Mediagazer: DirecTV takes fight with News Corp. to the FCC (Joe Flint/Company Town)

10:50 AM ET, October 28, 2011

Top News:

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

Lefty journalism professor tries to discredit the Tea Party by passing along sensational footage to his buddies at the Times!!! — Yesterday I was the target of a “sting” operation by right wing trickster James O'Keefe. I will tell you what happened. — But first, here is the product of that sting …

Discussion: Poynter, Erik Wemple, Forbes and Mediaite

Joel B. Pollak / Big Journalism:
New O'Keefe Video: Jay Rosen, Clay Shirky Discuss How the New York Times Promoted Obama, Protected Occupy

Discussion: The New York Observer and @andrewbreitbart

Keach Hagey / On Media's Blog:
NYT says target of O'Keefe sting didn't work for them

Discussion: Mediaite, Betabeat, Forbes, Erik Wemple and James O'Keefe's Project …

Steve Myers / Poynter:
James O'Keefe takes aim at Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen

Discussion: Forbes, The New York Observer, Mediaite, Politics & Elections Blog, Erik Wemple, Globe and Mail, AllThingsD and The Wrap

Gene Weingarten / Washington Post:

Modern journalism meets LOLcats — As you know, I sometimes worry aloud about my profession. Beset by financial pressures in a bewildering new digital world and waging a fevered, desperate battle to keep readers and attract new ones, journalism seems to be cheapening itself.

Discussion: Washington Post, @geneweingarten, @jake_bernstein, @benhuh, Felix and Chickaboomer

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Cyborg no more! The BBC moves to human-edited Twitter feeds — Move over, auto-tweets: This week, the BBC has switched its @BBCNews Twitter feed to all-human curation. (One small step for a news feed; one giant leap for newsfeedkind.) — It's a lot like the experiment The New York Times tried …

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Clear Channel Cuts D.J.'s Across the Country — Clear Channel Communications, the largest radio station operator in the United States, dismissed dozens of local D.J.'s this week, affecting small stations from Syracuse to Spokane, Wash., and raising fresh concerns about the homogenization of radio programming.

Discussion: Gawker, mediabistro.com, Chickaboomer, @mediaredef and AllAccess.com

Joe Flint / Company Town:

DirecTV takes fight with News Corp. to the FCC — Satellite broadcaster DirecTV has taken its fight with News Corp. to the federal government. — The two sides are at odds over a new distribution agreement that would keep News Corp.-owned cable channels including FX on DirecTV.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Adweek and Multichannel

Eric Wilson / New York Times:

Front Row: Style.com/Print, a Fashion Web Site's Glossy Debut — NEXT week, the first issue of a glossy magazine from the editors of Style.com, with the puzzling name of Style.com/Print, will hit newsstands. The cover shows a close-up of Lindsey Wixson, the model from Kansas …

Discussion: Medacity, FishbowlNY and The New York Observer

Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:

Redbox rental prices to rise — SAN FRANCISCO - Redbox's DVD rental kiosks are attracting movie lovers fed up with Netflix's video subscription service. But now Redbox's owner, Coinstar, is risking its own customer backlash by raising its prices, the same move that triggered Netflix's recent loss of 800,000 U.S. subscribers.

Discussion: Business Week, TechCrunch, CNET News, Seattle Times, ZDNet and Electronista

Steve Green / Las Vegas Sun:

Righthaven ordered to pay nearly $120,000 in attorney fees, court costs — Newspaper copyright infringement lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas was hit Wednesday with an order to pay $119,488 in attorney's fees and costs in its failed lawsuit against former federal prosecutor Thomas DiBiase.

Discussion: Ars Technica, WebProNews and Poynter

Carolyn Kellogg / Jacket Copy:

Agent Ira Silverberg said to be new NEA literature director — Agent Ira Silverberg is leaving Sterling Lord Literistic to become the National Endowment for the Arts literature director, according to an email obtained by the publishing industry newsletter Publishers Lunch.

Discussion: The New York Observer

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

YouTube Close to Announcing Video ‘Channels’ — Google Inc.'s YouTube is expected to announce as early as next week that it has signed a slew of partnerships with media companies and well-known personalities to produce original content for the popular video website, said people familiar with the matter.

Discussion: VideoNuze, SEO Book.com, WebProNews, MarketingVox News & Trends, Electronista, CNET News, FT Tech Hub, Forbes and Softpedia News

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

Obama Administration Mulls Changes to Copyright Rules (Analysis) — New radical proposals that may shape the future of media include a small claims court for copyright disputes, new registration methods for blogs and crowdsourcing a digitization of the current card catalogue system.

Tom Krazit / paidContent:

Wikimedia Doubles Down On Mobile With Wikipedia Zero, Carrier Appeals — After years of employing an ad-hoc community-driven approach to mobile, one of the world's biggest Web sites is going mobile in a much more organized way. Wikimedia Foundation is currently pitching deals involving …

Discussion: MediaNama

Mac Engel / The Big Mac Blog:

ESPN shouldn't bother with Poynter, an ombudsman & quit faking journalism — It is cute to see ESPN play journalism and employ the nationally renowned Poynter Institute to act as its journalism watchdog and ombudsman. This is a mammoth organization that stands for Entertainment Sports Programming Network.

Dorian Benkoil / MediaShift:

E-Book Publishers Must Provide Flexible Access to Avoid ‘Media Hell’ — This week on MediaShift, we are exploring the dramatically changing publishing industry in our Beyond the Book special series. Stay tuned for more pieces like this one in the coming days.

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Netflix Takes Up a Third of Internet Bandwidth Traffic shifting from computers to connected devices — Netflix may have lost 800,000 subscribers last quarter, but there are still more than enough streaming fans left over to hog nearly a third of peak Internet bandwidth.

Discussion: Digits

Lawrence Pintak / CJR:

POWs, Dead Dictators, and Journalistic Ethics — Would any journalist have turned down the opportunity to interview Gilad Shalit? — The young Iranian prisoner was no more than fourteen, still caked with a thick layer of dust from the battlefield. He was among thousands of old men …

Amy Chozick / New York Times:

Telemundo Seeks Spanglish Speakers, Aiming for New Viewers — Telemundo has long trailed its rival Univision in their competition for Hispanic television viewers in the United States. But as the number of second- and third-generation Hispanic-Americans skyrockets, the perennial runner …