Mediagazer: Yet another YouTube funding: Bedrocket invests in Shira Lazar's What's Trending (Janko Roettgers/paidContent)

1:05 AM ET, June 19, 2013

Top News:

Tim Dickinson / Rolling Stone:

Michael Hastings, ‘Rolling Stone’ Contributor, Dead at 33 — The bold journalist died in a car accident in Los Angeles — Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned.

BuzzFeed:

Statement On Michael Hastings — BuzzFeed is saddened to report that Michael Hastings died in a car accident early this morning in Los Angeles. He was 33. — Ben Smith, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief, said in a statement: — We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone.

Eric W. Dolan / The Raw Story:

Journalist Michael Hastings dies in car crash — The journalist and author Michael Hastings died at the age of 33 on Tuesday morning. According to his employer BuzzFeed, Hastings was killed in a car crash in Los Angeles. — “We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone …

Discussion: Slate, BuzzFeed, Business Insider, Daily Mail, WorldViews, @nbj914, @feldmaniac, @katz, @circa, @scottleadingham, @jeremyscahill, @lyramckee, @stefanjbecket and @nikhilgoya_l

Craig Timberg / Washington Post:

Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment — Google is preparing to ask the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government.

Discussion: Forbes, Reuters, The Verge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, VentureBeat, @trevortimm, AllThingsD, Guardian, Mercury News, The Daily Beast, @rajunarisetti, Quartz, @eff, ReadWrite, Wired, TechCrunch, CNNMoney.com, @samgustin, Mashable, Digits, The Next Web, Hillicon Valley, Salon, Engadget, RT, Techdirt, GigaOM, CNET, The Daily Caller and ZDNet

Salvador Rodriguez / Los Angeles Times:
Yahoo discloses how much government data requests it gets

Discussion: Valleywag, Business Insider, Mercury News, Christian Science Monitor, The Register, Bloomberg, TechRadar.com, The Independent, BBC, ZDNet, CNN, CNNMoney.com, Reuters and Guardian

Isaac Chotiner / New Republic:

“What Part of ‘Politico’ Do You Not Understand?” — A conversation about the dark art of driving the conversation — The dominant mode of Washington journalism tends to both reflect and entrench the values of its era. The eminent writers and editors of the immediate postwar age …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Gawker, The Huffington Post, @bcappelbaum, Mediaite, FishbowlDC, Poynter and @jayrosen_nyu

Tom Kludt / Talking Points Memo:
Nate Silver: Politico Co-Founders Lack ‘Curiosity For The World Outside Of The Bubble’

Discussion: @evgenymorozov and The Huffington Post

Janko Roettgers / paidContent:

Yet another YouTube funding: Bedrocket invests in Shira Lazar's What's Trending — Thought there was no money in producing original content for YouTube's audience? The folks at Bedrocket Entertainment beg to differ — and just invested in What's Trending.

Discussion: The Next Web, Variety and Guardian

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

More on the Plane That Didn't Crash, and ‘Truthiness’ — A few weeks ago, I wrote about the plane that didn't crash - that is, about a Lives piece in The Times Magazine that has drawn significant criticism from aviation experts including Patrick ("Ask the Pilot") Smith and from James Fallows …

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Photographer sues BuzzFeed for $3.6M over viral sharing model — A photographer says BuzzFeed should pay copyright damages not only for an unauthorized photo that appeared on its site — but for the dozens of other sites on which the photo appeared. — An Idaho photographer, Kai Eiselein …

Discussion: The Awl, Poynter, WebProNews, The Raw Story and FishbowlNY

Sam Biddle / Valleywag:

Tumblr's Media Director Quits — Tumblr brought Mark Coatney aboard from Newsweek to bolster the site's editorial side—"to show how [Tumblr] can be key to connecting journalists and readers." Three years (and a Yahoo acquisition) later, and another early employee is gone. That's two in only a few weeks.

Discussion: CNET, Still Not Going To Do …, SlashGear, Business Insider and Betabeat

Brett Logiurato / Business Insider:

Fox Business Terminates Contract With Contributor Who Was Paid $50,000 To Boost A Stock — Fox Business Network has terminated the contract of contributor Tobin Smith, who was paid $50,000 to tout the stock of Petrosonic Energy, a network spokesperson told Business Insider.

Discussion: MarketWatch and TVNewser

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

AOL's Patch Limps Toward Profitability — After more than five years of reporting on school-board meetings and community bake sales, AOL Inc. (AOL)'s Patch is now at the center of another story: whether the company's bet on local news can be profitable. — Patch, with more than 900 sites …

Discussion: Street Fight

Edward Wyatt / New York Times:

F.C.C. Nominee Favors Competition Over Regulation — WASHINGTON — President Obama's nominee to head the Federal Communications Commission told a Senate committee on Tuesday that his top priorities, if he is confirmed, would be consumer protection, increasing competition …

Discussion: Hillicon Valley, Radio & Television …, Mashable and @jbflint

Chris Ariens / FishbowlLA:

FishbowlLA Going on Hiatus — Mediabistro's FishbowlLA is taking five. In the meantime, FBLA co-editor Richard Horgan has moved over to FishbowlNY to cover the Hollywood trades, awards season and a broad range of national media stories. — Launched in 2005, the site has seen its fair share …

Discussion: 10,000 Words, FishbowlNY and LA Observed