Mediagazer: When mainstream media is the lunatic fringe (Sarah Kendzior/Al Jazeera English)

2:40 PM ET, January 22, 2014

Top News:

Tania Branigan / Guardian:

Guardian blocked in China after story about leadership's offshore wealth — Access to the front page of newspaper's website blocked and availability of other stories intermittent — The Guardian appeared to be partially blocked in China on Wednesday after revealing that relatives …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Poynter, The Independent, New York Times, @mlcalderone, Tech in Asia and The Next Web

Robert Andrews / Beet.TV:

BBC.com Opens Its Doors To Native Advertising — The BBC is known for its editorial integrity and, at least in the UK, its aversion to advertising. These facts would seem to make an embrace of the current “native advertising” trend difficult. But that's just what BBC Worldwide …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab and @beet_tv

Emily Rauhala / TIME:

CNN, BBC Reporters Covering China Activist Trial Manhandled on Live TV — Street-side tussles take place outside Beijing court where transparency campaigner Xu Zhiyong is being tried behind closed doors — BBC journalist Martin Patience lived up to his name today.

Discussion: TVNewser, Politico, The Huffington Post, BBC and BBC

Dean Starkman / Columbia Journalism Review:

Ezra Klein and the early-mover disadvantage — No one knows if these new personal-franchise journalism ventures are going to work — The parade of departures of high-profile journalism talent from big newspapers, of which Ezra Klein's is the most recent, can basically be divided into two categories.

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, Mediaite, Gigaom, Mediawire Daily and Capital New York

Andrew Sullivan / The Dish:
Alliances of media stars and legacy organizations make sense, but sometimes control matters more

Discussion: Mother Jones, The New Republic, The New Republic, The New Republic and Talking New Media

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Fox Will Stream Super Bowl XLVIII Free to Computers and iPads — Broadcaster to offer a ‘special preview’ of Fox Sports Go authenticated service for the NFL championship game on Feb. 2 — Fox Sports will use Super Bowl XLVIII as a showcase for its online and mobile authentication service …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, AdAge, Forbes and CNET

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Phone-hacking trial: police defend dawn raid on Rebekah Brooks's home — Detective insists all searches are conducted without ‘fear or favour’ after jury hears officers checked baby's Moses basket — Police have defended their dawn raid on Rebekah Brooks's Oxfordshire home at the phone-hacking trial …

Discussion: Press Association, @adambienkov and Press Association

Michael Holden / Reuters:
Police searched basket of Rebekah Brooks's baby, court hears

Discussion: Guardian, The Independent and thedrum.com

Kristen Hare / Poynter:

Radio Free Europe journalists beaten, detained in Kiev protests — On Wednesday, UPI reported that two journalists have been beaten and detained in the ongoing protests in Kiev. … In a video for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty posted Wednesday, the two badly beaten men, Dmytro Barkar and Ihor Iskhakov, talk about what happened.

Discussion: UPI, The Week and Radio Free Europe/Radio …

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Ex-AOL editor Cyndi Stivers joins Tina Brown's company — Cyndi Stivers, who saw her job as editor-in-chief of AOL.com eliminated in the upheaval at the media company late last year — after only seven months in the position — has a new gig lined up with Tina Brown's fledgling conference business.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Maria Konnikova / The New Yorker Blog:

The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You — When Jonah Berger was a graduate student at Stanford, in the early aughts, he would make a habit of reading page A2 of the Wall Street Journal, which included a list of the five most-read and the five most-shared articles of the day.

Discussion: @actualkris, @10000words, @alisonhallett, @mathewi, @utlibraries and @brainpicker

Reuters:

Massive Internet mishap sparks Great Firewall scrutiny in China — (Reuters) - Human error likely caused a glitch in China's Great Firewall that saw millions of Internet users ironically rerouted to the homepage of a U.S.-based company which helps people evade Beijing's web censorship, sources told Reuters.

Discussion: NYT Bits, CNN, @jonrussell, @adampasick and CNET

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Lex Fenwick, Dow Jones Chief, Resigns in Shift by News Corp. — Lex Fenwick, the hard-driving chief executive who stumbled in his efforts to transform Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has resigned effective immediately as the company rethinks its strategy.

Discussion: JackFlack.com, Press Gazette, Business Wire, Capital New York, @danwmedia, @jbenton, Capital New York, @nycjim and @moorehn

Sarah Kendzior / Al Jazeera English:

When mainstream media is the lunatic fringe — Digital media gives cruelty, new visibility, but does the prestige of old media give bigoted ranting respectability? — On January 8, 2014, Emma Keller, a journalist for The Guardian, wrote a column about a woman named Lisa Bonchek Adams.

Discussion: @kurafire, @melissagira, @graceishuman, @derrelldurrett, @allisonkilkenny, @redlightvoices and @pankisseskafka

Jamie Weinstein / The Daily Caller:

Glenn Beck: ‘I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart’ — Glenn Beck made a candid admission Tuesday night. — During an appearance on Fox News' “The Kelly File,” the former Fox News host reflected on his time at the network.

