Mediagazer: Omidyar Network's Democracy Fund grants $500k over two years to Investigative News Network (Lisa Williams/Investigative News Network)

6:35 PM ET, January 16, 2014

Top News:

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

The Independent seeks buyer — The Independent is up for sale. The paper's founder, and current chairman of its publishing company, Andreas Whittam Smith, has been authorised to seek out a buyer. — The owners, Alexander Lebedev and his son, Evgeny, have been indicating …

Discussion: @spencetimes, BuzzFeed, Management Today, mUmBRELLA, @samirashackle, @adambienkov, @raju, @bounder, @scottygb and The Drum

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

The Independent's future in jeopardy as sales fall to alarming level — It is hard to imagine anyone buying The Independent and therefore places the paper's future existence in jeopardy. The fact that its owner has failed to find a buyer after months of seeking one suggest that its newsprint days are coming to an end.

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Independent owners decline to comment on report that title is again up for sale — The publishers of The Independent declined to comment this morning on a report that the title is again up for sale - nearly four years after it was sold by Independent News and Media to Alexander Lebedev.

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Financial documents being shown to potential buyers raise questions about its future growth. Has Forbes peaked? And can it justify the high price it's seeking — The newsonomics of Forbes' real performance and price potential — The bidding for Forbes is now moving into round two, with a sale expected within a month.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, PandoDaily, @carr2n, @jeffjohnroberts, @niemanlab, @rafat, @bobbymacreports, @foxjust, @pkafka, @eamonn and @rafat

Ken Bensinger / Los Angeles Times:

Layoffs come at OC Register and Riverside Press-Enterprise — Newsroom layoffs hit the Orange Country Register and Riverside Press-Enterprise on Thursday, a troubling sign for the papers. Above, the Register's Santa Ana headquarters. (Karen Tapia Andersen / Los Angeles Times / January 16, 2014)

Discussion: @dlboardman, @ricksforza and @jbenton

Gustavo Arellano / Navel Gazing:

Reports: Orange County Register editor Ken Brusic out, Rob Curley in as layoffs hit newspaper — OC Reg Source on Layoffs: “It's a Bloodbath”; Editor Ken Brusic Out, Rob Curley in as Editor: UPDATE — Update after the jump . . . ORIGINAL POST, 10 A.M. Several sources—via planes …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, LA Observed, @genepark, @mjenkins, @kenbensinger, @antonprtweets and Orange County Register

Chris Elliott / Guardian:

Open door: Why an article on Lisa Bonchek Adams was removed from the Guardian site — I don't think it is wrong to frame a question about how those with incurable illnesses use social media, but the Guardian was wrong in the way it went about it — Lisa Bonchek Adams is a woman …

Discussion: Poynter, Mediaite, @emilynussbaum, The Huffington Post, @glennf, @sethmnookin, Gawker, @louisemensch, @xeni, @johnmcquaid, @jenseniorny, @jayrosen_nyu, @poniewozik, @scottros, @mathewi, @stuartmillar159, The Daily Caller and Capital New York

Rehema Figueiredo / Guardian:

Al-Jazeera journalists held in Egypt accused of harming national security — Prosecutors say three are still being investigated on suspicion of joining the Muslim Brotherhood — Egyptian prosecutors have said three journalists working for al-Jazeera English are being interrogated on suspicion …

Discussion: BBC, @monaeltahawy, Daily News Egypt, CityNews, @evanchill, @bbcworld and CBC News

Robert Mackey / New York Times:
A.P. Cameraman Detained in Egypt After His Images Appear on Al Jazeera

Discussion: The Huffington Post, CNN and Mediaite

Al Jazeera English:
Al Jazeera says journalists did not confess

Discussion: Montreal Gazette and @aljazeera

Pew Internet:

E-Reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps — The proportion of Americans who read e-books is growing, but few have completely replaced print books for electronic versions. — The percentage of adults who read an e-book in the past year has risen to 28%, up from 23% at the end of 2012.

Discussion: Quartz, GalleyCat, The Verge, The Next Web, @pewresearch, Digits, VatorNews, Publishers Weekly, @lrainie, BetaNews, @geoffreyfowler, @webjunction, WebProNews and Taking Note

Josh Stearns / Free Press Blog:

Net Neutrality and the Future of Journalism — Tuesday's court decision, which struck down the FCC's Open Internet Order and threatened the future of Net Neutrality, has huge implications for the future of journalism and press freedom. — According to the Pew Research Center …

Discussion: @jcstearns, Gigaom and Consumerist

Bloomberg:
Tallying the Cost to Netflix in Verizon's Victory Over FCC

Discussion: @harrisj and @harrisj

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:
FCC Chairman intends to fight network neutrality defeat, but how?

