Mediagazer: Ex-BBC boss Thompson defends BBC severance payments in British parliament (Reuters)

1:35 PM ET, September 9, 2013

Top News:

Dylan Byers / Politico:

POLITICO publisher buys Capital New York — In an ambitious play for the New York market, POLITICO publisher Robert Allbritton has purchased the online news site Capital New York, with plans to make “a substantial investment” in the business and more than quadruple staff.

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:

Coming this fall: A new and improved Capital — We are in the news this morning: This website, which we launched in June of 2010, has been sold to Robert Allbritton, the owner of POLITICO. This is going to allow us to get bigger and better. Here's what we're doing now: - Hiring more people …

Discussion: The Wrap, FishbowlNY, @media_shepherd, @gillianmae and @tmcgev

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post: VandeHei on Capital NY purchase: “We're coming to play. We don't do small ball.”

David Carr / New York Times:

A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link — Barrett Brown makes for a pretty complicated victim. A Dallas-based journalist obsessed with the government's ties to private security firms, Mr. Brown has been in jail for a year, facing charges that carry a combined penalty of more than 100 years in prison.

Alexander Zaitchik / Rolling Stone:
Barrett Brown Faces 105 Years in Jail

Discussion: @skddc

Vindu Goel / NYT Bits:

Facebook allows news orgs to search public posts, see aggregate, anonymized data on private posts — Facebook Offers New Windows Into Social Conversation — Facebook is releasing two new search tools on Monday designed to give news organizations — and potentially, marketers …

Discussion: The Verge, Facebook, PC Advisor, Kirk LaPointe's …, memeburn, Digital TV Europe, @asmitch, Journalism.co.uk, The Drum, @lavrusik and bizjournals

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Memo #1 to Jeff Bezos: Try Washington Post Prime — Changes at The Washington Post's will be the most watched media story of the coming months and, perhaps, years. Why? First of all, with the iconic Watergate saga, The Post epitomized a historic high in print journalism.

Discussion: @niemanlab and Markham Nolan

Owen Thomas / ReadWrite:
The Data-Driven Future Of Journalism

Discussion: Street Fight and @stevebuttry

Michael Wolff / USA Today:

Tech journalist Kara Swisher is a feared player — In every journalism generation, there are various re-enactments of the 1957 movie Sweet Smell of Success, in which Burt Lancaster plays J.J. Hunsecker, the powerful and vindictive Broadway gossip columnist whose self-interest shapes everything he writes.

Discussion: Gannett Blog, @cgasparino and Big News Network.com

Elizabeth Jensen / New York Times:

‘PBS NewsHour’ Begins Its Overhaul — The 38-year-old “PBS NewsHour” began a new era this weekend, adding Saturday and Sunday newscasts for the first time and preparing for the debut on Monday of Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff as the new weeknight anchor team and the first female co-anchors at any network.

Discussion: @azmatzahra, @jayrosen_nyu and @vivianschiller

Betsy Rothstein / FishbowlDC:

Yahoo! News Names New Editor in Chief — Yahoo! News has hired Megan Liberman, deputy news editor at NYT, to be their new Editor in Chief. The interim editor was Chris Suellentrop, who will resume his duties as Deputy Editor. The previous editor was Hillary Frey, now Editorial Director of NBC News Digital. continued...

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Adweek, FishbowlNY, Business Insider and Softpedia News

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Livefyre Acquires Storify, Says The Social Curation Service Will Still Operate As Standalone Product — Livefyre, a commenting platform used by TechCrunch and other websites, is announcing that it has acquired social curation startup Storify. — The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, GigaOM and Journalism.co.uk

Kaylene Hong / The Next Web:

Tencent adds Disney, Pixar and Marvel blockbusters to its movie streaming service in China — Chinese Internet giant Tencent, which owns the popular messaging service WeChat, announced today that it has partnered with Disney Studio to stream films from Disney, Pixar or Marvel Studios …

Discussion: Digital Journal

David Taintor / Adweek:

CNET Is Targeting the Tech-Hungry Latino Market With a New Site — On Sept. 19, CBS Interactive's CNET will introduce CNET en Español, a Spanish-language edition of the tech news site that will be produced by a team of a dozen journalists. — To assist in the launch …

Discussion: @lturrentine

Reuters:

Ex-BBC boss Thompson defends BBC severance payments in British parliament — (Reuters) - Former BBC Director General Mark Thompson, now chief executive of the New York Times Company, on Monday defended large severance payments to senior BBC bosses that he said had ultimately helped the publicly funded broadcaster to cut costs.