Mediagazer: ‘Arab spring’ revolutions fail to provide greater press freedom (Roy Greenslade/Guardian)

10:55 AM ET, October 13, 2011

Top News:

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Dow Jones calls Guardian allegations of WSJ Europe circulation scheme ‘inflammatory’ — Dow Jones is refuting allegations by the Guardian that The Wall Street Journal Europe paid a third party, through other companies, to buy its newspapers as part of a scheme to boost its circulation.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal and Future of Journalism

Nick Davies / Guardian:
Wall Street Journal circulation scam claims senior Murdoch executive

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

WEF calls for pressure on Eritrea to release journalists — Erik Bjerager renews calls for the release of all journalists detained in Eritrea, as he presents the 2011 Golden Pen of Press Freedom to the brother of Dawit Isaak — The president of the World Editors Forum today called …

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

‘Arab spring’ revolutions fail to provide greater press freedom — The fall of repressive regimes in north Africa and the Middle East, in the so-called Arab spring, has failed to usher in greater press freedom, according to a global media organisation. — A report by the World Association …

Ben Fritz / Company Town:

Apple prepping movie cloud service — Apple Inc. is preparing to put movies in the cloud, entering a market in which it may be both competitor and ally to a similar offering backed by most Hollywood studios. — Representatives of the iPhone and iPad maker have been meeting with studios …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, CNET News, GigaOM, MacStories, TUAW, SlashGear, Future of Journalism, Electronista, Business Insider, App Advice, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac and Engadget, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

A News Story Is Growing With ‘Occupy’ Protests — ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Splashed across the front page of the local newspaper here on Tuesday was the story of a 24-year-old Occupy protester named Keith Cuesta. He was not in New York, where some have been living in a park near Wall Street …

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Chickaboomer

Jesse Holcomb / Journalism.org:

Occupy Wall Street Drives Economic Coverage — The economy reclaimed its perch at the top of the news agenda as the No. 1 story last week, largely driven by dramatically increasing media attention to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. — Overall economic coverage accounted for 22% …

Discussion: Forbes, Capital New York, Salon.com, Washington Times, Future of Journalism, On Media's Blog, TVNewser and Multichannel

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
ProPublica's Pulitzer winners: Media did not understand the banking crisis

Discussion: Mediaite, Globe and Mail, The New Yorker Blog, Future of Journalism, Talking Biz News, @jcstearns and Capital New York

MediaMonkey / Guardian:

Financial Times's FT Tilt service to close — Puzzling news out of FT Towers on London's South Bank: the pink 'un's flagship online emerging markets service, FT Tilt, is being shut down after just nine months. The reason? Slow subscription sales, apparently - showing once again how difficult …

Discussion: paidContent and Talking Biz News

Reuters:

AOL CEO pitches investors on Yahoo deal: sources — (Reuters) - AOL Inc CEO Tim Armstrong has been meeting with top shareholders in the past couple of weeks to push the idea of a sale to Yahoo Inc that could wring up to $1.5 billion of cost savings, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions.

Discussion: Forbes, Guardian, Deadline.com, CNET News and Electronista, more at Techmeme »

Chris O'Shea / FishbowlNY:

Us Weekly Stays The Course, Keeps EIC — Despite Us Weekly suffering through some poor newsstand sales, the magazine is keeping Mike Steele, its Editor-in-Chief, reports The New York Post. When Steele began as Editor-in-Chief last year sales were healthy, but as his contract inched toward ending, times have been much tougher:

Discussion: eBookNewser

Poynter:

Let's take news apps out of the newsroom and create products instead of content — There was a great story in The Onion a few weeks back, right after Steve Jobs announced that he was stepping down as CEO of Apple. The headline read, “New Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm thinking printers'”

Merrill Knox / TVNewser:

Current TV CEO: 'Our Three Competitors are About Breaking News, and We're About Fixing It' — For Current TV, the addition of former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to the primetime lineup was an easy decision. — “When Joel [Hyatt] and I sat down with her and sort of began a conversation …

Discussion: NY Daily News

The Huffington Post:
Jennifer Granholm Gets Current TV Show

Discussion: Mediaite, Adweek, TVNewser and On Media's Blog

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The contribution conundrum: Why did Wikipedia succeed while other encyclopedias failed? — The guys behind Wikipedia weren't the first to experiment with creating a crowd-sourced online encyclopedia. They were just the first ones to do it successfully, on a worldwide scale.

Discussion: Berkman Center

MiamiHerald.com:

Ga.'s Morris to focus on digital journalism — AUGUSTA, Ga. — Morris Communications Co. announced Wednesday it is restructuring the company to create a “digital-first” approach across its media divisions. — The Augusta-based company on Wednesday named Mark Lane from The Florida Times-Union …

Discussion: Big News Network.com

Carol Marie Cropper / NetNewsCheck Latest:

Paper's Paywall Proves Boon For Competition — In Albuquerque, N.M., the Albuquerque Journal's paywall — erected in 2001 — has let the rest of the market's online players catch up to the top site. Now, with aggressive mobile plans, the area's TV sites are poised to breakout.

David Lieberman / Deadline.com:

Discovery And News Corp Flunk Research Firm's Governance Tests — It's not surprising to see that News Corp was one of 10 companies given an “F” grade by corporate research firm GMI Ratings for management or accounting practices that could make them risky bets for investors.

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

WH Smith Replacing Its eBook Store With Broad Kobo Partnership — Kobo has struck a deal with WH Smith that will see the UK newsagent and stationer sell Kobo's e-readers and shut its existing WH Smith e-book store, replaced by a Kobo-powered alternative. — This is Kobo's first UK opportunity …

Discussion: Guardian and Softpedia News

Ally Schweitzer / Arts Desk:

Labor Film Fest Takes Heat for Washington Post Film — Local labor groups have plenty of experience battling governments and executives. But this year, organizers of the annual D.C. Labor Film Fest encountered surprising opposition from people in their own camp.

Discussion: Poynter

Marcus Vanderberg / FishbowlLA:

Three Advertisers Reportedly Pull Ads From KFI — Three advertisers agreed to pull their ads from the John and Ken show on KFI, according to the National Hispanic Media Coalition. — The afternoon talk show has come under fire after giving out the cellphone number of Jorge-Mario Cabrera …

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

CNN: Blackberry Outage Impacting Users On Almost Every Planet — There's no escape. The Blackberry service outage is now impacting users on almost every planet, CNN reports. Tatooine and Coruscant appear to not have been affected yet, but users all over Geonosis, Naboo and Yavin were reportedly hit hard.

Discussion: paidContent:UK, BBC and PC Magazine, more at Techmeme »

Matt Scott / Guardian:

‘Fake sheikh’ denies all knowledge of hacking — Former News of the World investigations editor tells court he hopes perpetrators will be ‘sent down’ for activities — Mazher Mahmood, the former News of the World investigations editor, has denied any knowledge of phone hacking during …

Discussion: Media Diary

Lindsay Rubino / Broadcasting & Cable:

Broadcast Network Chiefs: We Need to Rethink Our Business Models — Upfronts, content distribution among discussion topics during HRTS panel — With the entertainment business changing as rapidly as it has in the past several years — content that was once limited to one screen …

Discussion: The Wrap and Company Town

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Hunt chosen as ‘wartime’ PCC chief — So, as Dan Sabbagh reported three days ago, David Hunt (aka Baron Hunt of Wirrall) is to take over as the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission. — In fact, he begins the job on Monday, bringing a swift end to the reign of Peta Buscombe …