Mediagazer: Senate presses ahead with media shield law (Donna Cassata/Associated Press)

2:35 PM ET, August 1, 2013

Top News:

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Digital subscriptions up 35% at New York Times & IHT, 70% at Boston Globe — Circulation revenues in the second quarter of 2013 rose 5.1 percent over the same period the year before, a company earnings report says. Advertising revenue fell 5.8 percent over the same period. Overall, revenue was down by .9 percent.

Discussion: Forbes, Media & Entertainment, FishbowlNY, Boston Herald, The New York Times Company, @learmonth, @vkw, NetNewsCheck Latest, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, New York Times, @mathewi and Mashable

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

The NYT's $150 million-a-year paywall — Growth slows sharply, but digital-subscriber revenue is propping up the paper — The New York Times's once-torrid paywall growth continued to slow in the second quarter, adding 23,000 digital-only subscribers. — That's the second quarter in a row …

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

New York Times Profit Tops Estimates on Digital Subscribers — New York Times Co. (NYT), the newspaper publisher controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, reported second-quarter profit that beat analysts' estimates as it drew more subscribers for its digital editions.

Discussion: @paulxharris

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York: Times C.E.O. Mark Thompson stays the course in second-quarter earnings call

Will Bunch / Philly.com:

The de-newspaperization of America — It used to be there were local newspapers everywhere. If you wanted to be a journalist, you could really make a good living working for your hometown paper. Now you have a few newspapers that make a profit because they are national brands …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, Businessweek, GalleyCat, @urvaksh, Columbia Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review, @johnrobinson, @will_bunch, @jmartnyt, @jfdulac, @adamwagner1990, @majorcbs, Crain's Cleveland Business, @franklomonte, @tom_derrico, Talking Biz News, Facebook and Erik Wemple

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Plain Dealer plans special print section to explain shift to digital — The Plain Dealer, which laid off about 50 employees Wednesday, “plans a six-page special section in Sunday's paper to further explain the changes ahead,” Jay Miller reports. — The laid-off employees …

Discussion: Cleveland Magazine, Connie Schultz …, FishbowlNY, Cleveland Leader and Associated Press

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Despite Controversy, Rolling Stone ‘Boston Bomber’ Issue Is a Hit on Newsstands — Rolling Stone's “Boston Bomber” issue got a rash of bad publicity and retailers like CVS and Stop & Stop pulled it from shelves after a “Boycott Rolling Stone” campaign gained steam on Facebook.

Discussion: Mediaite, Erik Wemple, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, The Independent, WebProNews, @simonhoupt, Daily Mail, The Big Lead, TheBlaze.com, Gawker, Softpedia News, New York Magazine, The Drum and FTVLive

RT:

Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport — NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia and is allowed to enter the country's territory. — The whistleblower has been granted temporary political asylum in Russia, Snowden's legal representative Anatoly Kucherena said.

Brad Stone / Businessweek:

Can Marissa Mayer Save Yahoo? — Marissa Mayer is sitting in URLs, the Yahoo! (YHOO) cafeteria, making the case for the future of a company that almost everyone in Silicon Valley views as doomed. Employees swarm around her, assembling rows of chairs for the afternoon's FYI …

Discussion: The Verge and @clairecm

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Dish Hit With 53-Station Blackout in Fight With Raycom — Local stations go dark for satcaster in 36 markets in latest clash over retransmission payments — In the latest blowup over broadcast TV retransmission fees, Dish Network customers in 36 markets lost access to 53 television stations owned …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, TVSpy and EON

Cotton Delo / AdAge:

U.S. Adults Now Spending More Time on Digital Devices Than Watching TV — Digital Devices Now Get More Than Five Hours Per Day, According to eMarketer — American adults this year will for the first time spend more time each day using digital media than watching TV, according to a new report by eMarketer.

