Mediagazer: Social TV Startup Bluefin Labs Lands $12 Million Investment (Jason Del Rey/AdAge)

3:10 PM ET, January 24, 2012

Top News:

Jamie Condliffe / Gizmodo:

Julian Assange Is Getting His Own TV Show — Julian Assange has announced that he's going to have his own TV show, where he'll interview “key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries”, and it's going to be hitting the screens in spring. Is there anything this man won't do?

Discussion: CNET, The Next Web, Guardian, Future of Journalism, Charlie Beckett, Gawker, New Statesman, WikiLeaks, The Atlantic Wire, Mashable!, New York Magazine and Editors Weblog

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Is Julian Assange's Talk Show For Real? — Larry King...Charlie Rose...Julian Assange? — Well, maybe. The voluble, volatile Wikileaks founder is getting his own talk show, or so he says. Beginning in March, Assange will be “hosting a series of in-depth conversations with key political players …

Discussion: Guardian and Fast Company, more at Techmeme »

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

ABC News and Yahoo! Launch New Political Web Shows — ABC News's partnership with Yahoo! has resulted in several new web shows launching this week. — Two of the shows are extensions of long-running blogs from George Stephanopoulos and Jake Tapper. “George's Bottom Line” …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Forbes, FishbowlDC and Media Buyer Planner

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

How ABC News built a top social media presence with a small dedicated team — Upon his return to “This Week” earlier this month, George Stephanopoulos introduced a new feature that's expected to become a staple of the show. “Your Voice This Week” uses Twitter and search trends to tell …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk and MediaPost

Ingrid Lunden / paidContent:

Jon Miller, News Corp.: It's All About Video For Us Right Now — Jon Miller, the chief digital officer for News Corporation (NSDQ: NWS), described his company's digital strategy today as very “focused on video”, with a view that even properties that come from a print tradition should be producing more video content than they are today.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Epicenter and CJR

Felicia Pride / FishbowlNY:
News Corp To Train Wall Street Journal Reporters To Film Videos on Their iPhones

Discussion: TVNewser and GalleyCat

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

More questions for Mahmood to answer at his Leveson recall — Mazher Mahmood is due to to reappear before the Leveson inquiry tomorrow. — Guido Fawkes may well be correct in saying that the Fake Sheikh has been recalled because of my blog item, The real reason Mazher Mahmood left the Sunday Times under a cloud.

Discussion: George Galloway, allmediascotland, @skynewsbreak and Journalism.co.uk

Joel Gunter / Journalism.co.uk:

John Kampfner: Westminster lobby coverage ‘extraordinarily pliant’ — Index on Censorship chief tells Leveson inquiry that the UK media is ‘fundamentally weak’ and urges judge not to ‘go down the statutory route’ on regulation reform — John Kampfner, chief executive of free speech NGO Index …

Discussion: Guardian

Jim Hopkins / Gannett Blog:

Memo: GCI to reveal new model for weak USCP; plan could be biggest news revamp in five years — Corporate is poised to announce a revamping of its U.S. community newspapers next week, the latest since the launch of the digital-first Information Center model in 2006, according to a company memo.

Discussion: AllThingsD and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:
Gannett Goes Long With Acquisition Of Fantasy Sports Ventures

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Poynter

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

David Kenny Replacing Mike Kelly As CEO Of The Weather Channel Companies — In a surprise move, The Weather Channel Companies is swapping out CEOs. David Kenny is replacing Mike Kelly as CEO effective immediately; the Akamai-Digitas vet also will be chairman of the company owned by a consortium …

Discussion: rbr.com, AdAge, Multichannel News, Adweek, mediabistro.com, Broadcasting & Cable and TVNewser

Jay Yarow / Business Insider: Yahoo Board Member David Kenny Is Going To Be CEO Of The Weather Channel

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

E-Book Bummer: Growth Slower Than Thought—'Incremental, Not Exponential' — 2011 is widely perceived as a year of outrageous e-book growth, but some new research suggests otherwise. According to new data from Bowker and the Book Industry Study Group, the number of book buyers who also purchased …

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent: Barnes & Noble: We're ‘Not Competing’ With Independent Bookstores

Jason Del Rey / AdAge:

Social TV Startup Bluefin Labs Lands $12 Million Investment — A Bet That Social Data Will Become Essential for TV Marketers — If there's any doubt that social TV is poised to become big business, Bluefin Labs is trying to put that to rest. The Cambridge, Massachusetts social-analytics startup …

Discussion: Lost Remote, Adweek and Future of Journalism, more at Techmeme »

Kevin Roderick / LA Observed:

George Lewis retiring from NBC after 42 years * — George Lewis, the venerable NBC News correspondent in Los Angeles, is hanging up his microphone on January 31. What's he doing today, on his last day in the field? Covering the Oscar nominations for the NBC Nightly News.

Discussion: Inside Cable News

Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:

iBooks Author EULA restrictions invite antitrust concerns — Apple's end user license agreement for the iBooks Author app has generated extensive controversy among authors and publishers. Namely, the agreement restricts paid distribution of “works” created with the software to the iBookstore only.

Discussion: Daring Fireball

Politico:

New Yorker's ‘Obama Memos’: Why post-partisanship didn't pan out — The White House likes to describe them as “process” stories and is famously uncooperative with reporters trying to do them, so the tantalizing glimpse into President Barack Obama's decision making that appears in The New Yorker this week …

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

The Deal Professor, the New York Times and M&A coverage — TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE — Last year, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue was criticized for agreeing to make an appearance at a paid event for a public relations firm related to the tech industry.

Discussion: Poynter

Jim Romenesko:

Washington Post's shrinking newsroom — A tipster writes: … He's referring to departing Post managing editor Raju Narisetti's remarks posted by the D.C. chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Here's the passage that's said to be causing concern:

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:
A Post-mortem with Raju Narisetti: “I would have actually tried to move faster”

Discussion: Poynter, The Buttry Diary, Washington Post and BtoB Magazine

Patrick Smith / TheMediaBriefing:

Has blogging queen Huffington really failed in the UK? — It's been a long-running discussion among UK online journalism enthusiasts over why blogging didn't develop the same way it has in the US. For all the Guido Fawkes and Mumsnets we have, there isn't much to match Gawker, Techcrunch …

Discussion: paidContent and The Huffington Post