Mediagazer: BBC spent £28m of licence-fee payers' money gagging 500 staff (Telegraph)

7:30 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.

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 …

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Michael Hastings - journalists pay tribute to ‘fearless’ war correspondent — Reporter who was killed in a car accident on Tuesday had little time for ‘spinmeisters’ and an incredible instinct, say colleagues — Tributes have poured in for the award-winning journalist and war correspondent …

Discussion: BuzzFeed

Adam Haigh / Bloomberg:

News Corp. Spinoff Falls in Sydney After Murdoch Split — News Corp. (NNC), the Wall Street Journal publisher spun off by Rupert Murdoch, fell in its Sydney debut as stock in the billionaire's newspaper assets started trading separately in a split from his entertainment businesses.

Discussion: Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, Business Spectator, TheAustralian and Wall Street Journal

Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch donates $50,000 in memory of late correspondent — News Corp founder gives gift to Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting as his company prepares for de-merger — Rupert Murdoch has donated $50,000 (£32,000) to a New York university in memory …

Dominic Rushe / Guardian:
Rupert Murdoch splits empire but keeps faith in tomorrow's newspapers

Discussion: Big News Network.com

Craig Timberg / Washington Post:

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

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

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

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

Josh Sternberg / Digiday:

How PBS Won at Digital — Millions of Americans can point to PBS as a third parent, as the network that helped raise them with programs like “Sesame Street” and “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.” — But PBS is not immune to the transition from analog to digital and needs to continually reinvent itself.

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 and Variety

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 …

Mitch Stoltz / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Looking Deeper into MPAA's Copyright Agenda — It's time to rethink copyright law, say the U.S. Register of Copyrights and the chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. Hearings, speeches, and lots of quiet maneuvering have begun to shape “the next great copyright act.”

Telegraph:

BBC spent £28m of licence-fee payers' money gagging 500 staff — The BBC has used licence fee payers' money to buy the silence of more than 500 staff with payouts of up to £500,000 each. — According to figures released under Freedom of Information, in the past five years 539 staff …

Discussion: Guardian and London News

Andrew Wallenstein / Variety:

Netflix Announces Next Market: the Netherlands — Country likely to be the company's only overseas addition in 2013 — Netflix is going Dutch. — The Netherlands will be the next country to get the streaming service, the company announced late Tuesday.

Discussion: PR Newswire, paidContent, Home Media Magazine, TechCrunch, Softpedia News and The Next Web

Tom Kludt / Talking Points Memo:

Nate Silver: Politico Co-Founders Lack ‘Curiosity For The World Outside Of The Bubble’ — Nate Silver has some thoughts about Politico. Plenty of them. — In an email sent Tuesday to TPM (posted below), Silver — who nailed the 2012 presidential election by correctly forecasting the outcome …

Discussion: @evgenymorozov and The Huffington Post