Mediagazer: Petraeus ghostwriter ‘clueless’ to affair (Vernon Loeb/Washington Post)

12:40 PM 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

New York Times:

BBC Begins Disciplinary Action After Reporting Debacle — LONDON — The British Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday that disciplinary action was beginning against unidentified news personnel linked to a scandal over reporting of child abuse that wrongly implicated a senior Conservative Party politician.

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
Reporter on Newsnight film questioned by BIJ

Discussion: The Times

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

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

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

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

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: Wall Street Journal, Grantland, FishbowlDC, The Atlantic Wire, BuzzFeed, Poynter, New York Times, Speakeasy, Los Angeles Times, Garcia Media, City Desk, 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: Poynter, Forbes, @csoghoian, Wired, WorldViews and Hit & Run

John Aravosis / AMERICAblog:

Confirmed: ABC Denver misnames Petraeus book: “All up in my snatch” — Oh my. — A reader just sent me something that I didn't believe. Then he sent me a photo. Then he sent me a video. Then I found a comment on ABC Denver's Web site from another viewer who saw the same thing.

Discussion: Gawker, Betabeat, Mediaite, HyperVocal, The Latest Word, The Raw Story, Ostrow Off The Record and The Huffington Post

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

Marcus Brauchli to step down as editor of The Washington Post — The Washington Post announced Tuesday that Martin Baron, the editor of the Boston Globe, will become its new executive editor, replacing Marcus Brauchli, who is resigning to take a new position within the company.

Discussion: Poynter, JIMROMENESKO.COM, The Huffington Post, @myersnews, @craigsilverman, @mlcalderone and @mlcalderone

Christine Haughney / Media Decoder:

New Top Editor at Washington Post: Marcus Brauchli to Be Replaced by Marty Baron — The Washington Post, facing steep financial challenges and striving to find profitability as readers abandon print papers for digital formats, changed its newsroom leadership Tuesday.

Discussion: The Wrap

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: Mediaite, The Wrap, Los Angeles Times, Broadcasting & Cable, TVNewser, New York Magazine and The Huffington Post

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

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.

Discussion: Guardian

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

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

As Mark Thompson Starts New Job, the BBC's Implosion Is Felt in New York — When Mark Thompson started his job on Monday as president and chief executive of The New York Times Company, a British television network was there to capture the moment. — Responding to a shouted question …