Mediagazer: UN warns Somalia after alleged rape victim, journalists arrested (Agence France Presse)

4:15 PM ET, November 21, 2013

Top News:

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Barton Gellman Hits Back At Bob Woodward For ‘Insult’ About Snowden Coverage — NEW YORK — Barton Gellman fired back Thursday at Washington Post colleague Bob Woodward over Woodward's remarks that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden should have come to him first with documents …

Discussion: Mediaite, @tonyromm, @noahshachtman and TheBlaze.com

Hadas Gold / Politico:

Media protests White House photo ban — The White House Correspondents Association and several leading media outlets have sent a letter to the White House protesting its policy of banning photographers from covering the president at certain events. — “As surely as if they were placing …

Discussion: Poynter, NationalJournal.com, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, @steveholland1, @steveholland1, The Wire, NPPA and TheBlaze.com

Dylan Byers / Politico: Media urged to stop using WH photos

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:

NBCU May Invest in AllThingsD Journalists — Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher Will Be Starting New Company Next Year … NBCUniversal is close to a deal to take a minority stake in a new company being started by technology journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, say people familiar with the situation.

Discussion: @edmundlee

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Liz Spayd named editor-in-chief of ‘CJR’ — Liz Spayd has been named editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, Capital has learned. — The Washington Post alumna replaces Cyndi Stivers, who resigned in May to take a job as editor-in-chief of AOL.com.

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, Columbia University …, FishbowlNY, Pressing Issues, @joepompeo and @ryanchittum

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Third time's the charm: Will the new Potluck app be the best commenting section in news? — To understand what Potluck's new iOS app will mean, you have to understand where Josh Miller thinks he went wrong with the first two tries. — Though the products have different names …

Discussion: @joshm

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:
Hyped service Potluck reborn as group-chat app to talk about the news

Discussion: TechCrunch, @fromedome and @zpower

Andy Fixmer / Bloomberg:

Sony's Hirai Plans $250 Million in Entertainment Cuts — Sony Corp. (6758) will cut $250 million in costs at its entertainment units over two years, part of Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai's plan to boost profit and keep full ownership of the movie, TV and music businesses.

Discussion: Deadline.com and Variety

Daniel Miller / Los Angeles Times:
Sony Pictures outlines budget cuts, trims film slate

Discussion: Wall Street Journal

Brooks Barnes / New York Times:

With New Streaming Deal, Amazon Keeps Pressure on Netflix — LOS ANGELES — The Web streaming battles continue: Amazon, a competitor to Netflix, announced a deal on Thursday morning to add releases from one of Hollywood's most attention-grabbing independent film companies to its Prime service.

Discussion: Variety

Ben Miller / Puget Sound Business Journal:
Amazon makes deal with A24 film studio

Discussion: bizjournals, Deadline.com and The Next Web

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The NYT prepares new digital products and a new, cheaper subscription model for 2014 — The newsonomics of The New York Times' Paywalls 2.0 — Listen to Mark Thompson and you hear echoes of early 2011. — “We have the theory. We've done the research. We've done the modeling,” the New York Times Co. CEO told me last week.

Discussion: USA Today, @kyleykim and Newsonomics

Wall Street Journal:

Spotify Raises $250 Million, Valued Above $4 Billion — Swedish music-streaming company Spotify AB has secured nearly $250 million in new financing led by Silicon Valley firm Technology Crossover Ventures, valuing the company somewhere “north” of $4 billion dollars, according to multiple people familiar with the deal.

Discussion: Gigaom, The Verge, @geoffreyfowler, Mashable and hypebot

Sarah Kessler / Fast Company:

The Incredible Story Of Marion Stokes, Who Single-Handedly Taped 35 Years Of TV News — From 1977 to 2012, she recorded 140,000 VHS tapes worth of history. Now the Internet Archive has a plan to make them public and searchable. — In a storage unit somewhere in Philadelphia …

Discussion: Poynter, @heyfeifer, @greenharr and @stokesps

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Newspapers put together by one person ‘skimming online content’ - Montgomery outlines vision for Local World journalism — Chairman of the Local World group David Montgomery today sent staff a 2,000-plus word explanation of how he sees the future role of the journalist in his group.

Evie Nagy / Fast Company:

Pitchfork To Launch $19.96 Print Publication, “The Pitchfork Review” — When Pitchfork launched in 1996, Internet music criticism (or Internet anything) was virtually non-existent, and Pitchfork.com grew into arguably the most influential brand in online music coverage.

Discussion: @toddowyoung, hypebot and WebProNews

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

HBO Go Lands On Google Chromecast — Google has just announced that HBO Go is now available on Chromecast. — This means that Chromecast owners with an HBO Go subscription can now stream HBO's content from their Android or iOS device, as well as the HBO Go web app.

