Mediagazer: BBC hires Whitehall veteran PR to repair its tarnished image (Lisa O'Carroll/Guardian)

10:00 AM ET, September 13, 2013

Top News:

The Twitter of Tomorrow — This afternoon, Twitter officially, and secretly, filed documents to the S.E.C. in advance of its I.P.O. The company is worth billions upon billions of dollars, and its founders will become extremely rich sometime in the next year.

Discussion: BuzzFeed, blog.twitter.com, @nxthompson, PandoDaily, @piercedavid, CNET, Mashable and Marketing Pilgrim

AllThingsD:

Does Twitter Have a Growth Problem? — Is Twitter growing fast enough? — This seems like an odd question to ask, since the company has just told the world that it's getting ready to go public. — But there are signs that the company isn't adding users at the pace it had expected.

Discussion: Softpedia News, Mashable, @allthingsd, @mikeisaac, Wired.co.uk, Forbes, Mediaite, The Wrap and Broadcasting & Cable

Jeff John Roberts / GigaOM:

Twitter makes IPO plans official: files confidential S-1, but expected value is about $14B — Twitter has announced its long-awaited IPO in, what else, a tweet that came after market closed on Thursday: … Twitter's note that this is a confidential filing means the company's annual revenue is less than $1 billion.

Ben Popper / The Verge:
Twitter files for “confidential” IPO, suggesting its annual revenue is less than $1B

Discussion: Bloomberg, GigaOM, Fortune, eMedia Vitals, DealBook, Forbes, Digits, NPR, Mercury News, MoneyBeat, @joshuatopolsky and @dannysullivan

Journalism.co.uk:

Sun on Sunday gets a ‘refresh’ and new editor — Sun editors also announce a ‘multimillion pound investment’ in The Sun, which six weeks ago launched a £2-a-week paywall — Read more — Other top stories — Also on Journalism.co.uk...

Discussion: Guardian, Press Gazette, Big News Network.com, The Independent, TheMediaBriefing.com, FeaturesExec Media Database and The Drum

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Sun readers strongly support Page 3 topless models, says News UK boss — Male and female readers of the Sun “strongly support” Page 3 topless models, according to the chief executive of the paper's publisher News UK. Mike Darcey said that ultimately any decision on the future of the Page 3 models …

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

Tina Brown to Write Memoir — Tina Brown, the veteran editor who announced on Wednesday that she is departing The Daily Beast and magazine journalism, has struck a deal to write a memoir, she said in an interview on Thursday. — The book, titled “Media Beast,” will chronicle her career in magazines …

Discussion: New York Post, @rachelsklar, NPR, @koblin, New York Magazine and The Huffington Post

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
Daily Beast's fate to be decided by ‘first week in October’

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, The Wrap, New York Magazine, @joepompeo, paidContent, @jayrosen_nyu and @erikwemple

Elspeth Reeve / The Atlantic Wire:

Rick Stengel Is at Least the 15th Journalist to Move to the Obama Administration — Time managing editor Rick Stengel (pictured above) is leaving journalism to go work for the State Department, making him at least the 15th reporter to go to work for the Obama administration.

Discussion: The Daily Beast

Capital New York:

Rick Stengel to leave ‘Time’ for U.S. State Department — Richard Stengel, the top editor of Time magazine for the past seven years, is planning to step down as managing editor for a new job at the U.S. Department of State, sources familiar with the situation tell Capital New York and POLITICO.

Discussion: Reuters, New York Times, @aburnspolitico, @mlcalderone, @thestalwart, @ethanklapper, @mikenizza, The Huffington Post, AdAge and New York Magazine

Sari Horwitz / Washington Post:

Media shield act moves on to the full Senate — A Senate panel on Thursday backed legislation that would offer protections to a broad variety of journalists who do not want to divulge their confidential sources of information. — The key point of debate over the bill …

Discussion: New York Times, The Verge, Dave Winer, Law Blog, Broadcasting & Cable, @jilliancyork, @jilliancyork, @asher_wolf, @dellcam, @sueblueswilson, @mzimmerman_esq, RT, Washington Wire, @washingtonpost, @feardept, @medialawrocks, @atompkins and @attackerman

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Shield Law Moves Forward, Defines Journalism So That It Leaves Out Wikileaks & Random Bloggers

Discussion: @cassandrarules, The Atlantic Wire, @metalchris, @poormansmedia, Freedom of the Prez, @dangillmor, @rbakerny, @franklomonte, @nathanlfuller, Big News Network.com and @spj_tweets

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:

Belo Investors to Vote Against Gannett — Investor opposition to the terms of Gannett Co.'s $1.5 billion takeover offer for TV station-owner Belo Corp. is intensifying, two weeks before Belo shareholders are due to vote—putting a spotlight on the question of whether Belo should have put itself up for a broader auction.

Discussion: Gannett Blog, @keachhagey and MoneyBeat

Salt Lake Tribune:

Trib changes leadership, reduces staff by nearly 20 percent — Salt Lake Tribune Editor Nancy Conway, a passionate advocate for open records and government accountability, announced Thursday to the newsroom staff that Publisher William Dean Singleton is stepping down and that she and Editorial …

Discussion: Poynter, @hunterschwarz, @jjsportsbeat, @kylegoon, @gwarchol and @davemontero

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

BBC hires Whitehall veteran PR to repair its tarnished image — John Shield appointed director of communications after a year damaged by Savile scandal and executive pay row — The BBC has hired a Whitehall veteran to overhaul its communications and PR practices after a catastrophic year …

John Plunkett / Guardian: BBC's James Purnell warns of risk to independence from spending watchdog

Eliot Van Buskirk / Evolver.fm:

Twitter Releases Spotify App — Remember when Twitter bought We Are Hunted, whose creators then built Twitter's #music app, which was initially super popular in part due to its cool design and the fact that everybody uses Twitter, but then it ran into a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem?

Discussion: GigaOM, TechRadar.com, Music Ally, Engadget, CNET, The Next Web and Pocket-lint

BBC:

Freelance journalist arrested for inappropriate payments, 72nd arrest under Operation Elveden — Journalist held in payments probe — A freelance journalist has been arrested at his home in Northumberland by police investigating inappropriate payments to public officials.

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Number of tracks illegally downloaded in UK falls by a third — Ofcom says number of pirated tracks, from artists such as Adele and One Direction, fell to 199m from 301m in the past year — The number of pirated music tracks in the UK has fallen by a third to 199m in the past year, according to research published by Ofcom.

Discussion: NME

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

The Story Behind the Putin Op-Ed Article in The Times — A Times reader, Lawrence DeVine, has a few questions about The Times's publication of an Op-Ed article in Thursday's paper by Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia. He asks: “Did he call up the editorial page editor and say …