Mediagazer: After Mulling Sale, Business Insider Raising a New Round of Funding (Kara Swisher/Re/code)

10:55 AM ET, January 20, 2014

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Kara Swisher / Re/code:

After Mulling Sale, Business Insider Raising a New Round of Funding — Business Insider — which rejected an informal acquisition offer of around $100 million floated by AOL last year and has discussed other sale efforts — is likely to be raising a new round from its existing investors, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Discussion: @carney, VatorNews, @pkafka, @zseward, @peterlauria3 and Mediawire Daily

Josh Levin / Slate:

Digging Too Deep — Every journalist has worked on a story that started out being about one thing and ended up as something else entirely. That's what happened to Caleb Hannan, who got curious about a weird-looking golf club he found on YouTube and started quizzing the inventor about her far-out scientific theories.

Discussion: The New Republic, Nieman Storyboard, ThinkProgress and The Huffington Post

Hazel Cills / Gawker:
Twitter Explodes After Trans Subject of Golf Article Kills Herself

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Michael Kinsley to Join Vanity Fair and Write a Monthly Column — Mr. Kinsley will write a monthly column for Vanity Fair, which is likely to cover “what I've written about most of the time: politics, in one form or another,” he said.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu, @romenesko, @raju, @dkthomp and Mediawire Daily

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

After the Times Redesign, Complaints and Changes — I've seldom had as much response to any post as to one last week - from the first day of the redesign of The Times's website: about 1,000 comments on this blog, in addition to hundreds of emails to my office.

Discussion: @janinegibson, @katierosman, @vivianschiller, @albertocairo and @sulliview

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

In France, value of legacy media companies plummets — Those media assets that are worth nothing — The valuation gap between high tech and media companies has never been wider. The erosion of their revenue model might be the main culprit, but management teams, unions and boards …

Discussion: @blathnaidhealy, @s_m_i and @frasermatthew

Fergus Pitt / Tow Center for Digital Journalism:

Which News Organizations Influence Wikipedia? — The New York Times leads the Wikipedia record of 2013's biggest news stories, according to a very simple (and perhaps simplistic) analysis of the online encyclopedia's citations. The analysis and process are quite basic …

Discussion: @raju, @fergle and @towcenter

Betsy Rothstein / The Daily Caller:

Ex-Politico reporter sells blog to U.S. News & World Report — Goodbye tank tops in December. Hello lucrative job in Washington in early February. — Political reporter Dave Cantanese left Politico in January, 2013 under a swirl of controversy. In a New Years Eve resignation note …

Discussion: @betsyscribeindc and The Run 2016

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

News International security chief said he ‘burned stuff’, colleague tells court — Mark Hanna made comment to security guard after they discussed News of the World closure, phone-hacking trial hears — The News International director of security told one of his team he had dug a hole in his garden to …

Discussion: @guardian

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

International editors warn UK Government sending ‘negative message’ to world on press freedom — The World Association of Newspapers (WAN-IFRA) two-day press freedom mission to the UK concluded with a warning that changes to press regulation and Government “intimidation” of The Guardian were sending a …

Discussion: @pressgazette

Ben Fritz / Wall Street Journal:

For Movie Producers, a Golden Age Fades — As Hollywood slashes spending, nobody has felt the brunt as much as movie producers … LOS ANGELES—They still sit on the northern edge of the Universal Pictures lot—symbols of an era when producers were the kings of Hollywood.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times and @benfritz

Ben Woods / The Next Web:

BBC launches new iWonder brand for digital content, starting with interactive World War One guides — The BBC has launched a new brand called iWonder which it hopes will unlock the learning potential from its wide-ranging content. — Starting today, and designed to coincide with the BBC's World War …

Discussion: BBC, Digital Spy, T3, thedrum.com and Pocket-lint