Mediagazer: Vevo bags GEMA licensing deal to launch in Germany (Stuart Dredge/Music Ally)

1:50 AM ET, September 2, 2013

Top News:

BBC:

Sir David Frost, broadcaster and writer, dies at 74 — Veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost has died at the age of 74 after a suspected heart attack. — Sir David's career spanned journalism, comedy writing and daytime television presenting, including The Frost Report and That Was The Week That Was.

Discussion: Al Jazeera English, Guardian, New York Times, Associated Press, TVNewser, Telegraph, @beschlossdc, @nycjim, The Independent, Digital Spy, @davidgrann, @mcclatchydc, The Wrap, @bbcbreaking, @bbcnews, Mashable, NPR and Media Law Prof Blog

Peter Walker / Guardian:

David Frost: a career in clips — From That Was The Week That Was to the Nixon interviews to al-Jazeera, Frost delivered 50 years of broadcasting excellence — The difficulty in describing Sir David Frost's career arises both from the sheer scale of it - he achieved national fame …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, @bbcnews and Digital Spy

David Carr / New York Times:

Campaign Journalism in the Age of Twitter — In Timothy Crouse's seminal campaign book, “The Boys on the Bus,” the crusty political reporters settle on the story that they will tell the world at the end of the day. — For modern political reporters, the end of the day never arrives.

Discussion: @romenesko, @mlcalderone, @brianstelter, @jeffreygoldberg, @peterhambycnn, @lukerussert and Guardian

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

A Year in the Life of a Watchdog — IT'S a Monday morning in August — last Monday, to be precise — and more than 500 e-mails have arrived in the public editor's in-box. Some are spam. Some are requests for corrections or assignments, which can be sent to another desk.

Discussion: @yayitsrob, @bmitch, @sulliview, @jayrosen_nyu and Pressing Issues

Spiegel Online:

NSA Spied On Al Jazeera Communications — Arab news broadcaster Al Jazeera was spied on by the National Security Agency, according to documents seen by SPIEGEL. The US intelligence agency hacked into protected communication, a feat that was considered a particular success.

Discussion: Washington Post, Boing Boing, The Verge, VentureBeat, The Next Web, @csoghoian, @pasternack, ABC News and The Daily Caller

Felix Salmon:

Do online business models matter? — Nick Bilton has an odd column up about Business Insider and NSFWCorp — two publications which he has picked to represent the “reliant on ad revenue” and “reliant on subscription revenue” business models, respectively. He's particularly interested …

Discussion: @thelepathy and @mathewi

Alissa J. Rubin / New York Times:

Press Adds ‘What if?’ to Five W's in France — PARIS — What does a newspaper do over the summer in a country where nearly everybody goes on vacation at the same time? — With many French journalists (and their sources) away from late July to late August and many vacationing readers less inclined …

Discussion: @bachikarkaria, @africasacountry and @ibidibid

Al Jazeera English:

Egypt frees four-member Al Jazeera team — Four-man team set free after being detained for five days without charge, as three other staff are still in custody. — Egyptian authorities have freed a four-member team of Al Jazeera journalists after holding them in detention for five days without charge.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Globe and Mail and @antderosa

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Exclusive: Japan's Rakuten Acquires Viki Video Site for $200 Million — Japan's Internet e-commerce giant Rakuten is set to purchase Viki, a premium video site that has been described as “Hulu for the rest of the world.” — The deal was set to be announced next week …

Discussion: TechCrunch, GigaOM, ZDNet, App Advice and The Next Web

Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:

Vevo bags GEMA licensing deal to launch in Germany — YouTube's long-running licensing dispute with German collecting society GEMA has seen many music videos blocked in that country, and growing frustration from labels. Some good news for the latter, today: not a YouTube licensing deal in Germany …

Travis Andrews / Mashable:

Inside News Corp's $540 Million Bet on American Classrooms — In the middle of Brooklyn's high-end Dumbo neighborhood, 20 inner-city children sit around two wooden tables at what appears to be a small summer camp. Tablet computers are scattered across the tables, punctuated by plates of corn chips and bowls of salsa.

Chris Dorr / Digital Dorr:

Is ESPN worth what we are forced to pay? — Recently The New York Times revealed how much the typical cable operator (TWC or Comcast) pays per month for ESPN. For each subscriber the operator pays $5.54 for ESPN and .70 for ESPN 2-a grand total of $6.24 per month.

Discussion: @richbtig

Matt Buchanan / The New Yorker Blog:

Syria's Other Army: How the Hackers Wage War — At 5:41 P.M. on Tuesday, a tweet from the account of the hacker collective known as the Syrian Electronic Army, which supports the regime of Syria's President, Bashar al-Assad, said, “Media is going down...” It had been a couple of hours since …

Discussion: Krebs on Security, Crikey, The Wrap, The Public Editor's Journal and TVNewser