Mediagazer: Life as a Female Journalist: Hot or Not? (Amy Wallace/New York Times)

5:05 PM ET, January 20, 2014

Top News:

Print focus at OC Register fails to stem bleeding as publisher Aaron Kushner tries to scale — Publisher Stumbles in Wild Chase for Growth — Timing matters when it comes to news. I had been reading about Aaron Kushner's audacious strategy to invest in journalism ever since he bought …

Discussion: Street Fight, @jennifersaba, @peterlattman, @ezraklein, @carr2n, @publiceyestl and @mattdpearce

Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:

Matt Cutts: “Stick A Fork In It, Guest Blogging Is Done” — Google and Matt Cutts, in particular, has made a number of statements about guest blogging over the past year as the tactic has grown as a link building tactic. — None of those statements are as clear as the one Cutts wrote today on his personal blog.

Discussion: Matt Cutts, @dannysullivan and WebProNews

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Grantland and Dr. V: What happens when niche journalism meets the network effect — Like any niche pursuit, sports journalism can be a strange beast: magazines like Sports Illustrated often spend enormous amounts of time on stories that few outside the bubble of the sports world have even heard of, let alone care about.

Discussion: Guardian, Beautiful, Terrible … and BuzzFeed

Josh Levin / Slate:
Digging Too Deep — Every journalist has worked on a story …

Discussion: The New Republic, BuzzFeed, Nieman Storyboard, VICE, Kirk LaPointe's …, Boing Boing, ThinkProgress, GLITTERING SCRIVENER, @adrianchen, Jezebel, The Huffington Post and Autostraddle

Amy Wallace / New York Times:

Life as a Female Journalist: Hot or Not? — LOS ANGELES — IN 2009, I wrote a cover story for Wired magazine about the anti-vaccine movement and profiled Paul Offit, a leading proponent of vaccines for children. Dr. Offit is a man. I am a woman. That was sufficient grounds for things to get ugly.

Discussion: Forbes, @pcronald, @meta_porter, @dr_krystal, @trenni, @theopedproject, @semayer, @rachelsklar, @ccriadoperez, @laneflorsheim, @gqmagazine and @frankbruni

Henry Taylor / TheMediaBriefing.com:

UsVsTh3m at nine months and Ampp3d at six weeks: What has Trinity Mirror learned? — For any established media company, coming up with new ideas and finding out fast if they've got a future is a big challenge. — So for Trinity Mirror to place an (admittedly small) bet on UsVsTh3m last last May was a pretty ballsy move.

Discussion: @iainpope73 and @joannauk

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: @tonybrancato, @wblau, @vivianschiller, @janinegibson, @katierosman, @albertocairo, @sulliview and @bdeskin

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, @dkthomp, @raju, @romenesko and Mediawire Daily

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: @s_m_i, @blathnaidhealy and @frasermatthew

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

Sun-Times disbands Grid staff — The Chicago Sun-Times has disbanded the staff of its business publication Grid, with publisher Brandon Copple leaving last week, reports Lynn Marek of Crain's Chicago. — Marek writes, “The Grid brand, which devolved from a print publication to an online product …

Discussion: Chicago Business

Jarvis DeBerry / The Maynard Institute …:

NABJ Executive Director Resigns — Interim Successor Led Medical Association, Alpha Phi Alpha — Maurice Foster, executive director of the National Association of Black Journalists, has resigned after three years in the job, NABJ President Bob Butler announced on Monday, the Martin Luther King holiday.

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Magazine industry ad decline slowing, but 4th quarter not good — The final tally came in this week for print magazine advertising in 2013. It is the typical good news/bad news scenario. — Ad pages — the industry's traditional measure — were down 4.1 percent for the year.

Discussion: @rickedmonds and @poynter

Mark Rachkevych / Kyiv Post:

Watchdog: 26 journalists injured in police clashes, two detained (UPDATE) — Police have detained two journalists in Kyiv on Jan. 19-20 amid a standoff between anti-government protesters and law enforcement, according to the Institute of Mass Information, a local watchdog.

Discussion: @christopherjm

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