Mediagazer: BBC constrained by need to avoid political bias, admits Lord Patten (Amelia Hill/Guardian)

2:55 AM ET, November 15, 2011

Top News:

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

NewsBeast Brings in Mark Miller in Shakeup — NewsBeast has brought back longtime Newsweek vet Mark Miller to oversee editorial operations, signaling continued upheaval as the magazine-news site combo struggles to win over readers and advertisers. — Miller is coming back to a newly created position of editorial operations director.

Discussion: WWD Media Headlines, Media & Entertainment, New York Times, FishbowlNY and Media Decoder

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Publisher and Two Top Editors Are Out at Newsweek/Daily Beast — The publisher and managing editor of Newsweek and The Daily Beast are leaving their jobs, two high-level departures that signal distress inside the company as it struggles to turn its fortunes around.

Discussion: @jwpetersnyt, Adweek, paidContent, The Wrap, MinOnline, Wall Street Journal, Mediaite, The New York Observer, Folio, The Huffington Post, FishbowlNY, Poynter and Business Insider

Alan Cowell / New York Times:

British Judge Investigates Journalistic Practices — LONDON — After the phone hacking scandal that has seared its way through Rupert Murdoch's newspapers in this country, a senior British judge opened an inquiry on Monday into the way journalists operate and the elusive balance between press freedom and individual rights to privacy.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Guardian and @jamesro47

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:
News Corp.: Review in Australia Found No Evidence of Phone Hacking

Discussion: ABC News

James Robinson / paidContent:
Private Investigator's Notebooks Offer New Details In Phone Hacking Case

Discussion: Guardian, Jon Slattery, The Huffington Post, NetNewsCheck Latest and Press Gazette

Georgina Prodhan / Reuters: Press probe says more papers may have phone-hacked

Amelia Hill / Guardian:

BBC constrained by need to avoid political bias, admits Lord Patten — As Leveson inquiry starts, former Tory chairman says there are areas where corporation needs to be particularly careful — The BBC is unable to conduct investigations into some of the most important stories of the day …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Jessica Davies / New Media Age:

Harper Collins to explore selling interactive ad space in factual books — Book publisher Harper Collins is making its first foray into interactive online advertising as it prepares to ramp up its digital offering. — The publisher will explore interactive and contextual ad formats …

Discussion: TeleRead

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Chelsea Clinton's Hiring At NBC News Prompts Skeptical Reactions From Media — NEW YORK — Chelsea Clinton may have officially joined the media on Monday, but several journalists who covered the 2008 election remain skeptical about the press-averse former First Daughter entering their ranks.

Discussion: Jack Shafer, The Week, Erik Wemple, Guardian, Forbes, entertainment.time.com, The Corsair, Media Decoder, St. Petersburg Times, Poynter and New York Times

Publishers Weekly:

From Magazine To Book: ‘CJR’ Makes the Leap — On November 15, Columbia Journalism Review will celebrate its 50th anniversary as one of the premier magazines in its field. The recognition of that long legacy will also be marked by the beginning of a new venture for the journal: Columbia Journalism Review Books.

Discussion: CJR and The New York Observer

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Huffington Post Tech Wizard Paul Berry Stepping Back at AOL — If the Huffington Post was worth the $315 million AOL paid to acquire it, it's in large measure because of the second-to-none technology built into the platform,which is hyper responsive to the needs of editors and the preferences of users.

Discussion: AllThingsD

Jeff Poor / The Daily Caller:

MSNBCPOLITICO: A commanding presence for Politico on the left's favorite cable news channel — Has MSNBC opened a bureau in Arlington, Virginia? — Watch the assertively liberal cable news channel on an average day, and you're likely to see someone from Politico appearing on-screen …

Discussion: FishbowlDC, Inside Cable News, Big Journalism and TVNewser

Steven Levy / Wired:

Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think — “What I'm about to show you,” Jeff Bezos says, “is the culmination of the many things we've been doing for 15 years.”

Discussion: New York Times, MediaFile, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, GigaOM, GeekWire, Future of Journalism, Fortune, Media Decoder, Gizmodo, Engadget and The Verge

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:
Amazon Decides To Ship Kindle Fire And Kindle Touch Early

Discussion: CNET News, Amazon.com, L.A. Times Tech Blog, GigaOM and mediabistro.com

Ingrid Lunden / paidContent:
Kindle Fire, First Reviews: Hot Gadget Or Just Another Lukewarm Tablet?

Discussion: TechCrunch, MediaPost, Engadget, GigaOM, The Next Web, ReadWriteWeb, Forbes, PC Magazine, The New York Observer, ZDNet and Between the Lines Blog

Betsy Rothstein / FishbowlDC:

Hmmm...Greta Gets Exclusive With Gloria Cain — The media-shy wife of Herman Cain, Gloria, will sit down with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren tonight for her first major interview since her husband jumped into the Presidential race. Gloria Cain has been absent from Mr. Cain's side as he continues …

Discussion: TVNewser, Gawker, TVSpy and Mediaite

Felix Salmon / Epicenter:

The Future of Online Advertising — I gave a talk last Thursday at the AppNexus Summit in front of a few hundred digital advertising types. The first part of the talk was a macro overview, but when the Q&A session started, all that anybody wanted to talk about was my take on online media.

Jim Milliot / Publishers Weekly:

Authors Guild Voices Concerns with 'Amazon's Library Lending Mess' — In a memo posted on its Web site Monday afternoon, the Authors Guild outlined its concerns with Amazon's Kindle Online Lending Library, saying that it is troubled by both Amazon taking some titles from publishers without …

D.M. Levine / Adweek:

Beyond Cat Videos — Robert Kyncl and Tom Pickett are not your traditional media moguls. Neither acts like a conventional Old Hollywood power player—the fist-pounding Ari Emanuel, the super-tanned Robert Evans. But if the highest aspirations of their employers at Google are borne out …

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Casting light on the News of the World shadowing of MPs — Let me try to cast a little light on the story about MPs from the Commons media select committee being put under surveillance by the News of the World. — This appears to have gained legs because of an interview I gave to a US site, Media Matters, on Saturday afternoon.

Discussion: Media Matters for America and Business Insider