Mediagazer: Report: Google made €50 million copyright offer, French publishers want €100 million (Jeff John Roberts/paidContent)

8:05 AM ET, January 22, 2013

Top News:

Lionel Barber's email to FT staff outlining digital-first strategy — Editor's email to staff outlines detailed proposals for reshaping the paper for the digital age — In my New Year message, I said 2013 would test our resolve to move further and faster to support top quality journalism in a rapidly changing media landscape.

Discussion: ZDNet, Crikey, The Wall Blog, NetNewsCheck Latest, Talking Biz News and paidContent

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Financial Times editor announces digital-first strategy — Lionel Barber to cut 35 jobs in ‘big cultural shift’ for business daily — The Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, has announced plans to move the title to a digital-first strategy in a move he described as a “big cultural shift” for the business daily, and cut 35 jobs.

Discussion: Crikey

Katherine Rushton / Telegraph:
The Financial Times to axe staff in digital shift

Discussion: Reuters, Politico and Guardian

Danny Yadron / Wall Street Journal:

Meet Ethan Sattler, 13 Years Old, White House Reporter — Perhaps no reporter faced more scrutiny from guards at the White House gate Monday morning than Ethan Sattler. — Mr. Sattler, 13 years old, does not have a driver's license. His Virginia child ID card lists his height at 4 feet 3 inches …

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Inauguration front pages combine Obama's second term, Martin Luther King Jr. legacy — President Obama's inauguration on Monday, January 21, 2013 coincides with the federal holiday celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Many inauguration front pages combined the two.

Discussion: Capital New York, New Yorker, VentureBeat, Forbes, The Daily Beast, The New Yorker Blog and New York Times

Jim Romenesko:

Sinclair Broadcasting ‘owns’ social media accounts of its on-air talent — WHAM-TV (Rochester, NY) reporter Rachel Barnhart tells her followers that Sinclair Broadcasting, which recently acquired WHAM, has a policy of “owning” the social media accounts of its on-air talent.

Discussion: @dsorbara, @rajunarisetti, @ninametznews, @kahoakes and @stevebuttry

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Report: Google made €50 million copyright offer, French publishers want €100 million — Google proposed an annual €50 million payment to news publishers to resolve a long-simmering copyright dispute, but the publishers decided to hold out for more, according to a report Friday in Le Monde.

Discussion: Softpedia News, The Verge, The Next Web, ZDNet and WebProNews

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch in London to meet Times independent directors — News Corp chief may lead meeting over appointment of John Witherow and Martin Ivens as Times and Sunday Times editors — Rupert Murdoch has flown into London and is expected to hold a summit with the independent directors …

Discussion: Guardian

Andrew Pugh / Press Gazette:

Sun defence editor Virginia Wheeler charged over alleged payments to police — The Sun's defence editor Virginia Wheeler has been charged with conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office along with a former officer from the Metropolitan Police. — The Crown Prosecution Service …

Discussion: Associated Press, Sky News, Bloomberg, The Independent, BBC and Guardian

Jessica Hanks / The Huffington Post:

Silicon Valley Business Journal Redesign: Local Publication To Be Model For National Update — Print journalism may be dwindling, but one local publication is doubling down. The Silicon Valley Business Journal unveiled a dramatic redesign of its print publication earlier this month …

Discussion: Garcia Media

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:

Observer Names CEO — Jared Kushner has tapped his brother-in-law, Joseph Meyer, to be the first chief executive of the Observer Media Group, the Kushner-owned entity that houses the New York Observer and other publications. — The move comes as part of a broader overhaul of the leadership of Observer Media.

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Amazon Children's Publishing expands with more books for younger kids and teens — Amazon is expanding its children's publishing footprint with two new imprints based out of New York, the company announced ahead of the American Library Association's annual meeting this week.

Discussion: PublishersWeekly.com

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

Swarming a Book Online — Reviews on Amazon are becoming attack weapons, intended to sink new books as soon as they are published. — In the biggest, most overt and most successful of these campaigns, a group of Michael Jackson fans used Facebook and Twitter to solicit negative reviews of a new biography of the singer.

Discussion: GeekWire

Simon Dumenco / AdAge:

Why the Prosecution of Internet Activist Aaron Swartz Matters to You, Personally — Last week a friend asked me to explain why the death of internet activist Aaron Swartz has become such a media sensation. What he knew is what's been commonly reported since Swartz's suicide in New York on Jan. 11 …

Discussion: Media News and Betabeat

Noam Cohen / New York Times:
How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

Discussion: emptywheel and Media Nation

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Random House's new Facebook app: If you liked Evelyn Waugh, you'll love the Berenstain Bears — Online book discovery doesn't work very well. Random House is attempting to address that problem with a new Facebook app, BookScout, that gives users book recommendations from multiple publishers, not just Random House.

Leslie Kaufman / Media Decoder: An App to Sift Through Books