Marketing and advertising agencies are enjoying strong demand for their services, but late payments are causing cash flow problems, the Kaplan Group found in a study, Storyboard 18 reports. The study found that 97% of agencies experience delayed payments, and 71% say one in four invoices is paid late.

Artificial intelligence, while widely covered in the media, ranks at the bottom of the new sources used by Americans, a new Pew Research poll found, according to Mediaite. Of the individuals surveyed, 35% look to their preferred news organization for breaking news, 28% use search engines like Google or Bing. Only 1% turn to AI chatbots.

The New York Times has returned to court, saying in a motion that the Defense Department’s policy of moving the press to a separate annex does not comply with the prior court order issued by a federal judge, NPR reports. “We filed it because, instead of abiding by and following the judge's order and opinion, they're defying it, brazenly defying it,” said Theodore Boutrous, attorney for the Times, in a Q&A.

Local news is the biggest casualty as Hollywood studios merge and streaming now accounts for 40% of all viewing, Paste reports. The FCC has approved Nexstar Media Group’s $6.2 billion merger with its competitor Tegna, and Nexstar would own 15% of all television stations in the U.S. A wave of layoffs has begun at Nexstar-owned outlets.   

The Federal Communications Commission  has approved the transfer of 10 local television broadcast licenses from Allen Media Group to Gray Media, TheDesk.net reports.  Allen Media Group announced the transaction last August after saying it had to sell off its local TV stations to address debt obligations. It is not clear why the transaction was delayed from the expected date of Q4 last year.

The Pentagon announced it will move journalists from their dedicated workspace inside the building to work from a separate facility, The Washington Post reports. And while saying it will comply, it plans to appeal a decision by Senior U.S. Judge Paul L. Friedman that the Defense Department’s media police violated press freedom and due process rights. 

The ongoing dispute between NewsGuard Technologies and the Federal Trade Commission is now being fought in court, TVNewsCheck reports. NewsGuard, a media monitoring services, filed suit last month, accusing the FTC of “brazenly using its power not for any issue concerning trade or commerce but rather to censor speech simply because it disagreed with NewsGuard’s judgments about the reliability of news sources.”

Grammarly has scrapped its Expert Review, an AI feature that suggests improvements to what users are writing, saying they are from celebrated authors, Nieman Lab reports. Technology journalist Julia Angwin filed a class-action lawsuit against Grammarly, and Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra has apologized and agreed to an interview with Nilay Patel on the Decoder podcast from The Verge. Grammarly rebranded and changed its name to Superhuman in 2025.

A federal judge has ruled that key parts of the Defense Department’s media policy are unconstitutional, the New York Times reports. The Times, which filed a lawsuit accusing the Pentagon of violating the First and Fifth Amendments, is now seeking to have press access to the Pentagon restored to seven journalists. Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with the Times on the constitutionality issue. Dozens of reporters surrendered their press passes last year when the department instituted rules that allow it to declare that journalists are “security risks.” 

Stagwell has chosen AppLovin’s Axon in an effort to provide clients with a transparency measurement and reporting tool for mobile campaigns, Insider Monkey reports. Axom reaches 1 billion users per day via mobile apps and connected TVs. AppLovin matches advertisers with publishers to drive ad revenue and user acquisition.