Mediagazer: George Entwistle's BBC payoff is tough to justify, says government (Hélène Mulholland/Guardian)

9:50 AM ET, November 12, 2012

Top News:

Times Company chairman welcomes Mark Thompson as BBC scandal widens — Mark Thompson began his reign as chief executive of The New York Times Company this morning with a warm welcome from the man with whom he will plot the course of the company's future. — “Mark will lead us as we continue …

BBC:

BBC head of news ‘steps aside’ — The BBC's director of news and her deputy have “stepped aside”, the BBC understands. — The move by Helen Boaden and Steve Mitchell comes after director general George Entwistle quit on Saturday. — The BBC said it was not commenting yet, but there will be an announcement within hours.

Discussion: BBC, Guardian, BBC, BBC, Deadline.com, Digital Spy, Reuters, UK News and Opinion and Sky News

Jessica Elgot / Huffington Post UK:

BBC Newsnight Crisis: Bureau Of Investigative Journalism Editor Iain Overton Quits — The crisis surrounding a Newsnight programme, which wrongly implicated Tory peer Lord McAlpine in a child sex abuse scandal has claimed another scalp, the editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism Iain Overton.

Hélène Mulholland / Guardian:

George Entwistle's BBC payoff is tough to justify, says government — Culture secretary Maria Miller criticises £450,000 payout but No 10 backs BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten — Downing Street has criticised the £450,000 payoff to George Entwistle but expressed full confidence in Lord Patten …

Discussion: Digital Spy and Telegraph

Boris Johnson / Telegraph:
Smearing an innocent man's name is the real tragedy here

Discussion: Guardian

Guardian:
Crisis at the BBC - live updates

Discussion: Media Week and BBC

Emily Bell / CJR:
What's happening at the BBC

Discussion: Guardian, Deadline.com, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Independent, Daily Mail, Forbes, Telegraph, @jeffjarvis, @jayrosen_nyu and @moorehn

John Plunkett / Guardian:
Newsnight insiders fear it will not survive scandal

Discussion: Telegraph and Guardian

Reuters:
BBC must reform or die, says Trust chairman

Discussion: BBC and Guardian

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Petraeus' Fallout for NewsBeast — The David Petraeus firestorm is having fallout in the publishing world. — Petraeus was one of the high-profile speakers originally scheduled to appear at the Newsweek Daily Beast's inaugural Hero Summit, a new confab honoring America's military, on Wednesday night.

Discussion: New York Magazine, Chickaboomer and The Week

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Vernon Loeb, Washington Post Editor And Co-Author Of Petraeus Biography, Silent On Scandal — NEW YORK — Vernon Loeb, a high-ranking Washington Post editor who served as Paula Broadwell's co-author for a favorable 2012 biography of Gen. David Petraeus, would presumably know something about her reporting on the now-former CIA director.

Michael Hastings / BuzzFeed:

The Sins Of General David Petraeus — Petraeus seduced America. We should never have trusted him. — The fraud that General David Petraeus perpetrated on America started many years before the general seduced Paula Broadwell, a lower ranking officer 20 years his junior, after meeting her on a campus visit to Harvard.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, New York Times, @buzzfeedben, @techsoc, @dangillmor, @moorehn, Pressing Issues and Mashable!

Spencer Ackerman / Wired:
How I Was Drawn Into the Cult of David Petraeus

Discussion: Poynter, BuzzFeed, Business Insider, Slate, New York Times, TIME, Boing Boing, blog.sfgate.com, @gitagovinda, @dangillmor, @moorehn and Pressing Issues

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Changing Channels: YouTube Will Pull the Plug on at Least 60 Percent of Its Programming Deals — YouTube has helped fund about 160 “channels” as part of a new strategy to make the video site more TV-like. — And just like the TV world, YouTube isn't going to renew all of last season's programs.

Discussion: Fast Company, TechCrunch, The Verge and @pkafka

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

YouTube Preps Big New Round of Content Investments — Some Partners Will Get Another Check; Others May Quietly Go Away — Nearly a year after YouTube sprinkled $100 million across the online video ecosystem to create more than a hundred new “channels,” it's doubling down.

Discussion: C21Media, paidContent, CNET and The Next Web

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

The Anti-Fox Gains Ground — On Tuesday night, with a minute to go until the polls closed in the battleground state of Virginia, the MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews received word through their earpieces that the state was too close to call, according to the election analysts at MSNBC's parent, NBC News.

Discussion: TVNewser, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Inside Cable News, Business Insider, @jayrosen_nyu and @gabrielsherman

David Carr / New York Times:

Fox News's Election Coverage Followed Journalistic Instincts — It has been suggested, here and elsewhere, that Fox News effectively became part of the Republican propaganda apparatus during the presidential campaign by giving pundit slots to many of the Republican candidates and relentlessly advocating …

Discussion: Chickaboomer

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Luring developers into the newsroom: A new class of Knight-Mozilla fellows tries to bridge a cultural divide — The laws of supply and demand are working very differently in two different parts of major newsrooms. — In the United States, at least, there's a surplus of people who want to make phone calls …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and Knight Foundation