Mediagazer: FCC will allow encryption of basic cable, offers measures to protect open access (Chris Welch/The Verge)

5:35 AM ET, October 16, 2012

Top News:

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: Financial Times, Business Insider and Deadline.com

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: Guardian, Financial Times and The Daily Beast

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 …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Page, Forbes, Politico, The Caucus, Politico, Time and The Huffington Post

Micah L. Sifry / TechPresident: Who Controls the Presidential Debates? Journalists or the Campaigns?

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 and Mother Jones

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:

Why The Internet Cool Kids Think Gawker Outing Reddit's Violentacrez Is The ‘Best Story About The Web’ This Year — On Friday, Gawker published a piece that the Internet Cool Kids had been waiting for. In it, Adrian Chen unmasked one of the volunteer moderators of Reddit, a site for sharing news …

Discussion: Techdirt, Daily Dot, Guardian and Gawker

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, DigidaveDigidave, App Advice and The FJP

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Circa wants to rethink the way we consume the news on a sub-atomic level

Discussion: Circa Blog, GeekWire, @benpopper, The Verge, Betabeat, @craigsilverman, The Next Web, @jeffjarvis and @rafat

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

Chris Welch / The Verge:

FCC will allow encryption of basic cable, offers measures to protect open access — The days of plugging a TV into the wall and getting cable are coming to an end. After a lengthy review process, the FCC has granted cable operators permission to encrypt their most basic cable programming.

Discussion: Boxee Blog, Deadline.com, VentureBeat, Engadget, Cable Television News and Light Reading

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

File-Sharers Buy 30% More Music Than Non-P2P Peers — The major music labels have a clear stance on online piracy, as the following quote from the RIAA illustrates. — “While downloading one song may not feel that serious of a crime, the accumulative impact of millions of songs downloaded illegally …

Discussion: BGR and The Next Web

Anna Heim / The Next Web:

Why The New York Times, the Financial Times and El País are eyeing Latin America — The New York Times is planning to launch an online Portuguese-language edition for Brazil in 2013, its parent company announced. Once it goes live, the site will publish 30 to 40 articles a day …

Discussion: Capital New York, The New York Times Company, paidContent and Mashable!

Agence France Presse:
NY Times to launch Portuguese news site for Brazil

Discussion: Media Decoder

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Microsoft To Compete Against Spotify With Xbox Music, Available Soon On Xbox, Windows 8, And Windows Phone Devices — Microsoft will soon become the next player to enter the streaming music business, with a service that will see it competing against the likes of Spotify and Rdio.

Discussion: Kindle Review, idigitaltimes.com, Wired, AllThingsD, GigaOM, CNET, Pocket-lint and 9to5Mac

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: The Huffington Post, Mediaite and TVNewser

Guardian:

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

Discussion: Capital New York

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

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: Daily Dot, Poynter, CNET and Mashable!