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Rachel Maddow will return to MSNBC five nights a week during the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term in office. At the moment she is just there on Mondays. Alex Wagner, who takes the time slot Tuesday-Friday in the current arrangement, must be delighted. She is leaving the cosy studio and getting sent around the country and oversees. This all begins on January 20th, the day of the inauguration, and ends on April 30. Now, I’m a Maddow fan girl. Obviously. But swanning back in for the glamour three months having signed a mega contract that meant you got more money for less on-air work, as Maddow did, is surely not a great look. It will probably be good for MSNBC ratings though. And will Rachel Maddow get back the bug for nightly news and stay beyond April? I suspect MSNBC bosses are secretly hoping that the answer to that is yes.

Per Press Gazette, individual pageview targets are being introduced for journalists on The Mirror. According to a staffer at parent company Reach, this will not be implemented at other national titles within the business. “It’s not going to get rolled out across everyone,” they said. “The Mirror is a very, very different beast to The Express, and The Express is very different to The Daily Star.”

They described The Express as “untouchable”, adding: “You wouldn’t even know they’re the same company 99% of the time.” This means the paper does not generally feel the consequences of changes in other parts of Reach. Meanwhile, “The Mirror are under a shit tonne of pressure to prove why they’ve been hoarding staff, essentially, continuously bringing in new staff, even though they’ve got way more than everyone else, and refusing to share resources.”

Obviously, hacks do not tend to like pageview targets. There also seems to be some frustration that the move came not long after they were told by senior execs it wouldn’t be happening.

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