Mediagazer: AllThingsD and the limits of the personal franchise news model (Dean Starkman/Columbia Journalism Review)

7:00 PM ET, September 24, 2013

Top News:

Suzanne LaBarre / Popular Science:

Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments — Starting today, PopularScience.com will no longer accept comments on new articles. Here's why. — Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off. — It wasn't a decision we made lightly.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

No new TV viewers or newspaper subscribers are being born, BuzzFeed president says — Speaking at a NewsCred conference last week, BuzzFeed President Jon Steinberg talked about his theory that content, and the ways it is distributed, will be “completely decoupled, I would say, in the next five years.”

Discussion: @noirinhegarty, @rajunarisetti, @dianaruggontv and @stuartdredge

P.J. Bednarski / mediapost.com:
Iger Sees Little Cord-Cutting, Says Netflix is Good, Not Dominant

Discussion: Home Media Magazine, Variety, Los Angeles Times and Deadline.com

Tony Maglio / The Wrap:

Aereo Expands to Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and San Antonio — Aereo, Inc. is adding four new cities to its nationwide expansion: Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana, and San Antonio, Texas. — The combined population of those four markets is eight million people.

Discussion: Radio & Television …, CNET, VentureBeat, multichannel.com/rss, Variety, Variety, Broadcast and Digital Journal

Tim Kenneally / The Wrap:

TheGrill: Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia - 'Cable's an Inefficient Packaging System' — Aereo — which has drawn the legal ire of networks for providing their content via tiny antennas — has been painted as a potential killer of the television and cable industries.

Discussion: Media Money …

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Dan Colarusso named executive editor of Reuters Digital — Dan Colarusso is the new executive editor of Reuters Digital, making him the third person this year to hold that title at the news service. — His appointment, announced in an internal memo obtained by Capital …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Talking Biz News, The Wrap, Politico, @niemanlab, @joepompeo, @peterlauria3, @antderosa and @peterlauria3

Eric Newton / Columbia Journalism Review:

Paying attention to the shield law's critics — Journalists shouldn't blindly support the shield law without taking in the whole picture — When a Senate committee this month approved the “Free Flow of Information Act of 2013,” applause was heard from scores of media shield law supporters …

Discussion: BuzzMachine, Slate, @heychrisbarr, @jeffjarvis and Kirk LaPointe's …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Pinterest Appeals To Publishers With New Article Pins, Pushes To Become A Bookmarking & “Read It Later” Service — Only days after announcing the launch of ads, social networking site Pinterest is now making an appeal to publishers. The company is today rolling out an updated “article” …

Discussion: Oh, How Pinteresting!, Fast Company, Betabeat, VatorNews, Guardian, Engadget, ReadWrite, @acbarette, The Verge, Mashable and GigaOM

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Twitter will send alerts to your phone about popular people and their tweets — Twitter will begin sending new push notifications to users based on the activity of the people they follow, whether it's a new account or a popular tweet. Based on Twitter's 6-month-old MagicRecs account …

Discussion: blog.twitter.com, CNET, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, @calebgarling, @panzer and The Next Web

Dean Starkman / Columbia Journalism Review:

AllThingsD and the limits of the personal franchise news model — A few breakout stars don't signal a general power shift in journalism — A couple of weeks ago, Felix Salmon asked: — “Can Rupert Murdoch hold on to Kara Swisher?” — Well, now we have our answer.

Discussion: @felixsalmon, @karaswisher, @emilybell and @ampressman

Rem Rieder / USA Today:

TV news should have on-air fact-checkers — You don't usually think of ESPN's Tony Kornheiser as a journalism ethics sage. A font of sports one-liners, sure. An adviser on ways to improve news outlets' accountability, not so much. But the co-host of Pardon the Interruption is on to something …

Discussion: @antderosa, @davidfolkenflik and TVSpy

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

UK music magazine NME experiments with charging for enhanced version of cover story — NME to experiment with online charges — Magazine will charge 69p for access to ‘enhanced digital’ version of its cover feature but says there are no plans for a full paywall

Jim Romenesko:

Rem Rieder is named USA Today feature editor — Rem Rieder, who resigned as American Journalism Review editor in June to become USA Today media editor, is taking on the additional duties of feature editor at Gannett's flagship paper. The editor's memo:

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

McClatchy to Shut Down Retirees' Health-Care Plan by End of 2014 — McClatchy Co., owner of 30 daily U.S. newspapers, plans to end its health-care plan for retirees at the end of next year, joining a wave of companies reassessing their coverage as the new Affordable Care Act goes into effect.

Discussion: @brianfaughnan

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Hulu CEO: $750M means you start getting more scripts — The acting chief of the online-television site said one effect of getting a cash infusion means more pitches for original content — but Hulu's ambitions there are relatively muted. — NEW YORK — Andy Forssell …

Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:

StumbleUpon Acquires Video Discovery Startup 5by — StumbleUpon, the Website discovery startup that has been around for more than a decade, announced on Tuesday it has acquired 5by, a Montreal-based video discovery startup. The six-person team will relocate to StumbleUpon's San Francisco-based offices …

Discussion: TechCrunch and CNET

Sara Morrison / The Wrap:

IBT Media's ‘No Jeans’ Dress Code May Be the Least of Employees' Worries — Reporters have made quite a fuss about a supposedly restrictive “no jeans” dress code at IBT Media, Newsweek's new owner. The worries sound overblown — and they're distracting from bigger ones.

Discussion: Politico, Adweek, @redletterdave, @alexckaufman and FishbowlNY

Karen Fratti / 10,000 Words:

BBC.com and Quora Partner Up For New Column — BBC.com and Quora announced a partnership this week. It's called the Quora Column, and BBC.com contributors will write columns based on popular discussions on the Q&A site. — They launched a trial column this summer on the travel pages, where it's been a success.

Discussion: mediapost.com and Slate

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

Troy Young Is Reinventing Hearst Digital With a Wrecking Ball — Digital President's Brusque Managing Style Brought In to Boost Web Presence of Cosmo, Esquire — Unlike his buttoned-up peers in the executive suite at Hearst, Troy Young doesn't keep an office, nor does he wear designer suits to work.

Discussion: @troyyoung, @elishahartwig and eMedia Vitals