Mediagazer: Washington Post Eliminates Ombudsman Position (Greg Gilman/The Wrap)

2:15 PM ET, March 2, 2013

Top News:

Greg Gilman / The Wrap:

Washington Post Eliminates Ombudsman Position — The Washington Post has confirmed its own ombudsman's hunch and announced on Friday that it has cut the 43-year-old position. — “We have been privileged to have had the service of many talented ombudsmen (and women) who have addressed readers' concerns …

Katharine Weymouth / Washington Post:

A reader representative for The Post — The world has changed, and we at The Post must change with it. We have been privileged to have had the service of many talented ombudsmen (and women) who have addressed readers' concerns, answered their questions and held The Post to the highest standards of journalism.

Discussion: Washington Post, Politico, Washingtonian, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Washington Post, @jbrodkin, NPR Ombudsman and Tampabay.com

Joe Pompeo / New Republic:

The National: Abu Dhai's brief experiment in press freedom — In 2008, when a new government-owned newspaper debuted in the Persian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi, it was greeted as the latest sign of the formerly sleepy oil town's cosmopolitan ambitions. The island city of around 900,000 …

Discussion: @emile_hokayem, @sultanalqassemi, @jessradio and @tnr

Michael Moynihan / The Daily Beast:

Publisher Pulls Jonah Lehrer's ‘How We Decide’ From Stores — Disgraced pop-journalist Jonah Lehrer's publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has just announced that his second book, How We Decide, will be pulled from stores, and customers will be refunded. Michael Moynihan reports on the latest in the Lehrer fiasco.

Discussion: Guardian, LNR Journalism, New York Times, Globe and Mail and New York Magazine

Horace Dediu / asymco:

Measuring the iBook market — In June of 2011 Apple announced that 130 million ebooks were sold through iTunes. In October of 2012 it announced that 400 million sold. — That means 270 million ebooks were sold in 16 months. Or about 17 million units per month, on average.

Michael Berliner / Guardian:

Could online video consumption overtake linear TV viewing by 2020? — Will linear TV tank in the way that HMV and Blockbuster have? To survive, broadcasters need to pre-emptively evolve — John Farrell, director of YouTube Latin America, recently made the bold prediction …

Wall Street Journal:

Disney, News Corp. Discuss Hulu's Future — News Corp . and Walt Disney Co. have begun discussions about resolving uncertainty over their jointly controlled online video site Hulu LLC, with one possible outcome being that one or the other company sells their stake.

Discussion: Engadget and Deadline.com

Scott Shane / New York Times:

Manning to Face More Serious Charges in Leak — FORT MEADE, Md. — Military prosecutors announced on Friday that they had decided to try Pfc. Bradley Manning on the most serious charges they have brought against him and seek a sentence that could be life without parole …

Discussion: Gawker and The Verge

Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

Rupert Murdoch is on Tumblr, and the photos are kind of amazing — News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, having conquered Twitter, has moved on to Tumblr. Murdoch's chief of staff, Natalie Ravitz, has been maintaining a Tumblr blog for the past several months called “Murdoch Here.”

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @nravitz, @albertonardelli, Hollywood Reporter and @chrishams

Curtis Brainard / Columbia Journalism Review:

NYT cancels Green blog — No explanation from editors following surprise announcement — At 5pm on Friday afternoon, The New York Times posted the following announcement: … This is terrible news, to say the least. When the Times announced in January that it was dismantling …

Discussion: Green and @romenesko

Jim Romenesko:

‘I love newspapers,’ Warren Buffett tells Berkshire Hathaway shareholders — Warren Buffett's latest report to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders includes these observations about newspapers I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short …

Discussion: DealBook and The Atlantic Online

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Is Now Officially Calling Itself A ‘Technology Company’, Ditching The ‘Digital Media’ Tagline — Yahoo today issued its annual 10-K report to the Securities And Exchange Commission. These kinds of forms have a lot of boilerplate language that is reused again and again — often …

Discussion: ReadWrite, ZDNet, Forbes and WebProNews