first command in onboarding was, put a hat on the monkey. So you had to search for a hat and put it on the monkey, and then you had to add some text. And all of a sudden, you’d just done something that you never thought you’d be able to do, but you had fun doing it. And that just unlocks a whole new mental paradigm. And I think, yeah, AI is going to do that on steroids. Yeah. But it needs that interface to be able to Yeah. And that’s why Canva Code, for example, people are scared by even these AR coding tools that make creating a website so easy, but people find the Canva interface very approachable. So we launched Canva Code because it’s really hitting that, notthe first movers, but the masses that are already using Canva, and we can take them on that journey and unlock a whole new level of opportunity for them.
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E-Commerce
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