Mediagazer: Nick Denton Denies Rumor of Gawker And Business Insider Merger (Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke/The New York …)

5:00 PM ET, November 13, 2013

Top News:

‘Times’ ad exec announces ‘full native advertising platform,’ coming soon — The New York Times will launch a “full native advertising platform” in the next two to three months. — Meredith Kopit Levien, the Times' exec vice president of advertising, made the announcement during …

Discussion: AdAge, FishbowlNY and @jeffjarvis

Leslie Kaufman / New York Times:

San Francisco Chronicle Plans to End Its Prized Food Section — In the food-obsessed Bay Area, The San Francisco Chronicle's food section has been as much of a city institution as the cable car, and to many San Franciscans, more useful. Over the years it has won many awards and developed a dedicated following among local readers.

Discussion: Grub Street New York, @qualityrye, Eater National, @kimseverson and @pete_wells

Erik Wemple:

Hey, what about Politico's ‘brain drain’? — Politico last night warned of a “brain drain” at the New York Times: “In the past nine months, at least a dozen top reporters and editors have made for the exits.” — The perils of doing media coverage for Politico!

Discussion: Gawker, Politico and @dylanbyers

Bronwen Clune / Guardian:

So Twitter is ruining journalism? Really? — The Australian newspaper published an editorial referring to journalists using Twitter as a ‘path to ruin’. It couldn't be more wrong — There is no quicker way for old institutions to look irrelevant than to insist on their relevance.

Discussion: @jimbarrett

Erik Wemple:

Another CBS News story comes under attack — There may never be a more classic line in the pantheon of empty boasts by competitive news organizations. On Monday night, CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson came up with what looked like a significant story: “Memo warned of “limitless” …

Discussion: Mediaite, CBS News, @simonmaloy, @dangillmor, @jayrosen_nyu, Post Politics and The Daily Caller

Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke / The New York Observer:

Nick Denton Denies Rumor of Gawker And Business Insider Merger — Rumors of a merger between Business Insider and Gawker that made the rounds this morning have been greatly exaggerated. — “We had breakfast, as we regularly do. I admire Henry Blodget, Joe Weisenthal and Business Insider's editorial management.

Discussion: Gigaom, The Wrap, @johnjcook, @jeffjohnroberts and @stevekovach

Dylan Love / Business Insider: Gawker Chief Nick Denton Says He Has A Cure For Internet Trolls

Paul Mozur / Wall Street Journal:

China's Baidu Faces Suits Over Video Piracy — Online-Video and Film Companies Seek $50 Million From Internet-Search Firm — BEIJING—A group of Chinese media companies accused Baidu Inc. of piracy, filing litigation that signals the maturation of an online-video industry where illegal copying once was rampant.

Paul Carsten / Reuters:
Chinese Internet firms sue Baidu for online piracy

Discussion: Bloomberg, Xinhua News Agency, PR Newswire, Hollywood Reporter, UPI, ValueWalk, The Verge and InsideCounsel

Jim Edwards / Business Insider:

Google Is Now Bigger Than Both The Magazine And Newspaper Industries — Google has become so big that sometimes it's difficult to understand just how big it is. It's on course to do $60 billion in revenue this year, almost all of that from advertising. But how big is that in terms of the media it competes against for ad dollars?

Discussion: Big News Network.com, Forbes, Kirk LaPointe's … and BGR

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

Roundup: Staff Departures, an ‘Incorrect Promise’ and More — Here's a roundup of items from all over that may be interesting to Times readers and to the readers of this blog: — 1. The Great Exodus? Several news sites, including The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast …

Discussion: Politico, Mediaite, Firedoglake and The Daily Caller

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
WikiLeaks publishes secret draft of Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty

Discussion: keionline.org, Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian, Wired, TorrentFreak, Politico, International Business Times, RT, Foreign Policy, The Switch and Pressing Issues

Angela Watercutter / Wired:

Netflix's New Look Is a Glimpse at the Future of TV — Netflix just announced a whole new browsing experience for users who access the service on more than half the devices that run it, from game consoles to smart TVs. On the surface it just looks like a sleek new interface upgrade …

Discussion: USA Today

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:
Netflix ditches Webkit to roll out slick new UI for smart TVs, Roku boxes and game consoles

Discussion: Netflix US & Canada Blog, @dcaunt, FierceOnlineVideo News, CNET, Variety, AllThingsD and @dalmaer

Nancy A. Youssef / McClatchy Washington Bureau:

