Mediagazer: How many top newspaper editors are from digital backgrounds? Still darn few (Rick Edmonds/Poynter)

8:15 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, Mashable, @tcarmody, Gawker, The Switch, FishbowlNY, Press Gazette, Big News Network.com, New York Magazine, Reuters, Talking Points Memo, Slate, Business Insider, CNET, The Atlantic Wire and Boing Boing

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

Times Reporter Plans to Take Fight to the Supreme Court — For James Risen, an investigative reporter for The Times, the bad news just keeps on coming. When I wrote about him in late July, a federal appeals panel had just ruled against him in a case related to a leak investigation.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @jayrosen_nyu, @penenberg, @mlcalderone, @sulliview, @michaelroston and @pgourevitch

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

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: @fieldproducer, @dangillmor, @stuartmillar159, @ccriadoperez, @paul__johnson, @astroehlein, @ggreenwald and @jonathanhaynes

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

Discussion: @jonswaine, @freedomofpress, @kpoulsen, @scriptonite, @doublejake and Committee to Protect …

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

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: The Next Web

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, Gizmodo, The Switch and WebProNews

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

New York magazine considers going biweekly — New York magazine, launched as a weekly magazine 45 years ago by Clay Felker, is mulling a move to a biweekly in 2014. Anup Bagaria, CEO of parent company New York Media, confirmed to The Post that the move is being considered at the highest level …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

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

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, @lulupho 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, Mashable and The Huffington Post

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:

Media tech accelerator Matter announces its second class of startups — Matter, the accelerator for media startups founded by Corey Ford and backed by KQED, the Knight Foundation and PRX, announced its second class of startups Wednesday. Here they are:

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Matter and Knight Foundation

Brian Fung / The Switch:

How the FCC plans to clear the air for more mobile data — Not long from now, cars will start talking to other cars. Wearable technology will put the Internet on your body. Phones won't just be for interacting with the Web anymore; they'll also start to respond to other inanimate objects around them.

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: New York Times, Telefónica, TechCrunch, CNET and GigaOM

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Netflix VP: Chromecast could take second-screen TV mainstream — Netflix isn't going to produce elaborate second-screen apps with a whole bunch of additional content any time soon. Instead, it's investing in second-screen control - and having high hopes for Chromecast.

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

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

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: @glynmoody, Softpedia News and Boing Boing

John McDuling / Quartz:

News Corp's “problem child” is actually performing just fine — It's now more than three months since Rupert Murdoch divided in his media empire in two—separating the print media businesses on which his fortune was founded from his booming entertainment assets. And it hasn't played out as many expected.