Mediagazer: Vine Sprouts Its 6-Second Mayhem On the Web (Christina Bonnington/Wired)

3:05 PM ET, January 3, 2014

Top News:

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Ezra Klein Is Said to Plan to Leave Washington Post — Ezra Klein, an analyst, columnist and television commentator who runs The Washington Post's Wonkblog, is making plans to leave the newspaper after failing to win support for a new website he wanted to create within the company …

Felix Salmon / Reuters:

Netflix's dumbed-down algorithms — Alexis Madrigal has a rollicking investigation into Netflix's movie genres — all 76,897 of them, from category #1 (African-American Crime Documentaries) to category #91,307 (Visually Striking Latin American Comedies). His story is titled …

Discussion: Mother Jones, @caseynewton, @reuters, @obsoletedogma, @bendwilliams and The FJP

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

How Netflix uses the 76,897 micro-genres it assigns to videos — How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood — If you use Netflix, you've probably wondered about the specific genres that it suggests to you. Some of them just seem so specific that it's absurd. Emotional Fight-the-System Documentaries?

Discussion: The Switch, Daily Dot, @sriramk, @davidbauer, @simonowens, @andywhitlock, @manovich, @errorjustin, @alexismadrigal, @alexismadrigal, @npetit, @kesabeth, /Film, @alexismadrigal, Subtraction.com, @mollyesque, The Verge, Deadline.com, @harrisj, WebProNews and Gizmodo

Jack Shafer:

The Times advances the NSA's amnesty-for-Snowden trial balloon — Of course the New York Times editorial page wants clemency or, at the very least, a generous plea bargain for National Security Agency contractor turned super-leaker Edward Snowden! The news pages of the New York Times …

Discussion: Guy Fawkes' blog, The Dish, BuzzFeed, @saletan, Taking Note, WebProNews, The Huffington Post, Techdirt, New York Times and The FJP

Kevin Gosztola / The Dissenter:
Dear New York Times Editors: If Snowden Is a Whistleblower, What Is Chelsea Manning?

Discussion: CNN, CNET, TheBlaze.com and The Public Editor's Journal

Kalev Leetaru / Foreign Policy: King Snowden and the Fall of Wikileaks

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

Discovery CEO Stands to Make $110 Million in 2014 Compensation — Discovery Communications Inc. (DISCA) Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav stands to make more than $110 million in compensation in 2014, the first year of a new contract that keeps him at the cable-network giant through 2019.

Discussion: Adweek, Broadcasting & Cable, bizjournals, PR Newswire, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, @bloombergtech, Deadline.com and Variety

Brooks Barnes / New York Times:

DreamWorks is set to launch a tablet for children with original and exclusive programming — A Tablet for Children That Comes With Its Own Penguins — GLENDALE, Calif. — DreamWorks Animation first captivated children in movie theaters. Then it branched into TV, piping cartoons based on hits like …

Discussion: The Verge, Softpedia News, VatorNews, AndroidHeadlines.com, Gizmodo, TechnoBuffalo, SlashGear, @peterlattman, Cult of Mac, Geeky Gadgets, Engadget and Electronista

Press Gazette:

Pakistani TV reporter becomes first journalist killed in 2014 — Pakistan journalist Shan Odhor has become the first media worker to die in 2014 because of his work, the International federation of Journalists (IFJ) said today. — The announcement came just days after the organisation reported …

Discussion: kuna.net.kw, The Express Tribune, IFJ.org, The Eastern Tribune and The Drum

Peter Wilby / New Statesman:

Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain — He's the most successful and most feared newspaperman of his generation. But after a bad year in which he was forced to defend his methods, how much longer can Dacre survive as editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail?

Discussion: @ruskin147, @mrianleslie, @thebrowser and Boing Boing

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

Record Companies' Lawsuit Against Vimeo Heads Towards Appellate Showdown — If the 2nd Circuit agrees to hear this copyright dispute, it could impact how employees of UGC sites interact with videos and whether popular websites carry pre-1972 music. — Barry Diller

Discussion: Gigaom, Plagiarism Today and The Wrap

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Daily News closes Desi News, a South Asian-centric vertical led by NewsCred — Daily News shutters South Asian site — The Daily News has pulled the plug on Desi News, a South Asian-centric vertical fueled by the New York-based content-licensing platform NewsCred.

Christina Bonnington / Wired:

Vine Sprouts Its 6-Second Mayhem On the Web — Vine, Twitter's looping 6-second video app, is making the leap from mobile to the webtoday. — Unlike some mobile services like Instagram, Vine's web existence isn't just a pretty way to view your Vines in a browser.

Discussion: TechCrunch and The Verge

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Sports Gets iOS 7 Redesign, Awesome Gif Creation Tool For Sharing 'Big 4′ Sports Moments — Yahoo Sports gets a fantastic looking redesign today for iOS 7, and gains a slick new feature called ‘Loops’. Loops allows you to skim through a game, pick a short segment and create …

Discussion: 9to5Mac, The Next Web and The Verge

Tamer El-Ghobashy / Middle East Real Time:

Cautious Campaign for Egypt Journalist's Release — The family and lawyer of an Al Jazeera English journalist detained on terrorism charges in Egypt have mounted a delicate media campaign for his release, underscoring the deep unpopularity of the news channel that is seen as sympathetic to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's … and @tamerelg

David Oliver / American Journalism Review:

BuzzFeed's Secret Weapon: Ky Harlin — Ky Harlin, BuzzFeed's director of data science, runs simple tests on news stories, with extraordinary results. — For “The 35 Best Places to Visit Over the Summer,” one reader might see a picture of Paris. Another sees a picture of Tokyo.

Discussion: @albertonardelli and @amjourreview

Wall Street Journal:

Cox to Buy Back Stake in AutoTrader — Deal With Providence Equity Implies $7 Billion Value for Online Car Marketplace … Cox Enterprises Inc., the closely held media conglomerate, has bought back a stake in AutoTrader Group Inc. in a deal that implies a value of about $7 billion for the online auto marketplace.

Discussion: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, PR Newswire and NetNewsCheck Latest