Mediagazer: On George Soros, Occupy Wall Street, and Reuters (Felix Salmon)

7:10 PM ET, October 13, 2011

Top News:

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

New York Times Plans Staff Reductions — In the midst of a deteriorating advertising climate, The New York Times plans to eliminate up to 20 newsroom positions and seek additional savings in the business units, the company said Thursday. — The reductions, described by the New York Times Company …

Discussion: paidContent, FishbowlNY, Adweek, AllThingsD, Business Insider, Huffington Post, The New York Observer, New York Magazine, On Media's Blog, Poynter and Gawker

Steve Myers / Poynter:

WSJ confirms side deals in paid circulation boost at Journal's Europe edition — The Wall Street Journal follows the Guardian's story about a circulation scheme at the Journal's sister paper in Europe with its own story confirming many of the details first reported by its competitor.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, CJR, Felix Salmon, Talking Biz News, Future of Journalism and Jack Shafer

Mark Sweney / Guardian:
WSJ circulation figures to be investigated

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk, Press Gazette and ThinkProgress

Ryan Chittum / CJR:
Wall Street Journal Europe Sourcing Was Unusual

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Forbes and msnbc.com

Felix Salmon:

On George Soros, Occupy Wall Street, and Reuters — Wouldn't it be ironic if Occupy Wall Street — the soi-disant “99%” — were being secretly funded by billionaire Davos Man George Soros, exemplar of the 1%? Well, no, it wouldn't, actually. As Noreen Malone points out, lots of the 1% have …

Discussion: The New York Observer, Media Matters for America, The Huffington Post, On Media's Blog, The Awl, Guardian and Business Insider

Noreen Malone / New York Magazine:
Why Is Reuters Trying to Link George Soros to Occupy Wall Street? [Updated]

Discussion: Reuters, The Huffington Post, New York Post, The New York Observer and Guardian

Paul Thomasch / Reuters:

In Wall Street protests, TV news finds battleground — * Critics says networks too positive in reporting — Just as Fox News has staked out the conservative Tea Party movement as a pet topic, the unabashedly liberal MSNBC television news network appears to be doing the same with the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, The Huffington Post and TVNewser

Brian Stelter / New York Times:
A News Story Is Growing With ‘Occupy’ Protests

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Media Research Center, Poynter, Chickaboomer, The Millions, Journalism.org and Capital New York

Michael Montgomery / California Watch:

Feds to target newspapers, radio for marijuana ads — Federal prosecutors are preparing to target newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets that advertise medical marijuana dispensaries in California, another escalation in the Obama administration's newly invigorated war against the state's pot industry.

Discussion: On Media's Blog, Poynter, ThinkProgress, The Snitch, The Daily Weekly, FishbowlLA, Future Journalism Project, Seattle Times and LA Observed

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Worldwide, newspapers reach more people than the Internet, WAN-IFRA survey shows — WAN-IFRA — At the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Vienna, Austria, a survey of 69 countries showed where print circulation, revenue and mobile use were rising for newspapers, and where they are declining.

Discussion: WAN-IFRA

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 …

Discussion: Media Network

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:
WEF calls for pressure on Eritrea to release journalists

Discussion: Reporters Without Borders

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 …

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, Folio, Felix Salmon and Talking Biz News

Steve Myers / Poynter:

FBI: We didn't raise concerns about Globe naming Bulger informant, but that doesn't mean we approved it — The Boston Herald continues its criticism of rival Boston Globe's decision to publish the name of the informant who tipped off the FBI to the whereabouts of James “Whitey” Bulger.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Media Nation and CJR

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Bloomsburg Press-Enterprise's post-floods paywall a folly or financially sound? — Journalists are reacting strongly to the Bloomsburg Press-Enterprise's stance that anyone who wants its news should have to pay for it. Readers had asked the paper to drop its website paywall for an extended …

Discussion: The Bloomsburg Daily

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: Media & Entertainment, VentureBeat, Adweek, New Media Age, Techland, NYConvergence.com, Forbes, WebProNews, Guardian, Reuters, CNET News, Deadline.com and Electronista

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Editor Janine Gibson banks on 'The Guardian's' distinctly British appeal to the ‘internationalist’ Yank — One morning just a day or two into the new year of 2011, Janine Gibson was curled up on a couch in Soho, where she'd been staying for a winter vacation from her native England.

Merrill Knox / TVNewser:

Ted Koppel Named Special Correspondent For NBC's ‘Rock Center with Brian Williams’ — In a move that has been widely speculated, NBC News has named Ted Koppel as a special correspondent to “Rock Center With Brian Williams.” — Koppel, who left ABC News in 2005, began his career as an NBC page.

Discussion: @nbcnewspr, The Wrap, Media Decoder, On Media's Blog, MediaPost and Broadcasting & Cable

Glen Warchol / Salt Lake Tribune:

KCPW insists city loan does not change its journalism — A Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency loan that bails out public radio station KPCW from potentially defaulting on one of its loans brings other questions including journalistic credibility in light of the station's finances and its relationship with the city.

Discussion: Big News Network.com

Andrew Gauthier / TVSpy:

Kansas City Stations Refuse to Share Raw Footage with Investigators in Lisa Irwin Case — After receiving grand jury subpoenas requesting that they share video footage connected to the disappearance of 10-month-old Lisa Irwin, Kansas City stations plan to cooperate with investigators …

Discussion: Kansas City Star, B&C and TVNewser

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Engagement: The new digital metric — Everyone knows you have to measure things correctly to manage a business well. But the converse of this axiom is that you can get into a lot of trouble if you measure the wrong things. — Unfortunately, this has happened in the newspaper industry with respect to the digital media.

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'”

Discussion: (Re)Structuring Journalism

Greg Sandoval / CNET News:

Netflix licenses reruns from CW Network — The CW Network series “The Vampire Diaries” is coming to Netflix's streaming library. — Netflix has licensed content from CBS and Time Warner's jointly operated CW Network, the companies announced today. — The agreement is for four years …

Discussion: Online Video News, Company Town, Broadcasting & Cable, Mashable!, Media Decoder, AllThingsD, Business Insider, VatorNews, TVbytheNumbers and rbr.com, more at Techmeme »

Dylan Stableford / Yahoo! News:

Erin Burnett's ‘OutFront’ stumbles out of the gate — Erin Burnett's new primetime show is off to a rockier start than CNN probably had hoped—and not just in the ratings. The former CNBC star's 7 p.m. show, “OutFront,” drew 535,000 total viewers in her debut, according to Nielsen Research …

Discussion: Business Insider and Chickaboomer