Mediagazer: Why Lockhart Steele Sold Curbed to Vox (Josh Sternberg/Digiday)

1:30 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 and @jeffjarvis

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: The Public Editor's Journal, Capital New York, The Daily Beast, Yahoo News, @emilybell, @markleibovich, The New York Observer, bookforum.com and Poynter

Erik Wemple: Hey, what about Politico's ‘brain drain’?

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:
New York Times Departures Heighten Concerns About Staff Retention

Discussion: Politico, Forbes, New York Times, FishbowlNY, @tomgara, @fmanjoo, @fmanjoo, FishbowlDC, USA Today, Big News Network.com, @sulliview, @dkthomp, Capital New York, @brianstelter and The Wrap

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

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: Forbes, Big News Network.com and BGR

Nancy A. Youssef / McClatchy Washington Bureau:

CBS opens ‘journalistic review’ into controversial ‘60 Minutes’ Bengazhi 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: The Huffington Post, @nancyayoussef, NPR, Online NewsHour, @mlcalderone and Pressing Issues

Amy Davidson / The New Yorker Blog:
“60 Minutes” and the Benghazi Scandal Trap

Discussion: Poynter, Variety, Kirk LaPointe's …, Personanondata, Washington Post, The Huffington Post 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, FierceOnlineVideo News, @dcaunt, CNET, @dalmaer, Variety and AllThingsD

Paul Carsten / Reuters:

Chinese Internet firms sue Baidu for online piracy — BEIJING (Reuters) - A group of Chinese Internet firms, including Tencent Holdings and Sohu.Com Inc, has joined a top U.S. film industry body in seeking 300 million yuan ($49.2 million) in damages from China's Baidu Inc and QVOD for copyright violation.

Erich Schwartzel / Wall Street Journal:
Fox, Ivanhoe to Make Local-Language Movies in Asia

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, PC World, Los Angeles Times and 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: Poynter, @niemanlab and @rmantri

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.”

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 …

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.

Reuters:

Rebekah Brooks Was Hacking Victim Herself, Court Told — LONDON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of Britain's News of the World, on trial for phone-hacking, was herself repeatedly targeted for voicemail interception by the private investigator working for her tabloid, a London court heard on Wednesday.

Wall Street Journal:

Hulu Wants to Be Offered With Pay-TV Bundles — Online Video Outlet Could Be Centralized Location for Full Seasons of Shows … Online video outlet Hulu LLC is in early discussions with several pay-TV providers about potential partnerships, said people familiar with the situation …

Discussion: The Next Web and NetNewsCheck Latest

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

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.

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

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: Radio & Television …

Jack Marshall / Digiday:

Inside Ad Tech Fraud: Confessions of a Fake Web Traffic Buyer — Online advertising has a fraud problem. Millions of ad impressions are being served to bots and non-human traffic, and ad tech companies are doing little to stop it. Digiday spoke with a former publishing executive …

Discussion: @digiday, Beyond Search, @benkunz, AdExchanger, New York Times, Business Insider and MarketingVox News & Trends

John Reynolds / Guardian:

Independent's redesign lifts circulation — Relaunch of newspaper on Thursday 7 November led to rise in sales of around 3,000 compared to previous week — The Independent is understood to have enjoyed a circulation lift of around 3,000 copies on the day of its redesign …

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 …

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.

Jordan Chariton / TVNewser:

Al Jazeera America At Three Months: Pundit Free, ‘Experts When Needed’ — Al Jazeera America turns the ripe old age of three months next week. So yesterday, TVNewser visited the channel's midtown Manhattan studio and got a status update from network president Kate O'Brian.

Nicole Levy / Capital New York:

David Remnick laments the ‘cultural serfdom’ of young writers on the web — For what was essentially an audience of twentysomething journalists aspiring to write for the New Yorker, editor in chief David Remnick had no incontrovertible advice on the subject Monday evening.