Delta Air Lines announced Friday that its chief operating officer will depart the company next week after a little more than a year in the airline industry to pursue other opportunities.

Michael Spanos’ exit comes just a few weeks after they canceled thousands of flights during a bungled recovery from a global technological breakdown.

Before joining the airline in June 2023, Spanos spent the majority of his career with PepsiCo and the Pepsi Bottling Group. He was also the CEO of amusement park operator Six Flags Entertainment. He is one of three executive vice presidents at the Atlanta-based airline.

A Top Delta Executive Is Leaving Weeks After The Airline’s Slow Response To Tech Outage

Delta did not provide a reason for Spanos’ resignation in a regulatory filing, just stating that he would receive severance benefits under the company’s officer and director plan. Spanos received $8.6 million in remuneration last year, most of which came as stock awards.

CEO Ed Bastian stated in a memo to staff that Spanos informed him “earlier this summer” that he was considering quitting the airline. A spokesman stated that this occurred before the technical breakdown.

Bastian stated that Spanos will be moving to another company in September but did not specify which one. The CEO complimented Spanos on boosting Delta’s performance and stated that Delta would not appoint a new chief operating officer.

Chief operating officers often oversee a firm’s day-to-day operations and report directly to the CEO. They are frequently seen as the second-highest-ranking executive; however, at Delta, President Glen Hauenstein is widely regarded as fulfilling that role.

Delta was struck worse than any other US carrier by last month’s technology outage, which began with a failed upgrade from cybersecurity software firm CrowdStrike to Microsoft Windows-based systems.

A Top Delta Executive Is Leaving Weeks After The Airline’s Slow Response To Tech Outage

Other airlines recovered within a few days, but the airline cancelled approximately 7,000 flights over a five-day period as it battled to redeploy staff and match them with aircraft.

The US Transportation Department is investigating the incident, and Delta is suing CrowdStrike and Microsoft for $500 million in damages. The tech businesses claim the airline rejected assistance and made false assertions.

SOURCE | AP

SACRAMENTO, CA – Google will soon give California millions of dollars to help pay for local journalism positions in a first-of-its-kind pact, but journalists and other media industry professionals call it a disappointing agreement that mostly favors the tech behemoth.

The pact, reached behind closed doors and unveiled last week, will allocate tens of millions of public and private cash to keep local news organizations afloat. Critics argue that it is a textbook political maneuver by internet titans to dodge a tax under what could have been historic legislation. California lawmakers decided to scrap a bill forcing tech companies to support the news outlets they profit from in exchange for Google’s financial commitment.

According to Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, by delaying the bill, the state effectively abandoned an avenue that may have obliged Google and social media platforms to provide recurring payments to publishers for linking to news material. He added that California also left behind a significantly larger sum of money that could have been secured under the legislation.

Google Agreed To Pay Millions For California News. Journalists Call It A Bad Deal

“Google got off easy,” Pickard explained.

Google stated that the agreement would benefit both the media and the artificial intelligence sector in California.

“This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national centre of excellence on AI policy,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer at Google’s parent company Alphabet, said in a statement.

State governments around the United States have been working to support faltering news organizations. The newspaper industry in the United States has declined for many years, with traditional economic models crumbling and advertising revenues drying up in the digital age.

As news organizations shift from print to digital, they increasingly rely on Google and Facebook to deliver their material. While publishers’ advertising earnings have plummeted over the previous few decades, Google’s search engine has become the center of a digital advertising empire worth more than $200 billion annually.

According to its owner, the Los Angeles Times was losing up to $40 million a year, which justified laying off more than 100 people earlier this year.

According to a report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, more than 2,500 newspapers have disappeared since 2005, and around 200 counties in the United States lack local news outlets.

California and New Mexico are financing local journalism fellowship programs. This year, New York became the first state to offer a tax credit program to help news outlets attract and retain journalists. Illinois is exploring legislation identical to the one that was lost in California.

Here’s a closer look at the agreement California reached with Google this week:

What does the agreement entail?
The $250 million deal will finance two efforts: journalism projects and a new AI research program. The pact only guaranteed funds for five years.

Google will provide approximately $110 million, with the state budget contributing $70 million, to increase journalism career opportunities. The fund will be overseen by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. According to Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who arranged the agreement, Google will also contribute $70 million to fund the AI research initiative, which would develop tools to help tackle “real-world problems. ”

The agreement is not a tax, which is a striking contrast to a law Wicks proposed that would have imposed a “link tax” mandating corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft to pay a proportion of advertising revenue to media organizations in exchange for connecting to their material. The plan was patterned after Canadian legislation requiring Google to pay approximately $74 million annually to fund journalism.

Why are tech corporations agreeing on this now?
Tech companies have spent the previous two years battling Wicks’ measure, mounting costly opposition campaigns and airing advertisements criticizing the law. In April, Google threatened to temporarily restrict news websites from some California consumers’ search results. The bill has been moving forward with bipartisan backing until this week.

Wicks told The Associated Press on Thursday that she saw no way forward with her measure and that the funds obtained under the agreement “are better than zero.”

“This represents politics is the art of the possible,” the politician stated.

According to industry experts, the deal is a textbook move that Google has used worldwide to skirt restrictions.

Google Agreed To Pay Millions For California News. Journalists Call It A Bad Deal

“Google cannot exit from news because they need it,” said Anya Schiffrin, a Columbia University professor who studies global media and co-wrote a working paper on how much Google and Meta owe news publishers. “So what they are doing is using a whole lot of different tactics to kill bills that will require them to compensate publishers fairly.”

She calculates that Google owes California publishers $1.4 billion each year. Google disagrees with Schiffrin’s conclusions. According to a spokeswoman, news queries make up less than 2% of all searches and do not generate revenue for Google.

