Mediagazer: Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras Teaming Up With Glenn Greenwald On New Media Venture (Michael Calderone/The Huffington Post)

11:50 AM ET, October 16, 2013

Top News:

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras Teaming Up With Glenn Greenwald On New Media Venture — NEW YORK — Journalists Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras will be working with Glenn Greenwald on a new media venture funded by billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Poynter, Big News Network.com, Gawker, The Switch, @tcarmody, Press Gazette and Pressing Issues

BuzzFeed:

Exclusive: Glenn Greenwald Will Leave Guardian To Create New News Organization — Glenn Greenwald, the lawyer and blogger who brought the Guardian the biggest scoop of the decade, is departing the London-based news organization, for a brand new, large-scale, broadly-focused media outlet, he told BuzzFeed Tuesday.

Mark Hosenball / Reuters:

Exclusive: Greenwald exits Guardian for new Omidyar media venture — (Reuters) - Glenn Greenwald, who has made headlines around the world with his reporting on U.S. electronic surveillance programs, is leaving the Guardian newspaper to join a new media venture funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar …

Discussion: Washington Post, The Verge, New York Magazine, @qhardy, Softpedia News, Mediaite and GigaOM

Charlie Savage / New York Times:

Court Rejects Appeal Bid by Writer in Leak Case — WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal by James Risen, an author and a reporter for The New York Times, who was ordered in July to testify in the trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency official accused of leaking information to him.

Discussion: Poynter, Politico, Talking Points Memo, @charlie_savage, @ggreenwald, @mattapuzzo, New York Magazine and The Newspaper Guild

PandoDaily:

$40-million round for Vox seals it: Venture capital likes media — Vox's new mega-round puts a bow on content's “holy s**t” moment — Today it was revealed that Vox Media, owner of The Verge, SB Nation, and Polygon has raised another $40 million of funding.

Discussion: @emilybell, @editorialiste, @hsmittman, @codytoshiro, @elegantlywasted, @robpegoraro, @rafat and TechCrunch

Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:
Why Accel Is Leading A $40M Round In Vox Media, A Digital Content Company (!)

Discussion: Digital Media Wire, @markos, @reckless and @rafat

Tim Peterson / AdAge:
Vox Media Raises $34 Million to Expand Video Business

Discussion: TechCrunch, Fortune, @hblodget, VentureBeat, bizjournals, Reuters, VideoInk, @pkafka, @jorilallo, @reckless, GigaOM and AllThingsD

Andrea Peterson / The Switch:

Aaron Swartz's last gift to journalism and online privacy finds a new home — (Daniel J. Sieradski via Flickr) — Before Aaron Swartz's suicide in January, he had nearly completed work with Wired's Kevin Poulsen on a secure system to accept messages and documents from anonymous sources over the Internet.

Discussion: Freedom of the Press …, Softpedia News, The Verge, Techdirt, TIME, Co.Exist, The Huffington Post and Mashable

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

BBC to Name Head of VOD Service, Treat It Like Fifth TV Channel — Director of television Danny Cohen discusses possible on-demand offers, expected cost cuts and when broadband delivery of content may supersede broadcasting in the U.K. — LONDON - The BBC is planning to name a controller …

Discussion: Guardian

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline:

Marvel Preps 60-Episode Package Of Four Series & A Mini For VOD & Cable Networks — EXCLUSIVE: The notorious secrecy that surrounds Marvel's projects has been heightened to the nth degree for this one. No one would breathe a word, with rumors that everyone from top to bottom is bound …

Discussion: Wired, The Huffington Post, Digital Spy, /Film and The Verge

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Twitter's changing its direct messaging policy, some journalists are ready to take advantage — Twitter is changing an old policy that meant that you could only be DM'd by — that is, you could only receive a direct message from — users that you follow. (So if I follow John Doe …

Discussion: Mashable and Pocket-lint

Casey Newton / The Verge:
This just in: why news is Twitter's next frontier

Discussion: @mcproulx

Jim Romenesko:

Patch now has some unstaffed sites — Patch now has three types of sites: Staffed, Lightly Staffed, and Unstaffed. They're explained in a memo sent this morning by Patch Media CEO Bud Rosenthal. … * Here's an example of an unstaffed Patch site — * Read Patch editors' farewells

Discussion: Poynter

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:

AwesomenessTV, Hearst to Create Channel Aimed at Teen Girls — Keach Hagey … When Hearst Corp. wanted to expand its affluent-male Esquire brand into television, it linked up with a cable channel. But to establish a video channel for its teen girl bible Seventeen, Hearst is turning to Google Inc. 's YouTube.

