Mediagazer: The Boy Wonder of Buzzfeed (Douglas Quenqua/New York Times)

2:15 PM ET, February 16, 2013

Top News:

Douglas Quenqua / New York Times:

The Boy Wonder of Buzzfeed — “BenSmithing is now an official term!” shouted Michael Hastings, a Buzzfeed reporter and author, at his book release party in Chelsea on a subfreezing night in January. The roomful of young reporters, ad salesmen and b-list political gadflies (Meghan McCain turned heads all night) hooted in approval.

Discussion: Daily Download, @max_read, @buzzfeedandrew and @justinnxt

Ben Jacobs / Daily Download:

What The New York Times Utterly Misses About BuzzFeed — The New York Times' profile of Ben Smith, the Editor in Chief of Buzzfeed, depicts him as a brand new phenomenon in journalism. — It's not the article's only error— the author, Douglas Quenqua, labors on the misapprehensions …

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

New report says video ads are soaring — but only 5% are on mobile — New ad industry figures claim the number of online video ads shown in the last quarter of 2012 grew an eye-popping 52 percent compared to the previous three months. This stat shows that TV dollars may be shifting to the web in force …

Discussion: Beet.TV and eMedia Vitals

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

You Are Watching More Web Video Ads Than Ever — The fate of the TV ad may or may not be in jeopardy. But in Web videoland, ads are thriving: Distributors keep adding more of them, and they are bumping up their length, too. And the people who watch Web videos seem okay with that.

Dorsey Shaw / BuzzFeed:

CNN's 24 Hours Of Poop Ship — Relive the first major “breaking news” event to be covered by Jeff Zucker's dynamic new CNN with its amazing chyrons. Feb. 14, 2013, will go down in history as the first day Jeff Zucker's dynamic new CNN really covered a breaking news story, like a sewage-soaked Carnival cruise blanket.

Discussion: TVNewser, Media Decoder, Politico, @jayrosen_nyu, The Huffington Post, Hollywood Reporter, New York Magazine, Deadline.com and @jeffsonderman

Betsy Rothstein / FishbowlDC:

Valentine's Day Bloodbath: WaPo Lays Off Workers in Hush-Hush Manner — On Thursday, Valentine's Day, WaPo officially discussed the circumstances surrounding the layoffs of employees, FishbowlDC sources have learned. Internal sources appropriately place the number at 54, though a publicist hasn't confirmed the exact number.

Discussion: Politico, mediabistro.com, Capital New York, The Huffington Post, City Desk, Digital Media Wire, @escarry and Poynter

Cory Bergman / Poynter:

5 reasons mobile will disrupt journalism like the Internet did a decade ago — Imagine being able to rewind to the 1990s and help your news organization make key decisions — and create new habits — to help prevent a landslide of layoffs and enable the business to thrive on the Internet.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Reuters:

Exclusive: News Corp, popular tech blog contemplate split - sources — (Reuters) - AllThingsD, the widely read technology blog run by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, has begun discussions with owner News Corp about extending or ending their partnership, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.

Discussion: The Wrap, paidContent, @lucas_shaw, @rafat, @edmundlee, The Next Web, @sdkstl, @rafat, @pkafka, @johnpaczkowski, @mathewi, @sbermo, @megan, @bobbymacreports, Deadline.com and Business Insider

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Did Time Warner Really Try to Buy China's Help Fighting Piracy With Free Movies? — Rampant copyright piracy in Asia, especially in China, is a massive and intractable problem for the software, entertainment and luxury industries. Western countries simply don't have enough leverage to compel …

Discussion: Businessweek and Beet.TV

Charlie Warzel / Adweek:

YouTube Phenoms Raise Record Cash — If you're a casual browser of the Web, or just a TV-first person, you might not be paying close attention to the torrent of original video content floating around YouTube. For brands, however, the throngs of madly devoted YouTube subscribers are becoming harder to ignore.

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Judge allows case over HuffPo ownership to go forward, adds fraud claim — In a major development in the bitter court fight over the founding of the Huffington Post, a New York judge has for the second time refused the request of media moguls Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer to dismiss the case.

Discussion: The Wrap, Poynter, FishbowlNY, NetNewsCheck Latest and Beet.TV

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Posterous shuttering for good on April 30th to focus on Twitter, offering Spaces downloads until then — Blogging platform Posterous has announced via its company blog that it will be shutting down as of April 30th. The company was acquired by Twitter just under a year ago.