Mediagazer: NBCU Revs Sink, But Cable Up 4% (Wayne Friedman/MediaPost News)

3:35 AM ET, October 31, 2013

Top News:

Jim Roberts / Mashable:

Jim Roberts Is Mashable's Executive Editor and Chief Content Officer — Today is an exciting day for me. I'm joining a new family, as executive editor and chief content officer at Mashable. — To some it might seem a bit of a departure. You might imagine a headline like …

Discussion: @sree, New York Times, The Wrap, @fivethirtyeight, @megan, FishbowlNY, @benparr, @lheron, @jonathanellis, @nytfridge, @magicandrew, @justinnxt, @raju and @webjournalist

Mathew Ingram / paidContent:

Former NYT and Reuters editor Jim Roberts talks about why he is joining Mashable — Jim Roberts, a former New York Times editor and Reuters executive, is joining Mashable as executive editor, and says he wants to expand the kinds of journalism the site does while taking advantage of its social-web skills

Discussion: @om, @heathat and Talking Biz News

BBC:

Press regulation: Privy Council grants royal charter — A new cross-party royal charter on press regulation has been granted by the Privy Council, the government says, after the newspaper industry lost a last-minute court challenge. — Court of Appeal judges refused newspaper publishers …

Discussion: Telegraph, UK - The Huffington Post, @patrickwintour, Sky News, Press Gazette, Guardian, Hacked Off, @bbcnews and Big News Network.com

Mark Sweney / Guardian:
Newspapers' bid for injunction against press regulation royal charter fails

Discussion: @marksweney, Telegraph, The Independent, Telegraph and Kirk LaPointe's …

Jim Romenesko:

‘Change is hard’: Consumer Reports restructures to survive in the digital era — Consumer Reports and Consumers Union, the policy and action division of the magazine, showed a hefty profit of $21,414,103 for the fiscal year ending May 31, 2008. The next two years were profitable, too …

Discussion: @1bobcohn

Matt Buchanan / New Yorker:

Waiting for the Next Great Technology Critic — For well over a decade, the two most influential voices about consumer technology have been a sixty-six-year-old man who lives just outside of Washington, D.C. and a fifty-year-old man who resides in Westport, Connecticut.

Discussion: @jasonkincaid, @stewartmader, @fmanjoo, @laurengoode, @fmanjoo and @samfbiddle

Vicky Gan / Smithsonian:

The Phone That Helped Andy Carvin Report the Arab Spring is Now in the Smithsonian — Andy Carvin is a man of many titles—"digital media anchor," “real-time news DJ” and “online community organizer,” to name a few—but the one he is most comfortable with is “storyteller.”

Discussion: @cheeky_geeky and @jilliancyork

Laura Hazard Owen / Gigaom:

Random House acquires Figment, the teen writing site founded by Condé Nast vets — Random House Children's Books has acquired Figment, the teen reading and writing online community founded by Condé Nast's Jacob Lewis and Dana Goodyear in 2010. Lewis has worked at Random House since July.

Discussion: Good E-Reader and PublishersWeekly.com

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“We're still babies at it”: BuzzFeed Video's strategy relies on identity, emotion, and sharing content as communication — A year ago, Ze Frank — Internet “virologist,” creator of the beloved the show with zefrank, and online video pioneer — was tapped to head BuzzFeed's video department …

Discussion: @niemanlab and @peretti

Reuters:

Three ex-Murdoch journalists plead guilty to phone hacking — (Reuters) - Three former senior journalists from Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid the News of the World have pleaded guilty to charges relating to phone-hacking, the trial of two of the media mogul's former editors heard on Wednesday.

Discussion: Variety, Press Association, Guardian, Gawker, ProPublica, Associated Press, Trust.org, Globe and Mail, BBC, Big News Network.com, Politico and Telegraph

Umberto Bacchi / International Business Times:

Saudi Journalist Tariq al-Mubarak Arrested over Support for Women Drive Ban Protest — About 60 women in Saudi Arabia openly flouted the law by driving through the streets (Reuters) — Human rights activists have urged Saudi authorities to release a local journalist who was arrested …

Discussion: FP Passport, BuzzFeed and Associated Press

Wayne Friedman / MediaPost News:

NBCU Revs Sink, But Cable Up 4% — Comcast's NBCUniversal had a modest financial gains for its third quarter — when excluding Summer Olympic comparisons of 2012. Overall revenue for NBCUniversal sank 14.2% to $5.9 billion. Without the London Olympics some $1.2 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2012, revenue was up 3.9%.

Discussion: Deadline.com and Radio & Television …

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:
Comcast downplays Netflix talks, still adding broadband subscribers

Discussion: Capital New York

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

Forbes launches submissions system for anonymous sources — SafeSource, based on code developed by Aaron Swartz, allows potential sources to submit files or messages securely and anonymously — Copyright: Image by Esparta on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Discussion: Freedom of the Press … and Forbes

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

This year, no star-studded lunch planned for Time ‘Person of the Year’ rollout — Time magazine is gearing up for its annual Person of the Year rollout, in which the newsweekly anoints a public figure who “for better or for worse has done the most to influence the events of the year.”