Mediagazer: The FT backs down on paywalled blogs (Felix Salmon)

8:40 AM ET, November 15, 2012

Top News:

BBC Faces Probe Over Abuse Scandal — LONDON—Britain's communications regulator is investigating the British Broadcasting Corp. for a recent broadcast of its current affairs program “Newsnight” that improperly accused a former Conservative Party official of child sex abuse …

Martin Robinson / Daily Mail:

Lord McAlpine to sue Twitter users who called him a paedophile as BBC agrees taxpayer-funded payout for Newsnight slur — Lord McAlpine's lawyer has today issued a chilling warning to anyone who called him a paedophile on Twitter: 'We know who you are and what you've done'.

Arif Durrani / MediaWeek:

Audit Bureau of Circulations changes name after 98 years to AAM in the US — The Audit Bureau of Circulations in the US has become the first member of IFABC to change its name in an attempt to better reflect the changes sweeping across the publishing business in the digital age, opting for the Alliance for Audited Media.

Discussion: Poynter, NetNewsCheck Latest and New York Times

Ben Rooney / Wall Street Journal Europe:

Spotify Valued at $3 Billion, but Where is the Missing Billion? … Good news for Spotify that it is now valued at $3 billion after closing its latest $100 million funding round. There aren't many European startups that can truly be said to be competing on a global scale.

Discussion: The Next Web

Media Decoder:

Spotify Attracts Investments From Coca-Cola and Fidelity — Coca-Cola is becoming a minority investor in Spotify, as part of a new round of financing that will bring in $100 million and value the streaming music service at about $3 billion. — Spotify has completed the financing round …

Discussion: GigaOM, PandoDaily, Digital Media Wire, Betabeat, The Next Web, AllThingsD, WebProNews, SocialTimes and TechCrunch

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Is it time for the New York Times to embrace sponsored stories? — As news publishers confront a troubled online ad market, many of them are turning to “native advertising” which lets marketers create content that resembles a website's natural content. The New York Times is resisting …

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:
Ads That Get More Love Than the Stories Around Them? Pulse Has Them

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Jack Marshall / Digiday:
The Mobile Banner: A Dog That Won't Hunt

Discussion: Nxtblog

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:
News companies see a financial future in brand-sponsored digital content

Discussion: Noted, CJR and eMedia Vitals

Felix Salmon:

The FT backs down on paywalled blogs — Back in mid-2010, the FT's Money Supply blog disappeared behind the FT paywall, with promises that it wouldn't be the last. From the top on down, the general attitude at the FT has been clear: the idea that the FT should publish information for free is …

Ronald Grover / Reuters:

News Corp nears deal to buy stake in Yankee sports network — (Reuters) - News Corp (NWSA.O) is expected to announce this week that it has taken a minority stake in the YES Network, a New York-based sports channel that broadcasts Yankee baseball and Nets basketball games.

Jim Rutenberg / New York Times:

Secret of the Obama Victory? Rerun Watchers, for One Thing — Larry Grisolano helped develop a system that permitted the Obama campaign to target advertising to supporters based on the shows they liked to watch. The campaign placed ads in surprising places, like the TV Land network, that might once have been overlooked.

Discussion: Mother Jones and Cable Television News

Kevin Loker / 10,000 Words:

Retweeting Without Reading? Yeah, It's Happening- and It Affects Journalism Strategy on Twitter — Worth noting for journalists looking to measure engagement on the Twitters: your retweets aren't necessarily your click-throughs, and the two unfortunately may have almost no correlation either.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

In Israeli Attack on Hamas: Shock, Awe and Social Media — As Israel on Wednesday launched an attack on Hamas, killing a top military commander, the government also took to Twitter to live-tweet the strike as it unfolded. — @IDFSpokesperson, the official Twitter account for the Israel Defense Forces …

Discussion: New York Magazine, Fast Company, GigaOM, Wired, The Hill, BuzzFeed and The Stream

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Turn pirates into customers: a smart approach to the photo problem — We're in the age of the image. Popular websites like Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram let users enter delightful worlds of pictures and express themselves with images of their own. — Photos everywhere mean more places …

Rebecca Greenfield / The Atlantic Wire:

Nate Silver Thinks Voting Is for Pundits — There is a 100-percent chance that after spending years and many blog posts predicting the outcome of the election, Nate Silver did not vote, he admitted during a Q&A on Deadspin. His reasoning: “I don't think that somebody who is observing …

Discussion: Deadspin and Betabeat

Daniel Miller / Hollywood Reporter:
Nate Silver on His Hollywood Future and 'Moneyball'-ing Box Office

Discussion: The Corsair and Los Angeles Times

Ryan Chittum / CJR:

Apples and oranges on Google and publishers — Print performance is bad enough without putting a thumb on the scale — Slate tells us that “Google ad revenue tops entire US print media industry” in the first six months of the year, based off this chart from a German outfit called Statista:

Caty Borum Chattoo / MediaShift:

How Link TV + KCET Plan to Give Context to Global, Raw Video — In the warp-speed evolution of the digital era, it's hard to remember 2005. Facebook was still just a tool for U.S. college students; Friendster and MySpace were the hot social-media sites; Twitter was in utero; now-behemoth Huffington Post was in its infancy.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Warren Buffett closes former Media General paper in Virginia — The Manassas (Va.) News & Messenger will stop printing at the end of 2012, Steve Jordan reports. Berkshire Hathaway bought the paper from Media General when it purchased most of the chain's other newspapers in May.

Discussion: Reuters