Mediagazer: Trouble with ‘60 Minutes’ Benghazi ‘review’ (Dylan Byers/Politico)

3:05 PM ET, November 15, 2013

Top News:

Forbes Media Is Working With Bankers to Sell Company — Forbes, Deutsche Bank Explore Options on Magazine — Forbes Media LLC, the closely held publisher founded by the family of former U.S presidential candidate Steve Forbes, is exploring a sale after getting interest from potential buyers.

Discussion: AdAge, Folio, New York Times, FishbowlNY, Business Insider, The Huffington Post, The Wrap, Capital New York, Wall Street Journal, @brucebartlett, @emorwee, @jackshafer, @mathewi, @rosental, @edmundlee, @mathewi, @rafat and @hblodget

Felix Salmon / Reuters:

The financial-media rollup strategy — Financial news is a classic ripe-for-disruption industry. It generally makes its money by selling expensive subscriptions to the price-insensitive, but that model won't last forever: it's never been harder to find anybody under the age of 40 who pays for such things.

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Matthew Lynch / Capital New York:

Forbes staff receives memo confirming company is ‘[testing] the waters regarding a sale’ — Confirming an alert from Bloomberg News, Forbes Media President and CEO Mike Perlis just sent a memo to staff that says the company is looking at offers. — We'll have more soon: on Twitter …

Discussion: Media & Entertainment, Media Money … and Poynter

Brian Abelson:

The Relationship Between Promotion and Performance: Pageviews Above Replacement — This is the second in a series of two posts about pageviews. This post details some research I've conducted on the promotional correlates of the metric, while the previous post discussed the sometimes apocalyptic tone …

Discussion: @mtigas, @opennews, @tcarmody, @stkonrath, @jordancrusoe, @brianabelson, @alvinschang and Talking Biz News

Felix Salmon:

How the NYT neglects business journalism — Brian Abelson has a fantastic post about the performance of NYT articles. The main gist is that it's possible to predict with surprising accuracy how many pageviews any given NYT article is going to receive, given just a few variables like the amount …

Discussion: @mlcalderone, @patrickgower, @seythal and @ivorytowerjourn

Ed Pilkington / Guardian:

Jailed Anonymous hacker Jeremy Hammond: ‘My days of hacking are done’ — Hammond calls his 10-year sentence a ‘vengeful, spiteful act’ by US authorities eager to put a chill on political hacking — Jeremy Hammond, the Anonymous hacktivist who released millions of emails relating …

Discussion: Wired, TechCrunch, The Verge, @a_greenberg, Salon, @wikileaks, @janetreitman, @edpilkington, @trevortimm and @kliphscurlock

RT:
Stratfor hacker Jeremy Hammond sentenced to ten years in jail

Discussion: @ericjaffa, @lifewisenews, Associated Press, @rt_america, Daily Dot and Guardian

Olivier Laurent / British Journal of Photography:

French newspaper removes all images in support of photographers — To coincide with Paris Photo's opening, French newspaper Libération has chosen to remove all images from its 14 November issue in a bid to show the power and importance of photography at a time when the industry …

Discussion: Poynter, Politico, Guardian, The Huffington Post, PetaPixel, The Verge, @babsphoto and @grafikmag

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Trouble with ‘60 Minutes’ Benghazi ‘review’ — POLITICO has learned that Al Ortiz, an executive producer for special events at CBS News, is conducting the “journalistic review” into the controversial “60 Minutes” report on Benghazi — a fact that spokespeople at both CBS and “60 Minutes” declined to disclose.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @mlcalderone, @ericboehlert and @dylanbyers

Rem Rieder / USA Today:
Rieder: Why CBS must come clean about Benghazi report

Discussion: The Daily Beast and The Nation

Cynthia Littleton / Variety:

‘The Simpsons’ Lands $750 Mil Cable, VOD Syndication Pact with FXX — Deal for 530-plus episodes of enduring Fox toon marks largest off-network sale ever — Homer and Co. are in rolling in dough: Fox's Twentieth Century Fox TV and Twentieth TV have set a massive first-ever cable syndication …

Discussion: Deadline.com, AdAge, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wrap, The Huffington Post, New York Times, The Verge, @thefilmstage and Los Angeles Times

New York Times:

British Press Freedom Under Threat — Britain has a long tradition of a free, inquisitive press. That freedom, so essential to democratic accountability, is being challenged by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron.

Discussion: Guardian, @wmfurney, @miketheharris, @kramdas, @nytimescohen and @lukeharding1968

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:
New press regulator just like the old, says Media Standards Trust

Discussion: Press Gazette and @hackedoffhugh

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson / Financial Times:

Lunch with the FT: Henry Blodget — A decade after being banned from Wall Street, the former internet analyst now runs a business website. He talks about redemption, regrets and market madness — ©James Ferguson — According to family legend, Henry Blodget's great-grandfather …

Discussion: PandoDaily and @hblodget

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:

Memo: It Took Three Weeks For The Washington Post's Viral Site To Become Its Biggest Blog — The Post 's Upworthy-inspired viral site, KnowMore , is already among its most popular web properties. Once again: Do not underestimate the power of the curiosity gap.

Discussion: Daily Dot, The Switch and @markarms

Natasha Vargas-Cooper / BuzzFeed:

David Miranda Is Nobody's Errand Boy — When Glenn Greenwald's 28-year-old Brazilian partner was detained in London this summer while transporting documents related to the bombshell Edward Snowden story, many assumed he was unfairly roped into a situation he didn't understand.

Discussion: Poynter, @kgosztola, @juliaangwin, @danielcassidy and @ggreenwald

Josh Sternberg / Digiday:

Kevin Delaney Tinkers With Media at Quartz — This is the second installment in a series that will profile four young executives rethinking the publishing business. This series is sponsored by Sonobi, the first and only digital advertising platform created by digital publishers for publishers.

Michael Rondon / Folio:

The Atlantic, Reddit Partner on AMA Series — Creators hope experimental video series is a way to drive engagement. — The Atlantic has been gradually expanding its use of video over the last two years, relying mostly on curation, but is delving into original content more aggressively of late.

Alexander Howard / Tow Center for Digital Journalism:

On the Ethics of Data-Driven Journalism: of fact, friction and public records in a more transparent age — While ethics in journalism have been defined and upheld for decades, the context they're practiced within has shifted with changes in technology and society.

Discussion: @dbarthjones and Kirk LaPointe's …

Hamish McKenzie / PandoDaily:

Harper's Magazine launches iOS app, holds tight to paid strategy — Harper's Magazine, a literary publication so old-school that it offers links to microfiche for stories it publishes online, is today launching an iOS app edition of its monthly magazine. — The app retains the look and feel …

Discussion: Gigaom and @ftrain

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

The Newsonomics of the Surprisingly Persistent Appeal of Newsprint — First published at Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab — Tonnage. The word speaks to a different age of news media when ink, bought by barrel, and newsprint, bought by the ton, ruled. Newspapers — in print …

Ben Fritz / Wall Street Journal:

Comcast Plans to Start Selling Movies Digitally Through Cable Service — Comcast Corp. is planning to start selling movies directly through its cable boxes, according to people with knowledge of its plans, a move that could boost the still nascent market considered critical in Hollywood.