Mediagazer: Smartphone Users Gobbling Up More Data Amid Growing Use of Streaming Music (Ina Fried/Re/code)

9:30 PM ET, January 16, 2014

Top News:

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: @haileyerin, @frumpymom, @thegarywarner, @registertravel, @medodif, @jbenton, @mtdukes, @jeichelberger84, @jbenton, Talking Biz News, @dlboardman and @ricksforza

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

Kevin Roderick / LA Observed:

Kushner announces new team at Register, explains ‘restructuring’ * — The Orange County Register shed more than 30 newsroom staffers today via layoffs, buyouts and retirement. The departing include editor Ken Brusic, as we noted earlier. It's all about restructuring for the future …

Discussion: Orange County Register

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Farhad Manjoo heads to NYT after 4 months at WSJ to replace David Pogue — The New York Times Gets Its David Pogue Replacement from the Wall Street Journal — The New York Times has found a replacement for David Pogue, its high-profile tech reviewer: Sources say the Times is filling …

Discussion: @gaberivera, Talking Biz News, @felixsalmon and @stefanjbecket

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

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Exclusive: Yahoo's Editor-in-Chief Jai Singh Departs Company — According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo's Editor-in-Chief Jai Singh has quit the company, a major departure which comes in the wake of changes made to its media unit after the firing of COO Henrique De Castro yesterday.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Business Insider, @awallenstein, @mathewi, @rafat, VatorNews, DealBook, Beyond Search, Forbes, Softpedia News, CNET, VentureBeat and The Wrap

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

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

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

Discussion: Jon Slattery

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette: Independent owners decline to comment on report that title is again up for sale

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

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

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: @mathewi and @jeffjarvis

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, @erikmal, @johnavlon and @miriamelder

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: @gitagovinda, Business Insider, @bupbin, @mmasnick, Re/code, WebProNews, Valleywag and Fortune

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

FCC Chairman intends to fight network neutrality defeat, but how? — In a speech today the FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said he “intends to fight” the court ruling that on Tuesday gutted most of the FCC's Open Internet Order governing network neutrality. Speaking at a Washington DC event he said …

Discussion: The Verge, Free Press Blog and Free Press Blog

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

Discussion: @harrisj and @harrisj

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, NBCNews, @loriekonish, Gothamist, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, The Newspaper Guild and Talking Biz News

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

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

The Week Picks Up a New Digital Boss From Patch — The Week, Dennis Publishing's online/offline news aggregator, has brought on a new digital boss. Rachel Fishman Feddersen will run TheWeek.com, and will “lead a relaunch and reconception” of the site, the publisher says.

Discussion: @romenesko

Michael Rondon / Folio:

SI Golf Group to Integrate Ecommerce — Also launches weekly digital magazine. — Ecommerce has become an oasis for many publishers looking to diversify revenue streams in a downward ad market. — And while Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated Golf Group has outperformed the industry in advertising …

Jordan Chariton / Lost Remote:

Facebook and Instagram Teaming Up With NBC for Sochi Olympics — After teaming up during the 2012 London Olympics, NBC and Facebook/Instagram are joining forces again for the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia. — “Building off of our successful collaboration for the London Olympics …

Discussion: TVNewser, Broadcasting & Cable, FierceCable, FishbowlNY, GalleyCat and FishbowlDC

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Smartphone Users Gobbling Up More Data Amid Growing Use of Streaming Music — The increased use of music services such as Pandora and Spotify has led to a significant rise in the amount of data being used by the average smartphone. — According to a new NPD study, consumers' average data use …

Chris O'Shea / FishbowlNY:

Brendan Ripp Named Sports Illustrated Publisher — Brendan Ripp has been named publisher of Sports Illustrated. Ripp moves to the magazine from Fortune, where he served as VP of sales and marketing. Prior to that, Ripp — the son of Time Inc. CEO Joe Ripp — was publisher of Money and Time.

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