Discussion: MediaPost, CNET, Financial Times, Kirk LaPointe's …, brafton.com, eMedia Vitals and Marketing Pilgrim

Eric R Danton / Rolling Stone:

Bradley Manning Hollywood Drama Planned — ‘We Steal Secrets’ makers seeking screenwriters for new film — A Hollywood drama about whistleblower Bradley Manning is already in the works: Variety reports that Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney and producer Marc Shmuger are seeking writers …

Discussion: Associated Press, The Moviefone Blog and Guardian

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:
Did the media drop the ball on the Bradley Manning trial?

Discussion: Poynter, Free Press, @froomkin, Foreign Policy, @sulliview, @piratenpartij, @abeaujon, @niemanlab and New York Times

Christopher Flavelle / Bloomberg:

If Politics Is So Easy, Why Can't Journalists Do It? — Chrystia Freeland, a columnist and senior editor at Thomson Reuters, said last week that she's quitting her job to run for political office in Canada, where she was born. Freeland is an accomplished journalist and the author of a book …

Discussion: @edmundlee, @adwooldridge, @scottbix, @bloombergview and @scroll

Greg Sandoval / The Verge:

Netflix debuts multiple user profiles so your roomate won't screw up your recommendations — Members of a household using one Netflix account can each create their own viewing page — Netflix has built one of the world's most powerful recommendation engines.

Discussion: Netflix US & Canada Blog, Engadget, VentureBeat, AllThingsD and The Next Web

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

German Publishers Can't Wean Themselves Off Google News, Despite Winning Copyright Law Change — Germany's new copyright law comes into force today but several major German publishers haven't rushed to pull their news snippets from Google News, despite lobbying in favour of tightening the law.

Discussion: CNET, The Verge, Forbes, Nieman Journalism Lab, Plagiarism Today, GigaOM, New Zealand Herald and Engadget

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Hulu Plans to Hook Subscription Service Into Google Chromecast — Online TV joint venture says it is ‘actively working’ with Google to add Hulu Plus access to $35 streaming adapter — Google's cheap Chromecast Internet TV adapter already lets users stream free Hulu content to their televisions …

Discussion: Mashable, AfterDawn.com, New York Times, SlashGear, Gizmodo, WebProNews, Broadcasting & Cable, TechnoBuffalo, The Verge, Softpedia News, Engadget, Business Insider and ReadWrite

Rebecca J. Rosen / The Atlantic Online:

The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish — A book published during the presidency of Chester A. Arthur has a greater chance of being in print today than one published during the time of Reagan. — Last year I wrote about some very interesting research …

Discussion: The Switch and New Yorker

Linda Kinstler / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Dis bonjour à LesEchos360, a French Techmeme for biz news — A news site in 2013 can't be flat. That's why French business daily Les Echos is gearing up to release LesEchos360, an aggregation tool that will cull articles from around the web to provide readers with an “expert filter” of business news.

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

Fusion Hires Former ‘Daily Show’ EP To Develop News/Satire Programming — Fusion, the upcoming cable news channel from Univision and ABC News, has made a big hire: it is adding former “Daily Show” head writer and EP David Javerbaum to its executive ranks. Javerbaum will serve as an EP for Fusion …

Discussion: Politico, Variety, Deadline.com, Hollywood Reporter and ABC News

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Trinity Mirror profits flat despite ad revenue drop — Publisher says sales of the Daily Mirror are resilient but it expects market to remain ‘difficult’ for the rest of the year — Trinity Mirror, publisher of the Daily Mirror, has reported flat pre-tax profits of £30.4m in the first half …

Discussion: Press Gazette, Reuters, The Drum, LDP Business and HoldTheFrontPage

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

CBS President On ‘Illegal’ Aereo: 'We Don't Think It's Catching On At All' — Considering how hard his company has been trying to obtain a legal death warrant for Aereo, CBS president Les Moonves affected a suspiciously nonchalant air when talking about the streaming TV service on Wednesday's earnings call.

Discussion: Home Media Magazine