Mediagazer: George Entwistle's £450,000 payment ‘hard to justify’

8:15 AM ET, November 12, 2012

Top News:

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: Deadline.com, Digital Spy, BBC, 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.

Emily Bell / CJR:

What's happening at the BBC — The Corporation is facing a serious challenge to its future and to its independence — “To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” — A very British crisis needs a very British epigraph.

Discussion: Guardian, Telegraph, Daily Mail, Forbes, The Independent, Mirror.co.uk, The Sun, The Huffington Post, @jayrosen_nyu, @jeffjarvis and @moorehn

BBC:

George Entwistle's £450,000 payment ‘hard to justify’ - No 10 — George Entwistle resigned just 54 days into the job — Downing Street has criticised the BBC's decision to pay ex-director general George Entwistle a year's salary, calling it “hard to justify”.

Boris Johnson / Telegraph:

Smearing an innocent man's name is the real tragedy here — The BBC should prove that ‘Newsnight’ was not acting with malice towards Lord McAlpine, argues Boris Johnson. — You know, I am afraid that they still don't get it. The people at the BBC show no real sign of understanding …

Discussion: Guardian

BBC:

Ex-BBC Mark Thompson starts as New York Times boss — Former BBC director general Mark Thompson is due to start his new job as chief executive and president of the New York Times newspaper. — The NYT appointed the 55-year-old in August, saying his experience in global media made him the “ideal candidate”.

Guardian:
Crisis at the BBC - live updates

Discussion: Media Week and BBC

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:
Patten faces national newspaper heat over Entwistle's generous pay-off

Discussion: Digital Spy, The Independent and Telegraph

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

Discussion: Guardian

Reuters:
BBC must reform or die, says Trust chairman

Discussion: Guardian and BBC

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

MSNBC, Its Ratings Rising, Gains Ground on Fox News — 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 …

Discussion: Mediaite, Inside Cable News, @gabrielsherman and @jayrosen_nyu

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

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, TIME, New York Times, blog.sfgate.com, Boing Boing, @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: AdAge, TechCrunch, Fast Company, paidContent, @pkafka and The Verge

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

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:

Which Polls Fared Best (and Worst) in the 2012 Presidential Race — As Americans' modes of communication change, the techniques that produce the most accurate polls seems to be changing as well. In last Tuesday's presidential election, a number of polling firms that conduct their surveys online had strong results.

Discussion: Pressing Issues