Mediagazer: Book publisher earnings roundup: Hachette, Random House (Laura Hazard Owen/paidContent)

11:45 AM ET, November 13, 2012

Top News:

Gordon Rayner / Telegraph:

BBC news chief pleads with staff not to Tweet about ‘our problems’ — Fran Unsworth, the new temporary head of BBC News, has appealed to staff not to Tweet about “our problems” as she tries to sort out the mess of the Newsnight scandal. Referring to the “tumultuous and very sad events of the past few days” …

Discussion: mediabistro.com, Daily Dot and BBC

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Reporter on Newsnight film questioned by BIJ — Angus Stickler, who researched disastrous BBC report, interviewed by trustees of Bureau of Investigative Journalism — The chief reporter behind the disastrous Newsnight report that wrongly linked a former Tory peer with allegations …

Discussion: The Times

New York Times:

BBC to Begin Disciplinary Action After Reporting Debacle — LONDON — Facing the deepest challenge to its status, prestige and self-confidence in years, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday that disciplinary action was beginning against unidentified news personnel linked …

Discussion: Washington Post

Brendan O'Neill / Telegraph:
This isn't the first time that Angus Stickler and Newsnight have made OTT claims about secret child abusers

Discussion: Guardian, Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day and National Updates

Patrick Smith / TheMediaBriefing:
The institutional paranoia of the BBC and its unsure future

Discussion: themediablog.typepad.com and Charlie Beckett

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:
BBC trustees keen to offer DG job to outsider

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

David Leigh / Guardian: Investigative journalism must live on despite the Newsnight crisis

Gordon Rayner / Telegraph:
BBC turmoil worsens as Helen Boaden and Stephen Mitchell hire lawyers to deny they willingly ‘stepped aside’

Discussion: BBC

Vernon Loeb / Washington Post:

Petraeus ghostwriter ‘clueless’ to affair — My wife says I'm the most clueless person in America. — I never anticipated the extramarital affair between David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, the woman I'd worked with for 16 months on a book about Petraeus's year commanding the war in Afghanistan.

Discussion: Gawker, FishbowlDC, The Atlantic Wire, The Wrap, Poynter, Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, Speakeasy, City Desk, Los Angeles Times, Garcia Media, LA Observed, Daily Download, Pressing Issues and The Huffington Post

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Lesson from Petraeus: Your emails, and Gmail, aren't that private — FBI investigators stumbled across Gen. David Petraeus' affair with Paula Broadwell by tracking harassing emails she allegedly sent to another woman, Jill Kelley. It's not clear whether those emails were sent from a Gmail account …

Discussion: @csoghoian, Wired, WorldViews and Hit & Run

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

NBC Moves to Shake Up ‘Today’ Leadership — NBC is completing a plan to change the leadership at the “Today” show, the longtime first-place morning show that slid to second place this year during the controversial removal of Ann Curry. — Alexandra Wallace, a senior vice president of NBC News …

Discussion: The Wrap, Broadcasting & Cable, TVNewser, The Huffington Post and New York Magazine

Bloomberg:

NBC Universal Said to Cut About 450 Jobs Across Units — Third-Quarter Ad Sales at Cable Networks Grew 1% — Comcast's NBC Universal is cutting about 450 jobs at several divisions of the broadcast, film and cable company, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

Discussion: Deadline.com

Lewis DVorkin / Forbes:

Inside Forbes: Journalists Need to Understand the Ad Business, Not Sulk and Go Home — I can get very frustrated with editors and reporters who prefer to live in their own little world. When it happens, I do my best to remember I used to be one of them — until their stubbornness makes me incredulous all over again.

Discussion: Big News Network.com and AdAge

The Patriot-News:

Sara Ganim, who won Pulitzer Prize for Sandusky coverage, accepts job with CNN — Sara Ganim, The Patriot-News crime reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, has accepted a position as a correspondent with CNN. — Ganim started with CNN this week.

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Poynter, TVNewser, The Huffington Post and @sganim

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Bookboard tries Netflix-like model for kids' ebooks — Former Adobe executives Fang Chang and Nigel Pegg know that kids love iPads, and they wanted to offer them something more educational than YouTube or Angry Birds. So they are launching Bookboard, an iPad app that gives parents …

Discussion: AppNewser and Digital Book World

Jonathan Martin / Politico:

The GOP's media cocoon — A long-simmering generational battle in the conservative movement is boiling over after last week's shellacking, with younger operatives and ideologues going public with calls that Republicans break free from a political-media cocoon that has become intellectually suffocating and self-defeating.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, Vanity Fair, TVNewser and The Huffington Post

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Book publisher earnings roundup: Hachette, Random House — Bertelsmann and Lagardère, the parent companies of Random House and Hachette, reported earnings Tuesday. — Lagardère reported publishing division revenues of €626 million for the third quarter of 2012, up 0.1 percent on a like-for-like basis.

Discussion: PublishersWeekly.com and Lagardère

Dominic Ponsford / PressGazette:

Sun investigations chief: Bribery Act has forced us to turn away whistleblowers — Brian Flynn addressing the Society of Editors conference in Belfast — Sun investigations editor Brian Flynn has warned that the fear of arrest is stopping journalists from pursuing public interest stories provided by public sector whistle-blowers.

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Wanderful Media Acquires Mobile Newspaper Shopping Ads Platform iCircular From The AP — Wanderful Media, which aims to digitize circulars (the printed fliers you find in your mailbox full of the latest deals and coupons), has acquired iCircular from The Associated Press.

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

The New York Times and the Thompson Effect: Blow Over or Blowback? — It's not exactly the entrance Mark Thompson had planned for his first day at the Times, but it's an entrance. — Call it dis-harmonic convergence. In the days leading up to and including his first day on the job …

Discussion: CJR and Guardian

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:
As Mark Thompson Starts New Job, the BBC's Implosion Is Felt in New York

Discussion: Associated Press, NetNewsCheck Latest, New York Magazine, National Updates, New York Times, GigaOM, Capital New York and Deadline.com

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Businessweek: Polls of student attractiveness were “in poor taste” — Bloomberg Businessweek unpublished a feature over the weekend that asked the question “Which business school has the most attractive female students?” — “We regret issuing two online polls last week that asked our readers …

Discussion: Business Week