Why are journalists and labor unions opposing the agreement?
The Media Guild of the West, a union representing journalists in Southern California, Arizona, and Texas, stated that journalists were excluded from the discourse. The union supported Wicks’ bill but was not involved in the negotiations with Google.

“The future of journalism should not be decided in backroom deals,” the union’s letter to lawmakers states. “The Legislature tried unsuccessfully to restrict monopolies. Now we wonder if the state has caused more harm than good.”

According to a letter from the union to Wicks earlier this week, the arrangement results in significantly less cash than Google provides to Canadian newsrooms and contradicts Google’s goal of rebalancing its control over local news organizations.

Others questioned why the agreement contained funds to develop new AI tools. They view it as another opportunity for tech corporations to eventually replace them. Wicks’ original bill did not include AI provisions.

Some news organizations, including the California News Publishers Association, Local Independent Online News Publishers, and California Black Media, have supported the pact.

What happens next?
The pact is set to take effect next year, with $100 million to jumpstart the efforts.

Wicks stated that the terms of the arrangement are still being worked out. According to Wicks, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has committed to including journalistic financing in his January budget, but reservations from other Democratic leaders may jeopardise the proposal.

SOURCE | AP

Google reached a first-in-the-nation agreement with California lawmakers on Wednesday to subsidize newsrooms in the state and end proposed legislation that would have required technology companies to pay for the right to distribute news content. However, the pact was immediately criticized by journalist unions, who labelled it “disastrous.”

The plan asks for a $250 million contribution from Google and the state over five years, with the bulk going to fund California newsrooms, as well as the development of an artificial intelligence “accelerator” to help journalists do their jobs.

According to the proposed cooperation, Google will donate up to $15 million to a media fund in the first year, while California will commit $30 million. During the next four years, California’s contribution will be reduced to $10 million per year, while Google will contribute at least $20 million to the fund and existing journalism programs.

Google Agrees To First-In-The-Nation Deal To Fund California Newsrooms, But Journalists Are Calling It A Disaster

The agreement kills a high-profile bill known as the California Journalism Preservation Act, which would have required technology companies such as Google (GOOGL) and Meta (META) to pay news organizations to distribute their content online. The initiative, supported by state assemblymember Buffy Wicks, is modeled after similar legislation passed in Australia and Canada. It provides financing to local news organizations whose business models have collapsed due to the rise of giant tech platforms.

“As technology and innovation advance, it is critical that California continues to champion the vital role of journalism in our democracy,” Wicks said in a statement announcing the collaboration with Google. “This alliance demonstrates a cross-sector commitment to supporting a free and thriving press, allowing local news outlets across the state to continue their critical work. This is only the beginning. I remain dedicated to finding new ways to support journalism in our state for many years to come.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had not publicly weighed in on the bill, praised the deal as “a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and bolstering local journalism across California — leveraging substantial tech industry resources without imposing new taxes on Californians.”

News publishers have struggled immensely in recent years, losing thousands of jobs and forcing the closure of some venues entirely as advertising budgets and viewers switched away from traditional media.

Ironically, the deal announced Wednesday also promoted a so-called “National AI Innovation Accelerator,” which includes funding for the development of artificial intelligence. Some journalist groups have warned that artificial intelligence poses a threat to the future of their industry and threatens to further erode trust in news reporting.

The agreement was supported by the California News Publishers Association, which represents hundreds of news organizations, Google’s parent company, and OpenAI. However, it was strongly criticized by unions representing the state’s journalists, who had supported Wicks’ measure to subsidize newsrooms but were not included in the agreement.

“The future of journalism should not be decided in backroom deals,” a joint statement from the Media Guild of the West, The NewsGuild-CWA, and others said. “The Legislature tried unsuccessfully to regulate monopolies. We now ask whether the state has done more harm than good. California’s journalists and news workers strongly oppose this terrible arrangement with Google and condemn the news executives who approved it in our name.”

The deal also faced blowback from other Democrats in the California legislature, including state Sen. Steve Glazer, who had proposed a bill to provide tax credits to news outlets employing full-time journalists.

“Despite the good intentions of the parties involved, this proposal does not provide sufficient resources to bring independent news gathering in California out of its death spiral,” Glazer said Wednesday during a press conference. “Google’s offer is completely inadequate and massively short of matching their settlement agreement in Canada in supporting on-the-ground local news reporting.”

California State Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire also criticized the agreement, stating, “Newsrooms have been hollowed out across this state while tech companies have made multibillion-dollar profits. We are concerned that this proposal does not provide adequate money for newspapers and local media or address the industry’s imbalances.

The agreement comes months after Google decided to ban news content in California due to Wicks’ planned rule, prompting a rapid outcry from the state’s press outlets.

Google Agrees To First-In-The-Nation Deal To Fund California Newsrooms, But Journalists Are Calling It A Disaster

The News/Media Alliance, representing US newspapers and online publishers, said it has written to the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the California Attorney General, requesting an investigation into whether Google violated any laws by limiting access to news sites.

Google previously threatened to take similar action in Canada ahead of the country’s new law requiring digital platforms to compensate news publishers for their work but eventually backed down. Under Canada’s Online News Act, Google will pay $74 million per year into a fund that will be dispersed to publishers.

“Google is the biggest source of referral traffic on the internet. When you are conducting journalism on the internet, you have to do business with Google,” Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce said after Wednesday’s announcement. “The premise of these bills is that if we are going to be dominated by a monopolist whose product we cannot escape, except at enormous cost to our own business, that monopoly needs to pay its fair share for our journalism.”

SOURCE | CNN