Mediagazer: Refinery29 ditches commerce, raising $20 million to double down on content (Erin Griffith/PandoDaily)

3:55 PM ET, October 16, 2013

Top News:

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

Why Pierre Omidyar decided to join forces with Glenn Greenwald for a new venture in news — Yesterday word leaked out that Glenn Greenwald would be leaving The Guardian to help create some new thing backed by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. I just got off the phone with Omidyar.

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, The Switch, @tcarmody, Gawker and Press Gazette

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, Gannett Blog, Erik Wemple, The Verge, New York Magazine, @qhardy, Softpedia News, Mediaite, VentureBeat and GigaOM

BuzzFeed:
Exclusive: Glenn Greenwald Will Leave Guardian To Create New News Organization

Guardian:

MPs set to investigate Guardian's involvement in Snowden leaks — Keith Vaz says home affairs committee to look at newspaper's activities as part of inquiry into counter-terrorism — A powerful group of MPs will investigate the Guardian's publication of stories about mass surveillance based …

Discussion: @ccriadoperez, @ggreenwald, @stuartmillar159, @fieldproducer, @paul__johnson and @jonathanhaynes

Patrick Wintour / Guardian:
Snowden leaks: David Cameron urges committee to investigate Guardian

Discussion: @scriptonite and @kpoulsen

Ben Quinn / Guardian: New York Times editor defends journalists over Snowden leaks

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

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. “If we don't start calling unstaffed sites ‘Zombie Patch,’ we've failed.”

Discussion: Poynter and @romenesko

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: Technology Liberation Front, Techdirt, The Switch, Gizmodo and Hillicon Valley

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, Mashable and The Huffington Post

Erin Griffith / PandoDaily:

Refinery29 ditches commerce, raising $20 million to double down on content — Well, that was a fun experiment. Last year fashion site Refinery29 made a big push into “content and commerce,” which was the buzzword du jour for any digital company offering either.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Betabeat, AllThingsD and @lulupho

Kadhim Shubber / Wired UK:

BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti on balancing investigative journalism with cute kittens — Founder of BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post, Jonah Peretti's impact on the way online content is created and consumed is perhaps immeasurable. From the share button “Reblog” to BuzzFeed's list-based approach to journalism …

Discussion: @nycjim and @niemanlab

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

Lauren Hockenson / GigaOM:

Netflix rolls out update for Android app — The choppy, laggy, and all-around unwatchable Netflix app for Android is finally being replaced, thanks to an update that is rolling out now. Spotted by Android Police, Netflix for Android 3.0 has a complete redesign a lot closer to the version available for Apple.

Discussion: Android Police and The Verge

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

How many top newspaper editors are from digital backgrounds? Still darn few — Upward of 1,400 digital journalists are expected in Atlanta this week for the annual Online News Association conference. That's fairly close to the number of daily American newspapers, at last count roughly 1,380.

Discussion: @megan

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 and Boing Boing

Tom Cheredar / VentureBeat:

Telefonica invests in Rhapsody to push Napster as a global music service — http://www.shutterstock.com/pic- 91078382/stock-photo-young-man- listening-to-music.html — Nov. 12 - 13, 2013 — Spanish telecom company Telefonica has made a strategic stake in U.S. music company Rhapsody, the companies announced today.

Discussion: GigaOM, Telefónica and CNET

Rachel Bartlett / Journalism.co.uk:

Google launches site highlighting journalism tools on offer — The new site outlines the different ways journalists can make best use of Google's tools, and features links to industry use cases — Read more — Other top stories — Also on Journalism.co.uk...

Discussion: Big News Network.com and The Next Web

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 and /Film

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

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

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, MacRumors, VentureBeat, Los Angeles Times, The Next Web and Fast Company

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.