Mediagazer: Pearson Posts Loss as Restructuring Continues (Simon Zekaria/Wall Street Journal)

5:35 AM ET, July 26, 2013

Top News:

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Pearson puts FT Group business Mergermarket up for sale — • Chief executive John Fallon insists Financial Times remains valued part of business and is not for sale — • Pearson reports £2.75bn in revenues, up 7% year on year, with adjusted operating profits down 26% to £137m

Discussion: Reuters, Bloomberg and NASDAQ.com

Simon Zekaria / Wall Street Journal:

Pearson Posts Loss as Restructuring Continues — U.K. Publisher Tries to Sharpen Focus on Digital Education, High-Growth Markets — LONDON—Pearson PLC said Friday that it swung to a first-half loss as the U.K.-based publisher continues to restructure its business to sharpen its focus on digital education and high-growth markets.

Discussion: Pearson

Xeni Jardin / Boing Boing:

Bradley Manning trial judge increased press security “because of repeat violations of the rules of court” — Col. Denise Lind, the Judge in the Bradley Manning military trial. Pic by Clark Stoeckley (twitter: @wikileakstruck). — Huffington Post reporter Matt Sledge read …

Discussion: @charlie_savage, The Huffington Post, @charlie_savage, @carwinb, @mgsledge, @freedomofpress, @nathanlfuller, @kgosztola and @kgosztola

Gloria Goodale / Christian Science Monitor: How Bradley Manning's ‘aiding the enemy’ charge could jolt journalism

Xeni Jardin / Boing Boing:
Journalists at Bradley Manning trial report hostile conditions for press

Discussion: Associated Press, Freedom of the Press …, @mgsledge, @trevortimm, TechCrunch, dissenter.firedoglake.com, @ikepigott, @jeffjarvis, New York Times and Reuters

Craig Newmark / The Huffington Post:

Trustworthy Journalism in a Fact-checking-free World — Getting real about trustworthy journalism — Okay, I really just want news I can trust. — Couple years ago, I blurted out that “the press should be the immune system of democracy.” — Personally, I really don't like being lied to …

Discussion: @mathewi, @ariannahuff and @buzenberg

Noah Feldman / Bloomberg:

Even Crazy Bloggers Deserve Safety From Subpoenas — The government has ways to make you talk, as writer James Risen was reminded when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered him last week to testify against the Central Intelligence Agency source who told him about covert operations regarding Iran's nuclear facilities.

Discussion: Blog Law Online, Freedom of the Press … and @ellnmllr

Miguel Helft / Fortune:

Laurene Powell Jobs backs ambitious media site — Ozy Media will create content for the so-called change generation. — FORTUNE — Laurene Powell Jobs, the intensely private widow of Steve Jobs, has teamed up with other Silicon Valley luminaries to back an ambitious new journalism site dubbed Ozy Media.

Discussion: @awallenstein, @lilmssociable, @mattrosoff, @jessicalessin, @mathewi, @bill_mcintosh and @dangillmor

Salvador Rodriguez / Los Angeles Times:

Google ends Chromecast-Netflix promotion ‘due to overwhelming demand’ — Citing overwhelming demand, Google on Thursday said it has ended a Netflix promotion tied to its new Chromecast TV dongle. — The promotion gave users, new and existing, three free months of Netflix's video streaming service …

Discussion: The Next Web, The Verge, Forbes, Softpedia News, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, CNET, VentureBeat, Engadget, Droid Life, Mashable, TUAW, GigaOM, @tcarmody, @hunterwalk, @mat, Broadcasting & Cable, Business Insider, ReadWrite, Electronista and Wired

Dan Nosowitz / Popular Science:
The One True Streaming TV Device

Discussion: Mediashift, Wired, VentureBeat and GigaOM

Adrienne LaFrance / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Gawker is letting readers rewrite headlines and reframe articles — Relegating online comments to the bottom of an article seems so old-school newspapery in retrospect, doesn't it? — Long the default for many news organizations online, the message is that reader comments are an afterthought …

Discussion: @matthewwells, @nicknotned, @kinja, FishbowlNY, @aaretz, @vbelairgagnon, @joemfbrown, @scrippsnews, @nicknotned, @johnjcook and @rbfishman

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

‘Post’ editor Col Allan being sent to Australia to guide News Corp. papers there — New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allan is leaving the paper—temporarily at least. — The tabloid's top man is being shipped off to his native Australia to provide “extra editorial leadership” …

Discussion: TheAustralian, @aus_media, @rob_stott, @tmcgev, @bobbymacreports, @sally_jackson, @davidfolkenflik, @rupertmurdochpr, @davidfolkenflik, @kbsmoke and mUmBRELLA

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Glenn Britt to Retire as Time Warner Cable Chief — When Glenn Britt got started in the nascent cable television business in the 1970s, no one knew whether people would pay a monthly fee for something that was already available for free through an antenna. “I thought that it was either …

Discussion: Variety, GigaOM, Business Insider and @brianstelter

Susan Berfield / Businessweek:

The End: Barnes & Noble in Silicon Valley — As the chief executive of Barnes & Noble (BKS) from 2010 to 2013, William Lynch might have had one of the most difficult jobs in the retail business. He made it harder still by running a large chain of bookstores as though it were a tech startup.

James Surowiecki / New Yorker: It's not over for Barnes & Noble.

Matt Wilstein / Mediaite:

The Wire's David Simon: Koch Brothers Buying Newspapers ‘Last Nail In The Coffin’ For Print Journalism — David Simon, who worked as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun for more than a decade before creating HBO's The Wire, has officially joined the fight against the Koch brothers' proposed takeover …

Discussion: AdAge and Politico

Sean Ludwig / VentureBeat:

Amazon fails to make a profit in Q2, but at least sales are good — Amazon just released some disappointing numbers for its 2013 second-quarter earnings. But there is one bright side — sales are looking good. — The company reported revenue of $15.7 billion with a loss of 2 cents per share.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Digits, AllThingsD, CNET, Forbes, Slate, Globe and Mail and The Wrap

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk:

New approaches to online video at the Wall Street Journal — Lessons in first-person interactive video from the WSJ — Copyright: Image by openDemocracy on Flickr. Some rights reserved — The Wall Street Journal earlier this month published a four-minute interactive video to explain changes …

Discussion: TVNewser

World News Publishing Focus:

Publishers pressured to promise ad viewability after study finds half of ads do not appear — Following a comScore study that found more than half of display ads go unseen, advertisers are demanding promises of viewability that publishers have explicitly been told not to provide.