Discussion: Deseret News and The Verge

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Noah Shachtman, formerly of Foreign Policy and Wired, joins Daily Beast as executive editor — After Tina Brown's Exit, Daily Beast Brings In Editing Help — The Daily Beast has hired Noah Shachtman, a former editor at Foreign Policy and Wired, as its new executive editor …

Discussion: @noahshachtman, @miriamelder, @johnavlon and @erikmal

Mark Potts / Recovering Journalist:

Introducing Newspeg — A New Way to Look at News — Do you get the feeling you're awash in a flood of news? — The internet has unleashed a torrent of news sources, old and new, that we're all scrambling to make sense of and sort out. The old convenient package of news that landed …

Discussion: @jeffjarvis and @mathewi

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Fired Yahoo Exec's $109M Golden Parachute Was One Of The Biggest Ever — There are a lot of different ways to express just how massive is the payout Yahoo is bestowing upon Henrique De Castro, the chief operations officer fired this week by CEO Marissa Mayer after only 15 months on the job.

Discussion: @mmasnick, @gitagovinda, @bupbin, Re/code, Business Insider, WebProNews, Valleywag, Fortune, CNET and The Wrap

Mark Stencel / Poynter:

Tech reporter Brian Krebs hacks it on his own, one scoop at a time … Few news stories in the past month landed on homepages and front pages with a louder thud than the theft of credit and debit card information from millions of Target customers. — The Target break-in was the latest scoop …

Discussion: @ampress, @amzam, @ktoughill, @jayrosen_nyu, @ezraklein, @poynter and Talking Biz News

Matthew Lynch / Capital New York:

Memo: Condé Nast ad pages flat in Q1 — Condé Nast Media Group president Lou Cona said ad pages were flat across the company's magazines in its first quarter in a memo to staffers sent Thursday. — Though pages were up in January and March, a “flagging” February contributed to the results …

NBC New York:

Wall Street Journal Reporter Goes Missing in New Jersey, Credit Card Mysteriously Used in Mexico — Hundreds of people are searching for a missing 55-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter who left his New Jersey home for a walk on Saturday and never came back.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Poynter, @loriekonish, NBCNews, Gothamist, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, The Newspaper Guild and Talking Biz News

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Netflix ‘original’ documentary lands Oscar nomination — “The Square,” a Netflix-backed film about the 2011 Egyptian revolution, secured an Oscar nomination for documentary feature on Thursday, fulfilling the Academy Awards buzz it drummed up at film festivals.

Discussion: Speakeasy, Latest News & Headlines, The Wrap, Home Media Magazine, FishbowlNY, Forbes, Variety, Rolling Stone, Media & Entertainment, The Next Web, LA Observed, The Verge, The New Yorker Blog, @tiff_net, VentureBeat and UPROXX

Lisa Williams / Investigative News Network:

Omidyar Network's Democracy Fund grants $500k over two years to Investigative News Network — The Democracy Fund Makes Investment in the Investigative News Network and the Nonprofit News Sector — The Investigative News Network (INN) is happy to announce that the Democracy Fund has approved …

Discussion: @democracyfund, DemocracyFund and @inn

Alex Miller / VICE:

Kelvin MacKenzie is Wrong About International News — Last night, parochial news troll Kelvin MacKenzie appeared on Newsnight to claim that foreign reporting “is killing TV news”. He was being entertained by Paxman and the rest thanks to new research, which suggests that TV viewers are often indifferent to foreign news stories.

Discussion: @viceuk and @niemanlab

Angus MacKinnon / Agence France Presse:

Actress sues magazine over Hollande affair report — Paris (AFP) - Actress Julie Gayet is suing Closer, the magazine that reported she had an affair with French President Francois Hollande, a spokesman for the glossy weekly told AFP on Thursday. — The move, under France's strict privacy legislation …

Ed Christman / Billboard:

FCC Shelves Pandora's Bid For South Dakota Radio Station — In another minor setback to its music licensing plans, Pandora has received word from the FCC that it is no longer processing its application for the transfer of the ownership of broadcasting license for KXMZ, the Rapid City, South Dakota radio station it acquired last June.

Discussion: Radio Ink Magazine, Gigaom, @mpinc, Billboard, Music Week and Electronista

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Rdio follows Spotify with unlimited ad-supported music on the web — A day after Spotify said it would remove all caps on free ad-supported music listening on the web, fellow on-demand music service Rdio followed suit. Previously, Rdio offered listeners ad-supported streaming for a limited …

Discussion: Rdio Blog, Gigaom, @chriswelch and The Next Web