Mediagazer: Fox News Reportedly Used Fake Commenter Accounts To Rebut Critical Blog Posts (Ben Dimiero/Media Matters for America)

11:00 PM ET, October 21, 2013

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Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Associated Press Fires Journalists Over Erroneous Terry McAuliffe Report — NEW YORK — The Associated Press has fired a reporter and editor over an erroneous Oct. 9 report that Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe lied to an investigator in a federal fraud case, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Terry McAuliffe for Governor, @thefix, @jmartnyt, Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and Pressing Issues

Erik Wemple: AP owes public a better explanation of McAuliffe mistake

Dylan Byers / Politico: Bob Lewis firing stuns Virginia media world

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Yahoo To Launch Consumer Tech Site With Help Of New York Times' David Pogue — Yahoo is planning to launch a consumer tech website with the help of long-time NYT columnist David Pogue. — The news comes by way of Brian Stelter, long-time NYT writer, who reports via Twitter that Pogue announced …

David Pogue / A Note from Pogue:

Goodbye—and Hello — It's true: After 13 years at the New York Times, I've accepted a new job. Leaving The Times is a big deal. My years there coincided with the explosion of just about everything important in today's tech — the Web, social media, e-books, smartphones, tablets, duck-faced selfies.

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Netflix's Q3 Beats Analyst Estimates With 1.3M New Domestic Subscribers, $0.52 Earnings Per Share — Netflix's third-quarter earnings report just came out, with the company beating analyst expectations on higher-than-expected subscriber numbers. For the third quarter …

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Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

Netflix now has more paying subscribers than HBO in the United States — Netflix just reported that its streaming video service had 29.93 million paying subscribers in the United States at the end of September. That surpasses, for the first time, HBO's paid subscriber base of 28.96 million in the US.

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
The slow but inevitable decline of Netflix's DVD business

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Leslie Kaufman / New York Times:

BuzzFeed Hires Pulitzer Winner to Head Investigative Unit — BuzzFeed, the media Web site focused on viral content, announced on Monday that it was again expanding its reporting staff, this time to introduce an investigative unit. A new team of about half a dozen reporters will be led by Mark Schoofs …

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Ben Dimiero / Media Matters for America:

Fox News Reportedly Used Fake Commenter Accounts To Rebut Critical Blog Posts — NPR media reporter David Folkenflik writes in his forthcoming book Murdoch's World that Fox News' public relations staffers used an elaborate series of dummy accounts to fill the comments sections of critical blog posts with pro-Fox arguments.

Todd Wasserman / Mashable:

Facebook Average Referral Traffic to Media Sites Up 170% This Year — Flexing its muscles as a public-facing forum, Facebook reported Monday that the average referral track from Facebook to media sites jumped 170% last year. — Facebook also disclosed that from September 2012 to September 2013 …

Discussion: GigaOM, TechCrunch, Facebook, AllThingsD, @rubinafillion, @lavrusik and @kantrowitz

Brian Womack / Bloomberg:

Facebook Woos Media Companies With Tool to Post Stories — Facebook Inc. is testing a feature to simplify how media companies find content to post on its service, stepping up efforts against Twitter Inc. for driving traffic to news providers. — The new tool suggests stories from media sites …

Discussion: Poynter

Sam Gustin / TIME:

Google Unveils Tools to Access Web From Repressive Countries — The tech titan is introducing products to track Internet attacks and aid free expression — Google Ideas, the New York City-based “think/do tank” run by the Internet search giant, is launching several new technologies designed …

Discussion: The Official Google Blog, The Daily Beast, Mashable, BetaNews, @thehackersnews, Mashable and @mattcutts

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Who Killed the Magazine App? 97% of newsstand apps are now free — The Association of Magazine Media (MPA), the magazine publishers trade group, this month reported some seemingly encouraging results for an industry that's become all too used to bad news.

Discussion: @rafat, @sannijokinen and @michaelwolffnyc

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Publishing, broadcasting revenues down at Gannett — Revenues were down in most of Gannett's segments in the third quarter of 2013, according to the company's new earnings report. Advertising revenue at Gannett's publishing properties fell 5.9 percent compared with the same period the year before.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Radio & Television …, NetNewsCheck Latest, USA Today and @poynter