Mediagazer: Spies, journalists and inconvenient truths (Gay Alcorn/The Age)

6:15 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, Hit & Run, Business Insider, @timkarr, @tonyromm, TheBlaze.com and @noahshachtman

Gay Alcorn / The Age: Spies, journalists and inconvenient truths

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

Hadas Gold / Politico:
White House press corps spars with deputy press secretary over photo access

Discussion: @chucktodd, @dylanbyers and The Huffington Post

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

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, @roxanneshirazi, Online NewsHour, @greenharr, @stokesps and @heyfeifer

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, @zpower and @fromedome

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: The Wrap, bizjournals, The Next Web and Deadline.com

Tim Molloy / The Wrap:

Nate Silver on How to Build a Better News Site: Quality Over Clicks (Video) — ESPN President John Skipper says he hasn't given Nate Silver any traffic targets for his new blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. — In their first appearance together since Skipper hired Silver from the New York Times in July …

Dylan Byers / Politico:
Leonhardt resists Nate Silver comparison

Discussion: Poynter and NetNewsCheck Latest

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, @joepompeo, @ryanchittum and Pressing Issues

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

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: New York Times, @felixsalmon and @edmundlee

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.

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

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: TechCrunch, Digital Music News, Gigaom, @synopsi, The Verge, @geoffreyfowler, Mashable and hypebot

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: Folio, New York Times, hypebot, @toddowyoung 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, Wired and Pocket-lint

Corynne McSherry / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

WordPress.com Stands Up For Its Users, Goes to Court to Challenge DMCA Abuse — The abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's notice-and-takedown process to silence lawful speech is well-documented and all too common. Far less common, though, is a service provider that is willing …

Discussion: WordPress.com News, @niemanlab, @krelnik, Techdirt, @idoubtit and @maira

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: Kirk LaPointe's … and @mathewi

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.

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 …

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, @jonathanchait, @carr2n, @ron_fournier, @ryanchittum, Washington Post, The Dish, Mother Jones, @mikeelk and @ddayen

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: FishbowlNY, NetNewsCheck Latest, Poynter and @testawong

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Pandora flips to slim loss, but ad-sales power amps up — Pandora Media, operator of the Web's top radio service, saw its bottom line flip to a slight loss from a thin profit, but the earnings power of its mobile advertising continued to grow. — Related stories — Pandora is growing up, and it smells like teen spirit

Discussion: MediaPost, Bloomberg and @lianabaker

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.

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

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: TechCrunch, 10,000 Words, The Verge, App.net, Journalism.co.uk, @poynter and The Next Web

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