Discussion: BuzzFeed, The Wrap, Mediaite, Politico, @allisonkilkenny, The Huffington Post and @mckaycoppins

Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

The race is on to launch an internet TV service in the US — America's first pay TV service delivered entirely over the internet is coming. The only question is who will offer it. — A slew of companies—Sony, Verizon, Apple, and Amazon—are working on television services that would take advantage …

Discussion: Bloomberg, @brianstelter, @zseward, Gigaom and USA Today

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

Weather Channel: DirecTV Subscribers Should Be Able to Switch, Without Penalty — The Weather Channel is ratcheting up the rhetoric in its fight to get back on DirecTV. — The leading weather TV channel, which begins a ninth day off the nation's second-largest pay TV service …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Deadline.com, AdAge, Broadcasting & Cable and FishbowlNY

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

The news curation game gets another entrant as the WaPo's former owner relaunches Trove — You might think the news-recommendation space is a little crowded, what with giant social networks like Twitter and Facebook as well as dedicated services like Prismatic, Zite and News360 …

Discussion: Trove, NYT Bits, Re/code, TechCrunch, @niemanlab, cnbc.com, Washington Post, Mashable, @lheron, @mims and The Verge, Thanks:@mathewi

Jasper Jackson / TheMediaBriefing.com:

News UK CEO: “A big bundle is a very efficient mechanism which works remarkably well” — News UK is unusual among newspaper groups in taking a hardline approach to digital subscriptions, eschewing metered models for an offer that provides online access to the whole bundle, or none of it.

Discussion: @raju and @hobbb, Thanks:@henryctaylor

Robert Andrews / Beet.TV:

Guardian Preparing To Go Fully “Responsive” — The Guardian will soon overhaul its website to ensure ads, as well as editorial, adapt to work across the multitude of devices consumers use. — The publisher first launched a “responsive design” site in 2012 - a tactic a growing number …

Thanks:@beet_tv

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

UK sports show bans mentions of Twitter in protest over abusive tweets directed at presenter — Talksport bans Twitter in protest at racist taunts and death threats for Stan Collymore — Talksport has banned mentions of Twitter from its radio station and from Sport magazine until …

Discussion: BBC, Daily Mail, Daily Mail, The Independent, Mirror.co.uk, Sport Industry.biz, GlobalPost, The Irish Times, Radio Today, @tnyjohncassidy, thedrum.com, BBC and Guardian

Liz Hannaford / Journalism.co.uk:

Recalculating the newsroom: The rise of the journo-coder? — Through a series of interviews with journalists and developers working at the BBC and Financial Times plus some key players outside of major newsrooms, Liz Hannaford aims to find out about data journalism's special role today.

Garett Sloane / Adweek:

Twitter's 2014 Strategy: The Intersection of Video and Data — Twitter is doubling down on its second-screen pitch. — The company has been meeting with agencies and brands since the beginning of the year, showing off its ad product road map in an attempt to counter Facebook's push into video …

Devin Coldewey / NBCNews:

Feds pull Google Glass user from theater for suspected piracy — A Google Glass user in Ohio has run into an unexpected consequence of wearing a camera on your face at all times: Movie theaters might suspect you of piracy. Homeland Security agents pulled the man from the movie and interviewed …

Discussion: The Gadgeteer, TechCrunch, Forbes, The Switch, The Columbus Dispatch, Hit & Run, PC Magazine, Associated Press, The Independent, NY Daily News, Computerworld and Telegraph

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft and Machinima brush off Xbox One shilling controversy — Microsoft's partnership with Machinima to pay YouTube users to promote the Xbox One has generated controversy, and raised some questions this week. While the practice isn't unusual itself, leaked documents appeared to show …

Discussion: VG247, PandoDaily, Softpedia News, Gotta Be Mobile and Ars Technica

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Three Strikes Law Does Nothing to Curb Piracy, Research Finds — In recent years many initiatives to curb online piracy have emerged and in several countries so-called “graduated response” schemes have been implemented. — In France, New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea strikes schemes are baked into law …

Discussion: Gigaom

Molly Mulshine / Betabeat:

Zach Braff Can't Legally Share His Multimillion Dollar Movie Deal With Kickstarter Donors — Dawww, we can't stay mad at these two. (Photo: Getty) — Poor Zach Braff. He's catching so much guff, when all he really wants to do is strike the perfect balance between quirky and relatable.

Discussion: BuzzFeed and NBCNews

Cliff Edwards / Bloomberg:

Netflix Seen Reporting U.S. Web Users Reach 33.1 Million — Netflix Inc. (NFLX), the world's largest subscription streaming service, will report after markets close today that its U.S. Web subscribers rose to 33.1 million in the fourth quarter, according to a survey of analysts.

Discussion: Mashable