CBS opens ‘journalistic review’ into controversial ‘60 Minutes’ Benghazi report — Facebook Twitter Google Plus Reddit E-mail Print — CAIRO — When “60 Minutes,” perhaps the United States' premier news program, apologized for featuring a security contractor in its report …

Discussion: New York Times, The Huffington Post, @nancyayoussef, Online NewsHour, NPR, @jayrosen_nyu, National Review, @mlcalderone, Pressing Issues, @huffpostmedia and @peterfhart

Matt Waite / Nieman Journalism Lab:

What new FAA plans will mean to the future of drone journalism — Editor's note: If you've been at a journalism conference over the past year — or stood near the right Midwestern riverbed at the right time— you've probably heard about drone journalism. That's the idea that small unmanned …

Nieman Journalism Lab:

Why so serious? Maybe because data shows news stories can get shared just as often as lighter fare — Editor's note: Our friends at NPR Digital Services, Eric Athas and Teresa Gorman, crunched the numbers on how public radio stories were shared on Facebook and found some encouraging results.

Discussion: Big News Network.com

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Former Rolling Stone Editor Eric Bates Joins Omidyar-Greenwald Venture — Eric Bates, the former executive editor of Rolling Stone, is joining the new media organization being launched by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and journalist Glenn Greenwald. — According to a post from Omidyar about NewCo …

Marc Tracy / The New Republic:

Don't Panic! The ‘Times’ Is Losing Staff, But It Will Be Fine — In August, reporting an article about The New York Times' future, I spoke to Sam Sifton, the former national editor now in charge of various nascent digital initiatives that the paper hopes will allow it to secure more paying customers.

Discussion: Politico, The Daily Beast, New York Times, Yahoo News, Capital New York, @emilybell, @markleibovich, bookforum.com and The Huffington Post

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

CBS Corp. CEO Talks Time Warner Cable Dispute, Netflix Competition — Leslie Moonves also says TV is a better business than film and discusses “pre-historic” thinking about retrans fees, why only ESPN should get paid more than CBS and how his wife binges on “Game of Thrones.”

Discussion: Deadline.com

Chris Hughes / The New Republic:

A Year and a Half Later... What's new at The New Republic — What's new at The New Republic — Today we are launching The New Republic's company blog, New Republic Home News. From time to time, we will use this space to give readers a sense of what's going on inside the company.

Discussion: @niemanlab, Poynter and @rmantri

Josh Sternberg / Digiday:

Why Lockhart Steele Sold Curbed to Vox — Digital media startup Vox Media, parent to SB Nation, The Verge and Polygon, will acquire the Curbed suite of blogs — Curbed, Eater, Racked — in a deal that was reported to have been in the neighborhood of $20-$30 million.

Jeff Jarvis / Medium:

CMS as Media Salvation. Not. … Salmon thus accomplishes the almost impossible, writing an ode to the content management system as he argues that Vox Media, Business Insider, Gawker Media, Buzzfeed, Aol, Glam, and this very medium, Medium, are fighting for dominance with CMSes as their weapons of mass disruption.

Discussion: BtoB Magazine Online, Talking Points Memo and @chanders

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Clearleap Raises $20 Million From Susquehanna To Make TV More Multiplatform — Clearleap builds software infrastructure that helps content owners, distributors, and aggregators to make TV and movies available online and on a wide array of devices. While it's spent the last several years …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable

Rachel Bartlett / Journalism.co.uk:

The Sun to introduce ‘dedicated department’ for social media — The new department will power ‘24/7’ social media activity, and consist of half a dozen social managers and a new social editor — The Sun is to set up a “dedicated department” for social media, which will consist of a team …

Nick Turner / Bloomberg:

Scripps Howard News Service Will Cease Operation After 96 Years — E.W. Scripps Co. (SSP:US)'s Scripps Howard News Service, which fed syndicated stories to papers across the U.S. since World War I, plans to shut down, becoming the latest symbol of readers' shift away from print media.

Discussion: @sfnick, Big News Network.com, JIMROMENESKO.COM and E.W Scripps Company

Katy Bachman / Adweek:

Senators Introduce Bill to Curb Sports Blackouts — Never underestimate a lawmaker's desire to make sure football games get aired in his market. — Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), two lawmakers who have been outspoken on sports blackouts …

Discussion: ZDNet and Radio & Television …

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

More Time Inc. Sites to Run Sponsored Posts Through Native-Ad Server — Sharethrough to Serve Ads on Real Simple and Health Magazines' Sites — Time Inc. is expanding its use of native-ad server Sharethrough to run some sponsored articles on its desktop and mobile websites, Sharethrough said Wednesday.