Mediagazer: News Corp. Admits 'World's Worst-Kept Secret': It's Planning ESPN Clone (Jeff Bercovici/Forbes)

1:00 PM ET, February 7, 2013

Top News:

Farewell, neighbors — We're sorry to report that EveryBlock has closed its doors. — It's no secret that the news industry is in the midst of a massive change. Within the world of neighborhood news there's an exciting pace of innovation yet increasing challenges to building a profitable business.

Discussion: Adweek, @dancow, @dancow, @pelletk, @digiphile, @romenesko, @jkocherhans and @jamesrbuk

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

NBC closes hyperlocal pioneer EveryBlock — NBC News has shut down EveryBlock, one of the early pioneers of hyperlocal community news and information. — The decision took effect today. Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and chief digital officer of NBC News, told me today by email …

Discussion: TechCrunch, @tomcoates, @sdkstl, @chanders, @amyhoy, @ryansholin, @kevindgrant, @dancow, @iandees, @elisharene, @adrianholovaty, @a_l and @dancow

Adrian Holovaty:

RIP Everyblock — I'm very saddened by today's news that EveryBlock has been shut down by NBC News. — I founded EveryBlock in 2007 after receiving a grant from the Knight Foundation. It was launched in January 2008 by an original team of four (Wilson Miner, Dan O'Neil, Paul Smith and me) and was acquired by msnbc.com in 2009.

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

News Corp. Admits 'World's Worst-Kept Secret': It's Planning ESPN Clone — Quarter after quarter, analysts have asked News Corp. executives about report that the media conglomerate intended to start its own national sports network to compete with ESPN, and the executives have duly played it coy.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
News Corp. says its split-up is on track

Discussion: Poynter, NetNewsCheck Latest, Media Week, Crikey, New York Magazine and Bloomberg

Andrew Pugh / Press Gazette:
Phone-hacking scandal: News Corp costs rise to $360m

Discussion: Management Today, The Week UK, The Independent and Guardian

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:
News Corp. Posts Gain on Strength of Cable Channels

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, AdAge, Home Media Magazine and The Wrap

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Coming Soon: A Children's Edition of The New York Times? — A new CEO is supposed to bring a new way of looking at problems. So how's this for some new thinking from New York Times Co. chief Mark Thompson: — He's looking at launching an edition of the paper just for kids.

Robin Wauters / The Next Web:

The New York Times now boasts 668,000 paying digital subscribers, Q4 revenue rises to $575.8m — The New York Times Company today reported strong earnings for the fourth quarter of and full year 2012. — The publisher's total revenues increased 5.2 percent to $575.8 million from $547.4 million in Q4 2011 …

Discussion: Poynter, New York Times, mediabistro.com, The Wrap and @edmundlee

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

New York Times posts ho-hum numbers, slow digital growth — The New York Times Company posted earnings on Thursday morning that show the company's ongoing struggle to create significant growth in its digital operations. While circulation revenues continue to rise, all forms of advertising …

Discussion: The New York Times Company, Bloomberg, Guardian, Poynter, @jackshafer and CNET

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Digital magazine sales doubled in second half of 2012, as newsstand sales dropped — The number of U.S. consumer magazines sold on tablet devices and other mobile platforms in the second half of 2012 more than doubled from the same period a year earlier, according to the latest figures released today …

Discussion: The Wrap and FishbowlNY

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:
Digital magazine sales are still tiny overall, but titles like Cosmo see big growth

Discussion: Alliance for Audited Media and Folio

Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:

Warner Music Group Buys EMI Assets for $765 Million — The Warner Music Group, the smallest of the three remaining major record companies, said on Thursday that it had made a deal to pay $765 million for the Parlophone Label Group, a package of divestments from the EMI label required …

Discussion: Telegraph, BBC, Wall Street Journal and Billboard

Neal Ungerleider / Fast Company:

How Jihadists Use Twitter, And Soon Even Instagram — A new research paper tracks how and why Al Qaeda-linked terrorist organizations and their sympathizers use social media. — Violent jihadists prefer foreign-language online web forums for their online social networking …

Discussion: The FJP

Glenn Greenwald / Guardian:

US media yet again conceals newsworthy government secrets — The collective self-censorship over a US drone base in Saudi Arabia is but the latest act of government-subservient ‘journalism’ — The US media, over the last decade (at least), has repeatedly acted to conceal newsworthy information …

Discussion: New York Times, Politico, NBCNews.com, Daily Download, TIME, @sulliview and BBC

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Circulation and ad revenue down at McClatchy — McClatchy's circulation revenues were down in the fourth quarter of 2012, the company said in an earnings report released Thursday morning. Circulation revenue fell 1.9 percent, and advertising revenue was down 6 percent.

Discussion: Sacramento Bee and PR Newswire

Mathew Ingram / paidContent:

Business Insider vs. Digiday: One man's aggregation is another man's traffic hijacking — Plagiarism. Copyright infringement. Traffic hijacking. These are all terms publishers like to use when someone excerpts their content without permission, whether it's Google News or The Huffington Post.

Discussion: PandoDaily, Poynter and Digiday, Thanks:@mathewi

Henry Blodget / Business Insider: Thank You For Aggregating Us!

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Copy editors ‘have been sacrificed more than any other newsroom category’ — The decline of newspapers has fallen especially hard on copy editors, Natascia Lypny writes. … The figures are actually worse if you go back another few years: ASNE's annual survey of newsrooms, released last April …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and The Newspaper Guild