Mediagazer: Obama's soft-media strategy (Politico)

12:15 PM ET, August 18, 2012

Top News:

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Oracle, Google file list of paid journalists — A federal judge last week wrote that he was “concerned” Oracle and Google had paid journalists and bloggers to comment on their highly-publicized intellectual property trial and ordered them to provide a list of names. The responses are now in.

Discussion: Softpedia News, AllThingsD and CNET

Foster Kamer / The New York Observer:

Layoffs Hit Editorial Staff at The Village Voice — Layoffs are hitting the editorial staff at The Village Voice today, and they're hitting some of the most widely-read staff writers in the office. The Observer has heard from multiple sources familiar with the situation that the bad news …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM and AAN

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Twitter's API changes will have a real impact on news developers — Twitter's newly fortified mission to “deliver a consistent Twitter experience,” which is FREAKING OUT the tech world right now, will also force some news organizations to re-examine their code.

Discussion: Techland, Business Insider, TechCrunch and GigaOM

Michael Lee / ZDNet:
Twitter edges out third party clients with tighter API rules

Discussion: NYT Bits, PandoDaily, Tapbots, TUAW, Marco.org, The Brooks Review, The Next Web and Twitter Developers

Louis Goddard / The Verge:

Streaming music revenues forecast to grow almost five times faster than downloads in 2012 — Global revenues from streaming music services such as Spotify, Pandora, and Rdio will grow almost five times faster than revenues from downloads over the course of this year, according to a new forecast from Strategy Analytics.

Discussion: Strategy Analytics, Bloomberg and WebProNews

Politico:

Obama's soft-media strategy — Forget Chris Matthews — he'll take Nancy O'Dell. — President Barack Obama has been taking a lot of questions in the two months since his last press conference or national news interview. He's just been doing them with ESPN, Entertainment Tonight …

Lisa de Moraes / Washington Post:

PBS CEO: Romney plans to cut funding ‘extremely disappointing’ — PBS CEO Paula Kerger finds recent comments by GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney about cutting the programming service's federal funding as “extremely disappointing” given the “value the American people place on public broadcasting …

Discussion: C21Media

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

News Corp.'s IGN Head Roy Bahat Leaves — Roy Bahat, who heads up News Corp.'s IGN Web unit, is leaving the company. — Bahat had spent more than a year trying to engineer a spinoff of the business, which publishes Web sites that cater to dudes who like video games and other stuff dudes like.

Discussion: The Wrap

Curtis Brainard / CJR:

UPI shirks responsibility — The plagiarism, or problematic paraphrasing, parade continued on Thursday as several reporters from Science News complained on Facebook that the wire service UPI had cribbed their stories. — Reporting on the charges, the Knight Science Journalism Tracker's Paul Raeburn laid …

Discussion: MIT and Poynter

Brent Lang / The Wrap:

Tess Vigeland Steps Down as Host of ‘Marketplace Money’ — Fans of “Marketplace Money” will have to get used to a new voice guiding them through the tangle of financial news. — Tess Vigeland will step down as host of the show at the end of November, American Public Media (APM), which funds the program, said Friday.

Discussion: LA Observed

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Facebook Passed Yahoo To Become The Second Largest Video Site In The U.S. In July — comScore's monthly online video data is in and it looks Facebook passed Yahoo in July to become the second largest video site in the U.S. behind Google/YouTube. According to comScore …

Discussion: VentureBeat, Inside Facebook, comScore, Inc., Home Media Magazine and getthefive.com

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Board member of University of Georgia paper steps down after call for resignation — Ed Stamper has resigned from the board of the University of Georgia's student newspaper, The Red & Black, following a dispute about the paper's independence. At a meeting Thursday, student journalists had called for his resignation.

Discussion: Gawker, The Huffington Post, Red and Dead and Poynter

Amanda Holpuch / Guardian:

Media take a prim view of Pussy Riot — News organizations pussy out of using controversial Russian punk rock band's name in coverage of their convictions — The conviction of three members of the punk band Pussy Riot has caused consternation throughout the world - and a dilemma for prudish news organizations.

Discussion: The New York Observer, Gawker, The Week, BBC, Guardian, ThinkProgress, Emerging Europe Real Time, World Now, Instagram Blog, Capital New York and GalleyCat

Gail Shister / TVNewser:

For Female Journalists, Another Significant ‘First’ This Election Season On PBS — When CNN's Candy Crowley on Monday was named moderator for one of the Presidential debates, it drew headlines. Breaking a 20-year dry spell for women will do that. — So why the underwhelming response …

Discussion: The Huffington Post and mediabistro.com