Mediagazer: For Movie Producers, a Golden Age Fades (Ben Fritz/Wall Street Journal)

5:50 AM ET, January 20, 2014

Top News:

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, The Huffington Post and MetaFilter

Hazel Cills / Gawker:

Twitter Explodes After Trans Subject of Golf Article Kills Herself — On Friday, journalist Caleb Hannan tweeted a link to a recent Grantland story he did, writing, “Not sure what to say other than this is the strangest story I've ever worked on.” — The piece, entitled “Dr. V's Magical Putter …

David Carr / New York Times:

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: @mattdpearce

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

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 and @towcenter

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

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

Associated Press:

Number of permits requested to make porn films in L.A. County has declined by about 95%. — Number of permits requested to make porn films in L.A. County has declined by about 95%. — LAS VEGAS (AP) — Lee Roy Myers has everything you'd expect to find in the nation's porn capital in Southern California …

Discussion: @hannahdreier, @ndiblasio and UPROXX

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.

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.

Nathaniel Popper / New York Times:

After Leaving Office, Bloomberg Is More Hands-On at Old Company — At editorial meetings in Bloomberg L.P.'s headquarters this week, Michael R. Bloomberg gave clear signs that he would not be taking a hands-off approach as he returned to his old company. — Just two week's removed from City Hall …

Discussion: TVNewser, mUmBRELLA, The Corsair, Mediawire Daily, @peterlattman, New York Magazine, @shirleybrady, @daschles and @nathanielpopper

BBC:

BBC World TV's Komla Dumor dies at 41 — BBC TV presenter Komla Dumor has died suddenly at his home in London at the age of 41, it has been announced. — Ghana-born Dumor was a presenter for BBC World News and its Focus on Africa programme. — One of Ghana's best-known journalists …