Mediagazer: ONN to cease operations Aug. 31 (Tim Feran/The Columbus Dispatch)

8:20 AM ET, July 26, 2012

Top News:

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

BSkyB reports 17% rise in profits — The satellite broadcaster's pre-tax profit rises to almost £1.2bn as its customer base grows to 10.6m households — BSkyB has reported record pre-tax profits up 17% to £1.19bn in the year to the end of June, and revealed that it intends …

Discussion: AllThingsD

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Roku gets $45M in funding from News Corp., BSkyB — Roku announced late Wednesday that it has secured $45 million in additional funding from new investors News Corporation and BSkyB as well as existing investors Menlo Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners.

Discussion: TechCrunch, paidContent, VentureBeat and Forbes

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

Is Twitter a Media or Technology Company? — If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, then it's a duck — right? — One question many seem to be wondering about Twitter: is this duck a media or technology company? — In a meeting at The New York Times offices in New York …

Adweek:
Twitter, Hollywood Working on In-Stream Video Series

Discussion: CNET, Business Insider, Marketing Pilgrim, VentureBeat, WebProNews, Marketing Land, SocialTimes, @jeffjarvis, NetNewsCheck Latest, Betabeat, Quotes and Snippets and NYT Bits

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

The NYT's Bill Keller on why we should defend WikiLeaks — In a post on Tuesday entitled “First they came for WikiLeaks, then the New York Times,” we wrote about how there is growing evidence that Congress and the Justice Department may be considering legal sanctions against traditional journalists …

Discussion: GigaOM

Will Oremus / Slate:
Judge Rules That Wikileaks Cables Are Still Secret

Discussion: Associated Press and The FJP

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Diller: Newsweek Not Dead Yet, But Get Ready For Big Changes — If Newsweek ceases to exist as a print magazine sometime in the next year, don't say Barry Diller didn't warn you. — On IAC's second-quarter earnings call, the chairman and controlling owner addressed the question …

Discussion: WWD Media Headlines, Hollywood Reporter, Publishing Executive …, The Daily Caller, New York Magazine, Poynter, @peterlauria3, NetNewsCheck Latest, @dylanbyers, AllThingsD, Reuters and Politico

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Jessica Ghawi scholarship raises more than $30,000 in a day — A fund set up by the family of murdered sports journalist Jessica Ghawi hit its fundraising goal less than a day after it was announced Tuesday. The family hoped to raise $20,000; as I write this, the fund is at $30,155.

Discussion: KXAN-TV, MySanAntonio.com and The Newspaper Guild

Tim Stenovec / The Huffington Post:
James Taranto, WSJ Editor, Tweets Controversial Aurora Shooting Comment, Issues ‘Mea Culpa’

Discussion: Yahoo! News and Erik Wemple

Josh Rogin / Foreign Policy:

Romney advisor accuses Donilon of leaking to the New York Times — A top advisor to Mitt Romney's campaign on Wednesday accused U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon of leaking classified intelligence information to New York Times reporter David Sanger.

Discussion: Wired and ThinkProgress

Katherine Fung / The Huffington Post: David Axelrod: White House Did Not Leak Classified Information

Elon Green / The Awl:

Maureen Dowd, Cub Reporter — It's easy to look at our media industrial complex and forget that its members were once young and hungry, that they had to hustle, grease sources and report stories within an inch of life. One can imagine these scrappers delirious just to see a byline buried on B4 or, God forbid, a sidebar.

Discussion: New York Magazine, The Corsair and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Brauchli: Washington Post reporters will need editor's approval to share drafts with sources — Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli says the paper's policy on sharing drafts with sources will get more restrictive after the Texas Observer reported that a Post reporter sent drafts of a story to the University of Texas.

Discussion: City Desk, Erik Wemple and The Texas Observer

Tim Feran / The Columbus Dispatch:

ONN to cease operations Aug. 31 — Statewide cable news channel ONN will sign off forever at the end of August, bringing an end to a 15-year run. ONN — Ohio News Network — is shutting down because “the cable news consumer has many different methods of gathering news and information compared …

Charlie Warzel / Adweek:

USA Today and MLB Advanced Media Launch Sports on Earth — While bursting with opportunity, the ongoing digital disruption of the publishing industry has brought with it monumental uncertainties, layoffs, and, in some cases, wholesale destruction of some media outlets.

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Google TV will get its own version of AirPlay — Google will bring AirPlay-like functionality to its Google TV platform, allowing users to play and control media directly from their Android tablet or handset, GigaOM has learned. The functionality will first be available via Google's YouTube app …

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Ars Technica fights through hassles to sell John Siracusa's OS X review as an ebook — Almost exactly a year ago, when Apple released Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), Ars Technica put a spin on a time-honored tradition: The website published John Siracusa's epic review of the software free of charge …