Rolling Stone Layoffs, Hearst Acquisition, Murdoch Succession Plan: Media News Recap for September

by Maria Perez · Published · Updated

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s roundup of the biggest media stories from the past month.

September was a month of turning points across the media industry. The Murdoch family finalized a long-anticipated succession plan, marking the end of an era in one of the world’s most powerful media dynasties. Rolling Stone and other outlets faced fresh rounds of layoffs as cost-cutting continued, while Hearst moved to expand its local footprint with the acquisition of The Dallas Morning News.

Here’s everything you need to know about what happened in the media world in September.

Rolling Stone Hit with Layoffs Amid Ongoing Staff Reductions at Penske

An unknown number of Rolling Stone staff, including some of the storied publication’s most prominent voices, were laid off in September.

The cuts come as parent company Penske Media Corp. is actively looking for ways to shrink headcount across its many properties. However, they may also be the sign of a change in direction under new CEO Julian Holguin, rather than a staff reduction, as Rolling Stone has also posted multiple new job listings.

Among the affected Rolling Stone staffers are executive digital director Lisa Tozzi, chief television critic Alan Sepinwall and copy chief Steven Pearl. (TheWrap)

Other layoffs in September included:

The New York Times Starts a Newsletter on Religion

The New York Times is launching a weekly newsletter about religion, in apparent response to popular demand. Appearing every Sunday, Believing will focus on how people live religion and spirituality today. Lauren Jackson, editor of The Morning, will serve as host of Believing.

Each week, the newsletter will publish one original piece of reporting and highlight how religion appears in the headlines. It will also answer reader questions about faith, and share individual stories of sacred rituals, texts and pilgrimages. (MediaPost)

These are some of the other launches announced in September:

  • CNN debuts new series, “Seasons.” (MediaPost)
  • Axios to debut “Axios Show.” (Variety)
  • The Local Media Association launched LatidoBeat to support Latino journalism. (Editor & Publisher)
  • CNBC added global audio options. (Talking Biz News)
  • POLITICO launched an SMS Congress product. (POLITICO)
  • NextTrip debuted Travel Magazine 2.0. (MediaPost)
  • The Verge launched a new tech history show. (Talking Biz News)
  • Reuters launched an Arabic website. (Talking Biz News)
  • Former Chartbeat and Scroll CEO Tony Haile raised $10.7 million for a new startup. (Axios)

Hearst Acquires Dallas Morning News and Medium Giant

DallasNews Corporation, the holding company of The Dallas Morning News and Medium Giant, announced that shareholders approved the company’s merger with Hearst. The deal closed Sept. 24.

The Dallas Morning News and Medium Giant will now join Hearst, one of the nation’s leading information, services and media companies. As outlined in the merger agreement, DallasNews shareholders will receive an all-cash consideration of $16.50 per share of DallasNews common stock, and DallasNews will cease to trade as a public company.

Adding The Morning News gives Hearst control over newspapers in most of Texas’ largest cities, expanding a portfolio that already includes the largest dailies in Houston, Austin and San Antonio. (Texas Press Association)

Check out these acquisitions announced in September:

  • Connoisseur Media completed the acquisition of Alpha Media. (Radio Ink)
  • Scripps agreed to sell Florida station WFTX to Sun Broadcasting. (Editor & Publisher)
  • Better Newspapers sold 15 Illinois and Missouri newspapers to Paxton Media Group. (MediaPost)
  • Air Mail will be acquired by Puck. (New York Times)
  • Dow Jones acquired EV data business Eco-Movement. (MediaPost)
  • People Inc. has acquired Feedfeed, a food publisher and creator network. (Axios)

Real Simple Justice: New Standard Seeks Payment for AI Content Scraping, Usage

Several publishers and tech firms have voiced support for Really Simple Licensing (RSL), a new standard designed to ensure fair compensation for content scraped by AI crawlers.

RSL was launched along with a nonprofit organization: the RSL Collective, which will provide collective licensing services.

The new standard allows publishers to add machine-readable licensing and royalty terms to their robots.txt files, specifying how AI agents must compensate them for using their content, going beyond the basic yes/no blocking of the robots.txt protocol.

In addition, RSL will support a range of licensing and usage models, including free attribution, subscription, pay-per-crawl (in which publishers will be paid every time an AI application crawls their content), and pay-per-inference (when an AI application uses a publisher’s content to generate a response). (MediaPost)

More AI stories from September include:

  • Rolling Stone’s publisher sued Google over AI summaries. (Wall Street Journal)
  • Fake pitches are flooding newsrooms as AI tools proliferate. (Media Copilot)
  • A Microsoft, OpenAI truce cleared a hurdle in the path to for-profit conversion. (Wall Street Journal)
  • Meta is seeking media deals to license AI content. (MediaPost)

Inside the Deal Ending the Murdoch Succession Fight

The Murdoch family’s epic, decades-long succession battle has reached a multibillion-dollar finale.

Lachlan Murdoch has completed an agreement to secure control of his family’s sprawling media empire for decades to come. The deal ensures that the empire’s various outlets, including Fox News, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, will remain conservative after his father Rupert’s death. It is valued at $3.3 billion, according to a person with knowledge of negotiations.

Under the terms of the deal, Lachlan’s three oldest siblings will receive $1.1 billion each for all their shares in the empire, according to the person with knowledge of the negotiations. Those shares are currently held in the existing family trust, which will be dissolved. This amounts to roughly 80% of the value of their stock. (New York Times)

Here are a few other stories that made news in September:

  • The New York Times debuted a new family subscription plan. (Axios)
  • Fox News overhauled its weekend slate. (Axios)
  • A new report finds U.S. advertising revenues are estimated to have grown 10.3% in the second quarter of 2025. (MediaPost)

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Maria Perez
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Maria Perez is director of web operations at Cision. In her spare time, she enjoys gaming, watching too much TV, and chasing squirrels with her dog Cece.

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