Mediagazer: Dame Janet Smith DBE and Nick Pollard to lead BBC independent reviews (BBC Press Office)

1:10 PM ET, October 16, 2012

Top News:

Rupert Murdoch at News Corp AGM - live coverage — Rupert Murdoch has sent a fleet of minibuses to collect shareholders and press for News Corp's annual meeting. The event starts at 10am LA time (6pm UK time) in the Zanuck Theatre in the guarded lot of Fox Studios in Century City, Los Angeles.

David Carr / Media Decoder:

News Corporation Shareholders Meeting: Much Ado Might Not Add Up to Much — News Corporation will be holding its annual meeting Tuesday on the Fox studio lot in Los Angeles and there will be several efforts by large shareholders to diminish Murdoch family control, citing the hacking scandal in England.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg: News Corp.'s Murdoch Faces Renewed Calls to Split Top Posts

Ed Pilkington / Guardian:

New York Times chief Mark Thompson leaves Jimmy Savile scandal at BBC — Mark Thompson isn't the luckiest of media CEOs. The incoming boss of the New York Times Company must not only deal with a financial squeeze and an escalating staff dispute; he has also been forced to watch out for an extraordinary storm in his rear-view mirror.

Discussion: fleet street fox

BBC Press Office:

Dame Janet Smith DBE and Nick Pollard to lead BBC independent reviews — The BBC today announced that former High Court judge Dame Janet Smith DBE will lead the independent review into Jimmy Savile and former Head of Sky News Nick Pollard will lead the review into Newsnight.

Discussion: @joshhalliday

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
Jimmy Savile scandal: David Cameron urged to set up independent inquiry

Discussion: Guardian

Guardian:

Rebekah Brooks's News International severance deal worth ‘about £7m’ — Payoff package for the former News International executive is far in excess of the £1.7m speculated on after her departure — Rebekah Brooks received a payoff worth about £7m after resigning …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Guardian, Financial Times, Telegraph, The Huffington Post, Financial Times, Deadline.com and Business Insider

The Independent:

Cameron, Brooks and the emails kept from Leveson — Private emails between David Cameron and the former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks have been withheld from the Leveson Inquiry after the Prime Minister sought personal legal advice, The Independent can reveal.

Discussion: @nifs, @davecameroon, Guardian and The Daily Beast

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

One month in, Margaret Sullivan talks about the changing role of New York Times Public Editor — A little over a month into her job, Margaret Sullivan has been transforming the traditional role of The New York Times public editor — by blogging almost every weekday and using social media …

Discussion: The Public Editor's Journal and FishbowlNY

Eliza Kern / GigaOM:

Switching consumers to digital books is hard enough — get ready for magazines — When it comes to bringing magazines to the Kindle or iPad, some of the trickiest competitors aren't fellow digital platforms — it's the actual print products themselves. Paper magazines are still pretty good, Amazon told publishers on Monday.

Discussion: magazine.org and MinOnline

Robert Steiner / Nieman Journalism Lab:

In Toronto, we're dumping the j-school model to produce a new kind of reporter — In its series of pieces on journalism education, the Nieman Journalism Lab raised two of three ideas that could really change the field. The first, from Len Downie: Journalism schools should work more like teaching hospitals.

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Guardian hires first digital strategy director to grow online business — Guardian News & Media has appointed its first ever digital strategy director to knuckle down on finding workable online business models, two years after its nearest equivalent post-holder left the role.

Discussion: Guardian, BuzzMachine, Guardian, @sifter and @emilybell

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

With Six Million Uniques, Upworthy Gets $4M From NEA to Find More Virals That Aren't Cat Videos — In March, a new start-up called Upworthy launched a site that promised to find viral content on important topics. It seemed an earnest aspiration — it's like cat videos, but serious! — that was unlikely to work.

Discussion: Betabeat

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Reuters' Early Report Of Protesters At Libya Attack Raises Questions — NEW YORK — On Sept. 12, Reuters reported that there were protesters present when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was attacked and described the assailants as “part of a mob blaming America for a film they said insulted the Prophet Mohammad.”

Discussion: FP Passport, CNN, Poynter, The Week and Mother Jones

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Moderator Candy Crowley's follow-up questions at Tuesday's debate are already upsetting both campaigns — The Obama and Romney campaigns signed an agreement that at Tuesday's debate, “The moderator will not ask follow-up questions or comment on either the questions asked by the audience …