Mediagazer: Britain's answer to BuzzFeed hopes silly games will be an even bigger money-spinner than cat videos (Leo Mirani/Quartz)

12:25 PM ET, October 2, 2013

Top News:

Anna Li / Poynter:

Government shutdown closes websites, affecting data journalists — Tourists, leaf-peepers and rambunctious World War II veterans weren't the only people inconvenienced by the partial government shutdown that began Tuesday: Journalists who deal with government data found themselves in a tough spot …

Discussion: Stars & Stripes, Forbes, IRE.org and UPROXX

Dan Froomkin / Al Jazeera America:
Reporting on government shutdown has failed democracy

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Poynter, The Week, Washington Wire, @manish_vij, @dustinslaughter, @binkytoes, @johnmcquaid, @dangillmor and The Atlantic Wire, Thanks:@jaredbkeller

John Hudson / Foreign Policy:
In Shutdown, Government-Funded News Declared ‘Essential to National Security’

Discussion: Poynter and Bangor Daily News

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Chromecast Adds Hulu to Its Modest App Collection — Back in July, when Google introduced its Chromecast Web TV gadget, it said that the device would eventually support apps from services like Hulu. So here's the Hulu app the company had talked about, available via Google Play and Apple's App Store.

Discussion: Forbes, The Official Google Blog, Hulu Blog, Broadcasting & Cable, @allthingsd, Pocket-lint, 9to5Mac and Softpedia News

Dawn C. Chmielewski / Los Angeles Times:
Study: Chromecast allows users to circumvent TV viewing restrictions

Discussion: VideoNuze Analysis and @pkafka

Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke / The New York Observer:

Reuters Will Cut Around Five Percent Across Editorial — Stephen Adler said that there will be around a five percent cut in editorial across Reuters, the president and editor in chief announced during a staff conference call this morning. — The cuts will be broadly distributed across …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Talking Biz News

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

Lessons from The Dallas Morning News's failed paywall — The paper shuns the meter model and flops — In May 2009, Dallas Morning News publisher Jim Moroney told the Senate that a paywall didn't make sense for his newspaper unless everybody else did one too:

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, AdAge, @cjr, @jbenton and @ka_willey

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

The Washington Post closes sale to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos formally took over as the owner of The Washington Post on Tuesday, officially ending 80 years of local control of the newspaper by the Graham family.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Poynter, @jfdulac, The Switch, @jfdulac, AppNewser, WebProNews, Fast Company, MinOnline, Politico and @washingtonpost

Jia Lynn Yang / Washington Post:
The future of the Washington Post Co. without its flagship newspaper

Discussion: @romenesko

Cynthia Littleton / Variety:

CBS Leads News and Documentary Emmy Award Winners — ‘60 Minutes,’ ‘CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley’ lead Eye to dozen wins — CBS lead TV news hounds with a dozen wins at the 34th annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, presented Tuesday night at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, TVNewser and CBS News

Ryan Tate / Wired:

Twitter Founder Reveals Secret Formula for Getting Rich Online — Ev Williams has figured out the internet. — That's what he told the gathered tech heads at the recent XOXO conference in Portland, Oregon, and while he may have said this with tongue partly in cheek, he spent …

Discussion: @joshelman and @jayrosen_nyu

Michael Carney / PandoDaily:

Intel exec Erik Huggers throws his hat into the (surprisingly crowded) Hulu CEO ring — Early this year, it seemed like no one associated with Hulu wanted to claim ownership of it. In January, the company's CEO and CTO both announced their resignation, moves that were followed by multiple high level executive departures.

Discussion: FierceOnlineVideo News, C21Media and Digital Trends

Tim Peterson / AdAge:
Hulu Ad Chief JP Colaco Is Latest to Depart Video Service

Discussion: Hulu Blog, Variety and AllThingsD

Megan McArdle / Bloomberg:

We Are Googling the New York Times to Death — This morning brought Eleanor Clift's reminiscence about 50 years at Newsweek to my Twitter feed. Those words alone seem to tell the story: Newsweek was a phenomenally successful product designed for a world that no longer exists.

Discussion: @niemanlab and Capital New York

Tara Conlan / Guardian:

BBC cuts: just four senior management jobs set for closure — NUJ official says journalists bear brunt of latest round of cuts to posts, with 75 earmarked for closure in news and current affairs — BBC News has earmarked 75 posts for closure, but there are concerns that only four are in senior manager positions.

New York Times:

Hollywood Advancing Clinton Film — LOS ANGELES — Two television projects about Hillary Rodham Clinton collapsed under political pressure this week, but she may yet get her close-up on screen, this time from Hollywood. — A third biographical portrayal of Mrs. Clinton …

Discussion: BBC and Los Angeles Times

Dean Starkman / Columbia Journalism Review:

Newspaper self-destruction: Providence Journal edition — Executive bonuses and newsroom cuts do not go together — If the digital revolution has done nothing else, it has exposed the extent to which American newspapers have relied on their quasi-monopolistic control over local advertising markets to fund news operations.

Leo Mirani / Quartz:

Britain's answer to BuzzFeed hopes silly games will be an even bigger money-spinner than cat videos — At the end of August, when a joint Anglo-American strike on Syria seemed inevitable, a British website posted an article headlined “The US Department of Defense isn't sure where Damascus is: statistical proof.”

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Scribd Book Service Adds HarperCollins Titles — The fledgling books subscription business is getting more competitive. — News Corp .'s HarperCollins Publishers has agreed to make available the majority of its U.S. backlist titles to a books subscription service operated by Scribd Inc., a Web-based service.

Discussion: Digits

Alexander Panin / The Moscow Times:

Viacom Takes Control for MTV Russia Relaunch — Global media giant Viacom was set to relaunch its world-famous MTV channel on Russian cable and satellite networks Tuesday, part of a strategy to focus on a local market that promises growing audiences. — With 8 million more households expected …

Discussion: Radio & Television …

Wall Street Journal:

Thomson Reuters Undertakes Review — Thomson Reuters Inc. plans a fresh review of the company's business units, in the latest sign the data provider is looking for ways to respond to weak demand from its financial services clients. — In a video emailed to staff on Tuesday …

Discussion: Corporate Intelligence, @keachhagey, @peterlauria3 and Talking Biz News

Celestine Bohlen / New York Times:

In Syria, Advocates Step In to Sift for Truth — PARIS — What to believe? That's a key question in the diplomatic duel over Syria, as Russia continues to dispute evidence in a United Nations inspectors' report that points to the Syrian government's complicity in the Aug. 21 chemical attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.

Greg Mitchell / The Nation:

‘NYT’ Fingers McClatchy for ‘Terror’ Leak—and Now McClatchy Hits Back — Yesterday morning the top story at the New York Times site reported on US analysts feeling that the early-August leak to the media on how Al Qaeda communicates had done more to harm our anti-terrorism effort than anything revealed by Edward Snowden.

Discussion: The Huffington Post