Mediagazer: Russia media tycoons expand - with Kremlin's help (Laura Mills/Associated Press)

7:15 AM ET, October 19, 2013

Top News:

Andrew Fitzgerald / Twitter blog:

Verifying Tweets when news breaks: Q&A with the NYT's Jennifer Preston — Once the Times' first social media editor, today Jennifer (@jenniferpreston) writes about the news for The Lede, the Times' blog that examines what takes place behind news events. We asked her how she uses Twitter …

Hadas Gold / Politico:

Nate Silver previews site, hits POLITICO — Nate Silver, the statistician who recently joined ESPN from The New York Times, previewed his new website on Friday and dished out some criticisms of the current journalism environment, much of it directed at POLITICO.

Discussion: Poynter and Talking Points Memo

Raju Narisetti / Digiday:

To Save Journalism, News Needs to Buy Into Data — Smart news organizations will move from a “tracking” mentality that simply lists what audiences are doing to focus on what any such insight could mean for both journalism and the business of journalism. Newsrooms need to embrace the kind of number-crunching more common to marketers.

Discussion: @owenthomas and @albertocairo

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of “Little Data,” data scientists, and conversion specialists — OSLO — Arthur Sulzberger surprised some people recently when asked what he would do differently in the digital transition, given hindsight. — Hire more engineers, he said. TWEET — It wasn't an off-the-cuff comment.

Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:

All Hail Flipboard? — After the brouhaha that got kicked up over my comments about Flipboard last week, I had an initially somewhat awkward but eventually very pleasant conversation on Tuesday with Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard, who wanted to discuss what he thought I missed in my post on Flipboard …

Laura Mills / Associated Press:

Russia media tycoons expand - with Kremlin's help — You are here — Home » Edward Snowden » Russia media tycoons expand _ with Kremlin's help — MOSCOW (AP) — The skinny man in a baggy, wrinkled shirt carting groceries back to his car could have been any Silicon Valley programmer …

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

ASME Issues Editorial Guidelines for Native Ads — Native advertising is all the rage as online publishers try to get more creative to get marketers' dollars. But in doing so, some are trying to masquerade native ads as content, even using editorial staff to write the copy.

Discussion: AdAge

Bloomberg:

News Corp. Executive Clayman Is Said to Leave for Diller's Vimeo — News Corp. (NWSA) executive Greg Clayman, once publisher of the company's defunct digital newspaper the Daily, has left for a position with the video startup Vimeo, according to executives with knowledge of the matter.

Discussion: The Wrap, @felixsalmon, @clayman and @bloombergtech

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

The Times Is Working on Ways to Make Numbers-Based Stories Clearer for Readers — Many readers have written to me recently, given the federal budget crisis, to make a simple request: Please advocate for news stories that put large numbers in context. If The Times does not do that, they say …

Discussion: @dleonhardt

Chi Chi Izundu / BBC:

Breaking Bad creator says online piracy ‘helped’ show — The creator of Breaking Bad says piracy “helped” the show to become popular and increase “brand awareness”. — Vince Gilligan said: “[It] led to a lot of people watching the series who otherwise would not have.

Discussion: Variety, @mathewi, The Wrap, The Verge, Softpedia News and TorrentFreak

Claire Atkinson / New York Post:

Disney once again considering sale of local TV stations — Walt Disney Co. is looking to hire an investment bank to explore a possible sale of its eight owned and operated television stations, a move that could reap billions, The Post has learned. — Disney's ABC-affiliated stations …

Discussion: Digits, Los Angeles Times and TVSpy

Travis Winkler / Thirty-Five Millimeter Bytes:

The Twitter TV Bet Limits Company Valuation — Since Twitter filed for its initial public offering, a day has not gone by without an article about the company. Facebook vs. Twitter's battle for the second screen, NYSE vs. Nasdaq for the IPO (spoiler: NYSE wins), XYZ media company strategic …

Discussion: GigaOM and bookforum.com