Discussion: Google Chrome Blog, VentureBeat, Businessweek, ReadWrite and Pocket-lint

Michael P. Hill / NewscastStudio:

Gannett stations switch to USA Today look online — A select number of Gannett stations have debuted new websites that use the same look and feel as its parent company's flagship newspaper USA Today. — NewscastStudio noted back in October that Gannett switched its Rochester …

Sam Kirkland / Poynter:

With ‘newsletter for mobile,’ Dalton Caldwell wants to make your native app obsolete — “Imagine if you had to download a different email client for every email newsletter you subscribe to.” That's the analogy offered by Dalton Caldwell, CEO of app.net, for the state of push notifications on mobile devices today.

Discussion: 10,000 Words, App.net, Journalism.co.uk and The Next Web

Leila Abboud / Reuters:

Cable group Liberty Global not sure mobile ‘a must-have’ — (Reuters) - Liberty Global, Europe's biggest cable group will sell mobile services as part of all-inclusive bundles across its 12 markets in the coming years but is not yet convinced that such so-called quadruple-play offers are a big attraction.

Associated Press:

Carovillano is named managing editor for U.S. news — Brian Carovillano, who has been AP's Bangkok-based Asia-Pacific news director, today was named managing editor for U.S. news, a role that encompasses the 50 state news reports and other key responsibilities.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, FishbowlNY, Poynter and @testawong

Jonathan Chait / New York Magazine:

Can K Street Buy Mike Allen? — The populist critique of official Washington, which I more or less agree with, revolves around a somewhat fuzzy, impressionistic collection of archetypes. What the critics imagine is an insular subculture inside the Beltway in which a shared conventional wisdom …

Discussion: BillMoyers.com, PRNewser, @carr2n, @ron_fournier, @ryanchittum, @jonathanchait, @jonathanchait, Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Dish, @mikeelk and @ddayen

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

In Case You Thought BuzzFeed Needed More GIFs, The Site Launches A GIF Feed Sponsored By Google+ — Do you sometimes read BuzzFeed and think, “This is great, but why is all this text getting in the way of the funny GIFs?” If so, there's a perfect new section for you, called the GIF Feed.

Guardian:

Google's Eric Schmidt predicts end of censorship within a decade — Excecutive chairman says solution lies in internet connectivity and encrypting everyone — Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has a bold prediction: censorship around the world could end in a decade …

Discussion: @mathewi

Kristin Bergman / Digital Media Law Project:

Cyborg Journalists: How Google Glass Can Change Journalism — in - United States - Newsgathering - Recording Others — Wearable technology is creeping into society, gradually finding its way onto the street and into the gym, offices, classrooms, and more.

Discussion: ReadWrite and @niemanlab

Ted Johnson / Variety:

MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd's Compensation Was $3.3 Million in 2012 — MPAA CEO Chris Dodd's compensation package was just over $3.3 million in 2012, an increase from a year earlier according to disclosures in tax filings made public on Tuesday. — Dodd, in his second year leading …

Discussion: bizjournals, Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times and Deadline.com

Bridget Finn / Twitter blog:

Introducing the new media.twitter.com — As Twitter's role in the media world continues to grow and evolve, we wanted to create a place where people and companies from the worlds of TV, sports, journalism, government, music, faith and nonprofits could have self-service access to ways to increase their impact in the global town square.

Discussion: @twittermedia

Farhad Manjoo / Wall Street Journal:

Why ‘Native Ads’ Muddy the Water for Web Surfers — As advertisers push for more “native ads,” the spread of the paid messages that cleverly blend in with online “content” will further muddy the Web's already murky distinctions between ads and non-ads.

Jason Deans / Guardian:

Bauer unveils digital brand The Debrief aimed at 20-something wealthy women — Publisher of Heat says The Debrief will have aggregated news and sex advice for connected, influential readers — Bauer Media is the latest mainstream UK publisher to jump on the social mobile bandwagon …

Discussion: campaignlive.co.uk

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

Sponsored-Content Spending Growing Faster Than Predicted — Ad spending on sponsored content is growing at a faster clip than originally thought, according to a new forecast from eMarketer. — In June, eMarketer said advertisers would spend $1.88 billion on sponsored content this year …

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

NAMG Confirms It Has Bought Scout From Fox Networks Group in Dude-Focused Content Roll-Up Bid — The North American Membership Group has confirmed a previous report by Business Insider that it had bought sports site Scout.com from the Fox Networks Group. — The price of the deal was not disclosed …

Discussion: GeekWire

Bill Mickey / Folio:

AAM President Mike Lavery Retiring in 2014 — Executive search firm will help Board of Directors secure replacement. — Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) President and Managing Director Mike Lavery will retire after nearly two decades on the job. — Lavery, who joined AAM in 1987 …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck.com and Talking New Media

Agence France Presse:

UN warns Somalia after alleged rape victim, journalists arrested — NAIROBI: The United Nations in Somalia called Thursday for a “proper investigation” after police arrested an alleged rape victim and the journalists who reported her story for defamation. — Rape, and reporting on sexual assault …

Discussion: Committee to Protect …, BBC, allAfrica.com, Telegraph and Al Jazeera English