Mediagazer: Blavatnik's Access wins Warner Music bid

11:30 AM ET, May 6, 2011

Top News:

Adrian Chen / Gawker:

Don't Leak to the Wall Street Journal's New Wikileaks Knockoff — The Wall Street Journal is trying to make a play for whistleblowers with its very own Wikileaks clone, SafeHouse. But SafeHouse is the opposite of safe, thanks to basic security flaws and fine print that lets the Journal rat on leakers.

Discussion: Guardian, The Firewall, FishbowlNY, New York Magazine, Future of Journalism, Techdirt and Boing Boing, more at Techmeme »

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Can The Wall Street Journal Replace WikiLeaks? — NEW YORK — The Wall Street Journal wasnât on the receiving end of major WikiLeaks document dumps on Iraq, Afghanistan, the State Dept. and Guantanamo Bay. But the Journal may have found a way to cut out the middleman and convince leakers to go straight to the paper's editors.

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Fast Company, eMedia Vitals, mediabistro.com, Editors Weblog and SAI

The Atlantic Online:
The Wall Street Journal Launches a WikiLeaks Competitor, SafeHouse

Discussion: Mashable!, Journalism.co.uk, Betabeat, AdExchanger.com, Pulse2, Mixed Media, Future of Journalism, Guardian, @jason, NewsGrange, WebProNews, FishbowlNY, Tom Foremski and @wsj

Reuters:

Blavatnik's Access wins Warner Music bid - source — Billionaire Len Blavatnik's Access Industries has won the auction to take control of Warner Music Group Corp (WMG.N) with an offer of $8.25 a share, according to a person familiar with the matter. — The agreement, which is expected …

Discussion: rbr.com, DealBook, MediaMemo, paidContent and @pkafka

Peter Stevenson / New York Times:

Tina Brown Is Still Hungry for Buzz — Around sunset on a recent spring evening in Manhattan, a nervous-looking young woman was clutching a clipboard outside the entrance to the East 57th Street apartment belonging to Tina Brown and Harry Evans. Guests were shown into a large room filled …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, The Atlantic Wire, Yahoo! News and Poynter

Ben Smith / Ben Smith's Blog:

Fox ends contracts of Gingrich, Santorum — Fox News has terminated its contracts with former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Senator Rick Santorum after the deadline for them to decide on presidential bids passed on May 1, a source familiar with the move told POLITICO.

Chris Crum / WebProNews:

Demand Media Deletes eHow Articles, Edits Others in Quality Clean-up Initiative — It's a big day for Demand Media, with that earnings report and all. It will be very interesting to see how the stock goes. — We had the opportunity to chat with Larry Fitzgibbon, Demand Media's EVP …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Betabeat and MarketingVOX, more at Techmeme »

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
Demand Media Reports A Better-Than-Expected Jump In Sales

Discussion: paidContent, TechCrunch, SAI, Investor Relations, Demand Media, eMedia Vitals, VatorNews, Pulse2, BoomTown, The Wire and Future of Journalism

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Swears He's Not Going to Kill HBO: “We Compete Like Football and Baseball” — So we've heard what Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes thinks about Netflix. What does Reed Hastings think about Time Warner? — He's full of good will, too!

Discussion: TVbytheNumbers

Simon Owens / Nieman Journalism Lab:

A place for Homicide Watch: Can a local blog fill some of the gaps in Washington, D.C.'s crime coverage? — While I was sitting with Laura and Chris Amico in their apartment in the Adams Morgan area of Washington, D.C., Chris suddenly sat upright and began reading aloud a comment that had just come …

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Confirmed: IGN Buys UGO, Hearst Gets Equity In New Venture That Will Soon Spin Out — News Corp's IGN gaming and entertainment property has just acquired Hearst's gaming and entertainment property UGO, we've confirmed with the company. And yes, the move is step one towards News Corp. spinning …

Discussion: Digital Trends, Media Week, Media News International, MinOnline, VentureBeat and Company Town

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

As If The Switch From AOL News To HuffPo Isn't Confusing Enough — AOL News, consistently among the top news sites, is making way for The Huffington Post, a victim of the $315 million acquisition of the younger site. It's confusing enough right now for those used to going to the site …

Discussion: Cision and BuzzFeed

Adam Tinworth / One Man & His Blog:

Can we use web metrics to improve print products? — Catching up on my RSS feeds after my holiday, I came across this post in Jeff Jarvis's blog. One bullet point in particular struck me: … The publishing package we call a newspaper or magazine has long disguised the value of individual chunks of content within that package.

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

YouTube is Managing Graphic, Violent Videos from the Middle East with Community Help — SAN BRUNO, CA — YouTube has been an essential platform for videos of street violence in the Middle East, mostly camera phone uploads of events not covered by the news media.

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Condé leapfrogs Hearst in iPad digital mag derby — Conde Nast is very close to a deal to begin selling digital subscriptions via Apple's iPad. — The New Yorker will become the first publication from the S.I. Newhouse, Jr., empire to be available via subscription on the popular tablet …

Discussion: Adweek and FishbowlNY

Bloomberg:

Washington Post Profit Declines 67% as Kaplan Education Enrollment Drops — Washington Post Co. (WPO) said first-quarter profit fell 67 percent after revenue declined in its Kaplan education unit, which has come under government scrutiny. — Net income fell to $15.2 million, or $1.87 a share …

Discussion: paidContent

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Does Posting Things to Twitter Make You a Journalist? — There's been a lot of discussion about what the U.S. military strike on Osama bin Laden's compound says about the state of the media today, and the latest debate is whether Sohaib Athar — the Pakistani resident who live-tweeted the raid — is a journalist or not.

Discussion: Editors Weblog, WebProNews, The Atlantic Wire, Poynter and AndyDickinson.net

TMZ.com:

Katie Couric On the Verge of $20 Million ABC Deal — Katie Couric and ABC television are on the verge of signing a $20 million deal, which would give Katie her own talk show, as well as significant involvement in ABC News — and the big casualty could be “General Hospital.”