Discussion: Folio, The Wrap, Digital Journal and Variety

Matthew Futterman / Wall Street Journal:

NFL Explores New Slate of Thursday Night Games — SHALINI RAMACHANDRAN — Shalini Ramachandran … The National Football League is considering selling another slate of Thursday games to a media outlet to increase the audience for football on one of television's most competitive nights …

Discussion: Deadline.com, NY Daily News, bizjournals, ESPN, Bleacher Report, CBSSports.com and Awful Announcing

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

MPAA Says Piracy Damages Can't Be Measured — As the trial date moves closer, the arguments between the MPAA and BitTorrent search engine isoHunt are heating up. — One of the issues the two parties are in disagreement over is whether isoHunt should be able to question the notion that piracy is actually hurting the movie industry.

Discussion: Softpedia News

Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:

Can digital rentals block piracy? New site gathers the data — The most popular content still isn't available quickly, cheaply, and legally. — Google made changes to its search algorithm last year in an effort to demote sites associated with piracy, but the entertainment industry continues …

Discussion: The Switch, Gizmodo and Technology Liberation Front

Shalini Ramachandran / Corporate Intelligence:

In Aereo Fight, Are Comcast and NBCUniversal at Odds? … Are Comcast Corp.'s cable business and its NBCUniversal entertainment unit on the same page when it comes to the Aereo legal battle? That's a question worth asking in the wake of Friday's petition by major broadcasters seeking …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times and @shaliniwsj

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:

Ebook subscription startup Oyster expands to iPad and opens to all; some stats from Scribd — Oyster, the Peter Thiel-backed startup that aims to be a Netflix for ebooks, was iPhone-only and invite-only for its first six weeks. On Wednesday, though, Oyster launched its iPad app and opened up to everyone.

Discussion: Oyster HQ Blog, VentureBeat, Fast Company, SlashGear and Talking New Media

Zach Bergson / Digiday:

NowThis: Snapchatting the News — NowThis News, the mobile video news organization whose push onto Instagram made headlines this summer, is now moving onto a new social video frontier: Snapchat. — Stories, Snapchat's latest feature, allows users to take a series of videos and images that can be viewed and shared within 24 hours.

Discussion: Mashable and @digiday

AdAge:

Effort to Split Murdoch From Chairman Role Resumes at 21st Century Fox — Similar Drives Have Fallen Short Before — 21st Century Fox Inc. investors backing a resolution to strip the chairman job from CEO Rupert Murdoch said they have won the support of shareholder-advisory firm Glass, Lewis & Co.

Discussion: Bloomberg

Patrick Wintour / Guardian:

Snowden leaks: David Cameron urges committee to investigate Guardian — PM says leaks have damaged national security and suggests MPs could ‘examine issue and make further recommendations’ — David Cameron has encouraged a Commons select committee to investigate whether the Guardian …

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Univision to Debut ‘Flama,’ Its First Online-Only Video Network, on YouTube — Hispanic broadcaster forms joint venture with Bedrocket for online Latin culture network aimed at millennials — Univision Communications has formed a joint venture with digital media producer Bedrocket Media to launch Flama …

Discussion: VideoInk and Tubefilter

Ben Quinn / Guardian:

New York Times editor defends journalists over Snowden leaks — Jill Abramson says on BBC's Newsnight that Guardian articles on NSA files are ‘very much in the public interest’ — Jill Abramson, executive editor of The New York Times, has mounted a defence of the ability of journalists …