Mediagazer: Circa wants to save journalism by killing articles — what's wrong and right about that (Sarah Lacy/PandoDaily)

4:10 PM ET, October 15, 2012

Top News:

Jimmy Savile scandal: BBC director general to appear in front of MPs — George Entwistle is expected to answer questions in front of a House of Commons committee next week — The BBC director general is expected to appear to take questions from MPs next week on the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal …

Discussion: Telegraph

Amelia Hill / Guardian:

Savile questioned by BBC boss 20 years ago — Former BBC Radio 1 controller says he had no reason to disbelieve TV presenter's reply that rumours were ‘nonsense’. Jimmy Savile, who has been accused of child abuse spanning six decades, was questioned by a senior member of staff at the BBC …

Discussion: Capital New York and New York Times

Martin Beckford / Telegraph: Jimmy Savile: Former BBC Trust chairman criticises ‘hysteria’

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Circa wants to rethink the way we consume the news on a sub-atomic level — Ben Huh may be the CEO of the humor-oriented Cheezburger Network, a business built on funny cat pictures and other web ephemera, but for more than a year now he has been thinking night and day about the future of the news industry …

Discussion: Betabeat, AllThingsD, Circa Blog, NetNewsCheck Latest, @benpopper, The Verge, @craigsilverman, @jeffjarvis and @rafat

Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:

Circa wants to save journalism by killing articles — what's wrong and right about that — There's a lot to like and a lot to hate about Circa, the new company by Cheezburger Network and reality TV star Ben Huh and SocialThing and SimpleGeo co-founder Matt Galligan. It launches today and is on “a mission to fix journalism.”

Discussion: TechCrunch and The FJP

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Gannett announces rise in circulation revenue, driven by paywalls — Net operating revenues from print circulation were up 5.6 percent in the third quarter of 2012 over the same period the year before, Gannett announced Monday morning. Seventy-one of Gannett's newspapers now have a paywall.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Thomson IR, mediabistro.com, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Gannett Blog and Broadcasting & Cable

Associated Press:

AP names first international social media and UGC editor — The Associated Press has expanded its commitment to social media and user-generated content as global newsgathering resources, promoting Fergus Bell to the newly created position of social media and UGC editor — international.

Alexandra Topping / Guardian:

Murdoch: hacking campaigners are ‘scumbags’ — News Corp chief causes outrage on Twitter with caustic dismissal of victims who lobbied David Cameron last week — Rupert Murdoch has labelled victims of phone hacking “scumbag celebrities” after they met David Cameron during the Conservative party conference.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, The Wrap, Hacking inquiry, @jamesro47, @benfenton, @davidallengreen, themediablog.typepad.com, Crikey, @dangillmor, @jeffjarvis, The Huffington Post and Guardian

Nathan / The eBook Reader Blog:

Amazon Quietly Discontinues the Kindle DX — About a week ago I posted about how Amazon had cut the price of the Kindle DX from $379 to $299. As expected it was indeed a final sale to eliminate stock, because the Kindle DX is no longer available for purchase from Amazon; it's only being sold used through third party merchants.

Discussion: GeekWire, TechCrunch, CNET, SlashGear, WebProNews, Engadget, The Verge and Mashable!

David Carr / New York Times:

TV Debates That Sell More Than Just Drama — In 1960, John F. Kennedy was trailing Richard Nixon as they stepped into the crucible of the first nationally televised debate. While Kennedy soared, Nixon stumbled and never recovered. — Network television played a definitive role, but those were very different times.

Discussion: Poynter, USA Today, Prof Chris Daly's Blog and Media Decoder

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

What Eight Million Livestreams Really Means — That crazy leap that Felix Baumgartner made was astonishing. — And if you're interested in the future of Web video, YouTube's ability to serve up eight million livestreams at the same time is a really big deal, too.

Discussion: Poynter, Daily Dot, CNET and Mashable!

Michael Wolff / USA Today:

Can a new CEO save CNN? — CNN, the news network that nobody likes, or watches or can fix, is looking for a new CEO. Even if you actually believed you could fix it, it's far from clear that anybody would want you to. Although the network is an embarrassment to everybody who works there …

Discussion: TVNewser

Ryan Kohls / Poynter:

Swedish journalists explain arrest, imprisonment in Ethiopia — For 438 days, two Swedish freelance journalists were locked up in Ethiopian prisons for illegally entering the country and committing acts of terrorism. Prior to their arrest, journalists had been working in the northern part of the country …