Mediagazer: Helen Gurley Brown's $18 M bequest to Columbia journalism school nets new-media guru Mark Hansen (Joe Pompeo/Capital New York)

US site Homicide Watch DC exceeds $40k crowdfunding target — The US site will use the funding to run Homicide Watch DC as a ‘student reporting lab’ for the next year while founder Laura Amico and her husband Chris study journalism innovation at Harvard — US crime reporting site Homicide Watch DC …

Discussion: Homicide Watch DC and @homicidewatch

Penske takes inside track in Variety auction — Variety, the legendary but struggling Hollywood magazine, is still not ready for its close-up. — Reed Elsevier, looking to unload the 107-year-old title, its last remaining North American trade magazine, has been forced to cut Variety's asking price …

Discussion: The Wrap, FishbowlNY and LA Observed

Henry Blodget / Business Insider:

Destroyed By Blogs, “Variety” Magazine Will Sell For Less Than $30 Million — In case you need another example of the digital missile that has slammed into the traditional media world, check out Reed Elsevier's ongoing attempts to sell Variety magazine. — Variety, you will recall, used to rule Hollywood.

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Newspapers' print ad revenue losses are larger than digital ad gains by a ratio of 25 to 1 — The newspaper industry' s effort to cover print advertising losses with digital ad gains, weak in 2010 and 2011, deteriorated further in the first half of this year.

Discussion: The Newspaper Guild

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Ken Lerer's CNN-Killer Hires a CNN Veteran — Who do you hire if you're a start-up that wants to reinvent TV news? — You start, apparently, with pros from brand-name media outlets. — That's what Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer has been doing as he builds up a supposedly stealthy …

Discussion: The Wrap, Poynter, Capital New York, Betabeat, TVNewser and mediabistro.com

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

Multimedia project Narratively launches and surpasses $50k funding target — The project, which this week started its daily publication of multimedia pieces, had raised $53,000 at the time of writing, with the campaign due to close later today — New York focused multimedia project Narratively …

Discussion: Big News Network.com

Christine Haughney / New York Times:

On Campus, an Experiment to Save Local News — MACON, Ga. — From the rattling cicadas at twilight to the willow trees bending in the late summer heat, the lush campus of Mercer University seems like the last place to find one of the nation's boldest journalism experiments.

Discussion: Prof Chris Daly's Blog, Media Decoder and The Newspaper Guild

Julie Bosman / Media Decoder:

After Summer of Turmoil, Oxford American Appoints Roger Hodge Editor — After enduring weeks of unflattering attention over the firing of its editor, The Oxford American has hired a successor: Roger D. Hodge, a Texas-born editor and veteran of New York media.

Christine Haughney / Media Decoder:

Roll Call and CQ Today to Merge Into One Paper — As many Washington-area news outlets continue their hiring sprees to feed the appetite for political news, two political newspaper stalwarts, Roll Call and CQ Today, are following what recently has been a far more common path in journalism.

Discussion: Politico

Matt Buchanan / BuzzFeed:

How To Get Banned From Instapaper — If you tried to snag a page from 9to5Mac to read later with Instapaper yesterday, you got this error message: It's the first time I'd ever seen a publisher block Instapaper — in fact, Instapaper says, “As of the time of writing, no major publishers have chosen to opt out.”

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:

Times-Picayune Is Singing the Blues to Angry Readers — As the chief architect of the plan to turn New Orleans into the biggest city in America without a daily newspaper, Ricky Mathews spent the summer having to “take the licks,” as he put it in his Mississippi twang, of a ferocious community blowback.

Discussion: JOURNALISM IN THE AMERICAS, Poynter and NetNewsCheck Latest

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Helen Gurley Brown's $18 M bequest to Columbia journalism school nets new-media guru Mark Hansen — Six months before she died this past August, legendary Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown gave the Columbia Journalism School the largest gift in its 100-year history …

Discussion: CJR and Columbia University …

San Diego Business Journal:

U-T Buys North County Times and Californian — Douglas F. Manchester and the San Diego Union-Tribune have purchased the North County Times and Daily Californian. The sale comes less than a year after Manchester acquired the Union-Tribune and renamed it U-T San Diego, and just months …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM and Politico