Mediagazer: DCist editor fired after freelancing spat (Erik Wemple/Washington Post)

3:30 PM ET, August 7, 2013

Top News:

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

AOL Bets On Programmatic With Adap.TV, Pulls Back On Patch — Here's a sign that Tim Armstrong feels he's regained control of the narrative at AOL : He's back in the market for big-ticket items. — AOL's $405 million purchase of the video advertising platform Adap.TV is the biggest acquisition …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, FishbowlNY, BuzzMachine, Street Fight, CNET, The Atlantic Wire, Business Insider and Poynter

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

AOL Is Acquiring Video Ad Platform Adap.tv For $405M — TechCrunch-owner AOL just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire video advertising platform Adap.tv in a deal that should be worth a total of $405 million — $322 million in cash and $83 million in AOL common stock.

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

AOL Q2 Comes In (Slightly) Above Estimates With $541M Revenue, $0.35 Earnings Per Share — AOL just released its earnings report for the second quarter of the year, coming in ahead of Wall Street expectations with revenue of $541 million, up 2 percent percent from the same period last year, and diluted earnings per share of $0.35.

Discussion: Forbes, NetNewsCheck Latest, Broadcasting & Cable, Media Money …, @pkafka, AdExchanger, @jeffjohnroberts and The Wrap

Staci D. Kramer / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Don Graham on the sale of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, and the pace of newsroom innovation — Washington Post Co. chairman and CEO Don Graham kept the decision to sell the heart of the family business exceptionally quiet for months, avoiding public drama and employee angst while he went white-knight shopping.

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, Corey Pein, Xconomy, Washington Post, IJNet Blog, Forbes, Business Insider, Washington Post, The Blotter, Lean Back 2.0, @jayrosen_nyu, The Content Standard, Corey Pein, USA Today, Talking Biz News, The New York Observer, TIME and Wall Street Journal

Jennifer Saba / Reuters:

Amazon's Bezos pays hefty price for Washington Post — (Reuters) - Jeff Bezos has just shown how valuable one-of-a-kind newspaper properties can still be in the United States. — The multibillionaire founder of online retailer Amazon.com Inc may have paid more than four times the price …

Discussion: Mediaite, The Daily Beast, Broadcasting & Cable and Beyond Search

Bloomberg:

Bezos's E-Book Overhaul Provides Blueprint for Post — Jeff Bezos has already transformed one traditional print business — books — into a digital one. The experience provides a blueprint for how the billionaire technology executive is now poised to overhaul newspapers following his $250 million acquisition of the Washington Post.

The Huffington Post:
Washington Post Sale Turns Attention To Sulzbergers' Ownership Of The New York Times

Discussion: Washington Post, Poynter, Online NewsHour, FishbowlNY, Bloomberg and @thelloydgrove

Chris Kirkham / The Huffington Post:
Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan Bet May Have Cost It The Paper

Discussion: New Republic and Co.Labs

Lynne Marek / Crain's Chicago Business:
How will Globe, Post sales affect Tribune?

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Om Malik / GigaOM:
A new Babylon and the rise of the tech tycoon

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, New York Times, Mediashift, The New Yorker Blog and News Desk

Dylan Byers / Politico:

CNN taps Bloomberg TV head to oversee new digital integration effort — In a new effort to “connect digital and television,” CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker has announced that Bloomberg TV head Andrew Morse will join the network as Senior Vice President overseeing domestic newsgathering …

Discussion: TVNewser, multichannel.com/rss, CNN and The Huffington Post

AdAge:

Time Inc. Spinoff Delayed Until Early Next Year — Publishing Revenue Slips While TV Grows — Time Warner said Tuesday that it won't complete its plan to separate Time Inc. division into an independent company this year as anticipated, prolonging a period of uncertainty at the publishing division just a little bit longer.

Associated Press:
Time Warner 2Q net income jumps 87 pct

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Knight gives $345,000 to Philadelphia media incubator — The Knight Foundation is putting $345,000 into Project Liberty, a digital media incubator housed in the headquarters of Interstate General Media, which owns The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com.

Discussion: Knight Foundation, Knight Foundation, ArkansasBusiness.com and blogs.phillymag.com

Philip Bump / The Atlantic Wire:

This Year's Yemen Leak Isn't Angering Congress as Much as Last Year's — Someone in the government told the press confidential details of a terror operation centered on Yemen. In 2012, that meant broad outcry, with members of Congress calling for investigations and criminal charges. In 2013: crickets.

Discussion: CBS News and Guardian

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:
McClatchy Editor Defends Publishing Al Qaeda Detail CNN, NY Times Held Back

Discussion: Techdirt, TIME, @mitchellreports and Guardian

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

DCist editor fired after freelancing spat — In a testament to the cachet of a BuzzFeed byline, DCist Editor-in-Chief Ben Freed has been dismissed from his position after he placed a freelance piece with the popular news site. Speaking about the matter last night, Freed sounded a bit dazed by the ouster …

Discussion: FishbowlDC, Erik Wemple, @robpegoraro and @clarajeffery

Sam Thielman / Adweek:

Fox Will Invest $150 Million in Broadcast Programming — The newly-created 21st Century Fox had its first earnings call on Tuesday afternoon, and, perhaps befitting its status as half of the old News Corp., took half as long as most earnings calls with 15 minutes of presentation and another 15 minutes allotted for a Q&A.

Discussion: Financial Times and Sydney Morning Herald

Tony Maglio / The Wrap:
21st Century Fox Reports Q4 Revenue Gain

Discussion: Bloomberg, Hollywood Reporter, Reuters, The Australian, India & World, New York Times, Broadcasting & Cable, MediaPost, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Variety

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

BBC introduces cautions for user-generated content — Research finds three quarters of amateur footage used in coverage of the Arab spring was not accompanied by warnings — The BBC has started issuing on-air cautions for user-generated material it broadcasts, following research showing …

Discussion: @cward1e, @chrishams and @tvnewslab

Matthew Jarzemsky / MoneyBeat:

Ad-Tech Company YuMe's IPO Prices Well Below Target — YuMe Inc. saw its initial public offering price well below its expected range, a sign investors remain skeptical of new entrants in digital advertising. — The company priced an offering of 5.1 million shares for $9 each late Tuesday …

Discussion: Forbes, Forbes, Bloomberg, NASDAQ.com and AllThingsD

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Cord-Cutting No Longer an ‘Urban Myth’: Pay TV Operators Drop 316,000 Subs in Past Year — Industry faces steeper losses even as housing market shows signs of recovery, according to Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett — The number of Americans jettisoning pay TV is still fairly small …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal and Multichannel.com

Brian Moylan / Guardian:

Nielsen's tracking of Twitter's relation to TV is missing the point — Aside from its Twitter innovation, it can't keep up with all the different ways we're all Keeping Up with the Kardashians — Just last week Japan broke a world record and sent 143,109 tweets per second over one event.

Discussion: Nielsen, Kotaku, Globe and Mail and AllThingsD

Electronista:

Study: Apple tops in content streaming, beating Netflix, HBO GO — Ranking proves again that value of experience can trump content — A study done by customer experience research firm ForeSee has surveyed customers of mobile media and entertainment sites and found that generally …

Discussion: App Advice, VentureBeat, Cult of Mac, iClarified and 9to5Mac