Mediagazer: 'We're not trying to beat the Huffington Post' (Jon Bernstein/Press Gazette)

12:25 PM ET, January 30, 2013

Top News:

Matt K. Lewis / The Week:

Why I hate Twitter — The social sharing tool was once a vision. Now it's a prison — S — oren Dayton and Rob Bluey — two conservative tech geniuses — talked me into joining Twitter during a lunch Ed Morrissey organized at an Iraqi restaurant in Minneapolis during the 2008 Republican convention.

Discussion: The Awl, @mlcalderone, @mikeisaac, @juliemmoos and The Daily Caller

Jon Bernstein / Press Gazette:

'We're not trying to beat the Huffington Post' — Chris Hughes, from Facebook to New Republic — Question: How do you reinvigorate a 98-year old US news and current affairs magazine for the digital age? — Answer: Hire a 29 year-old former Facebook executive. Naturally.

Discussion: NPR and Canadian Magazines

Jack Shafer:

Unsolicited advice for New Republic owner Chris Hughes — For more than a century, rich guys who think they're smarter than the rich guys who came before them have been buying money-losing publications under the impression that by spending more money than their deep-pocketed predecessors, they'll turn the red ink black.

Discussion: Daily Download, @jayrosen_nyu, The Huffington Post and WorldViews

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

Time Inc. Said to Eliminate About 6% of Workforce — Time Inc. (TWX), the largest magazine publisher in the U.S., is eliminating about 500 positions, or 6 percent of its workforce, according to two executives with direct knowledge of the firings. — The job cuts occurred across …

Discussion: AdAge, AllThingsD, Adweek and The Huffington Post

Wall Street Journal:

Time Inc. Cutting Staff — Time Inc. began a wave of staff reductions Wednesday morning that are expected to eliminate about 500 jobs, according to a person familiar with the matter, as the country's largest magazine group grapples with declines in print advertising.

Discussion: @keachhagey and Politico

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Amazon Makes Murmurs About Its Video Business — Netflix added a bunch of streaming video subscribers in the last quarter. How did rival Amazon do? — Who knows? Amazon is fiercely dedicated to the notion that it won't say squat about its business, and things stayed true to form during yesterday's earnings call.

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:
Bezos: With ebook sales up 70% in 2012, Amazon has hit “transition” it expected

Discussion: Slate, New York Times, Forbes, NetNewsCheck Latest, PublishersWeekly.com, CNET, Home Media Magazine, Mercury News, AllThingsD, Softpedia News, Pocket-lint, VentureBeat, TechCrunch and GalleyCat

Tim Carmody / The Verge:
Amazon rides a razor-thin wave back to profit in first full quarter of new Kindles

Discussion: ZDNet and The Next Web

The Huffington Post:

Fox News Ratings Hit 12-Year Demo Lows In January Cable News Figures — At the end of each month, cable news ratings are released to the public. And, like clockwork, Fox News dominates the top 13 or so programs, far outstripping its competitors. — January was ... a little different.

Discussion: Politico, TVNewser and The Raw Story

Hamish McKenzie / PandoDaily:

Kill the pageview: 29th Street Publishing looks to profit off small and good — Maura Johnston, founding editor of Gawker's now-defunct Idolator and more recently the music editor at the Village Voice, is now a micro-publisher. The independent writer is four issues into her new periodical …

Discussion: magCulture.com/blog

David Holmes / PandoDaily:

Washington Post's Truth Teller and the future of robots doing journalism — At some point in the history of letters, fact-checking went from a foundational part of journalism to a specialization practiced by few to a buzzwordy media trend, alternately praised and dismissed depending on what politician was getting called out.

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:
Washington Post gets closer to real-time fact checking with new Truth Teller prototype

Discussion: Knight Foundation, 10,000 Words, Journalism.co.uk, AdAge, FishbowlDC, paidContent, NetNewsCheck Latest and Kirk LaPointe's …

Jim Romenesko:

Jessica Lustig named Village Voice deputy editor — Magazine veteran Jessica Lustig has been named Village Voice deputy editor. From the release: … At the Voice, she'll assign and edit features, help direct arts and culture coverage, run the food blog, and recruit new freelancers.

BBC:

Ukraine Gongadze case: Court convicts journalist's killer — Olexiy Pukach is a former police general — A Ukrainian court has convicted a former police chief of murdering journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000, a crime which rocked the country. — The court in Kiev found that Olexiy Pukach …

Discussion: New York Times, LNR Journalism, Jon Slattery, The Newspaper Guild and Committee to Protect …

Nancy Hass / GQ:

Reed Hastings on Arrested Development, House of Cards, and the Future of Netflix Movies — The quirky little start-up that once printed money by mailing you DVDs is hell-bent on morphing into the HBO—and the network, and the any-show, any-time streaming service—of tomorrow.

Discussion: Forbes, Betabeat, Guardian, Business Insider, Fortune, @netflix and The Verge

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle — Like plenty of music fans, Sam Broe jumped at the chance to join Spotify two summers ago, and he hasn't looked back. — Spotify, which began streaming music in Sweden in 2008, lets users choose from millions of songs over the Internet free …

Discussion: Quartz and Business Insider

Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:
Streaming and Micropennies: The Footnotes

Discussion: VentureBeat

Alexander Abad-Santos / The Atlantic Wire:

This Is Jeff Zucker's CNN Overhaul — As news arrives today that some of its most familiar (and familiarly loud) faces are on the way out and some new (and potentially household-name) anchors may be on the way in, the future of CNN is starting to take shape under its powerful new boss, Jeff Zucker.