Mediagazer: BT revenues up on demand for broadband and sports TV (BBC)

7:50 AM ET, January 31, 2014

Top News:

Malcolm Moore / Telegraph:

China kills off discussion on Weibo after internet crackdown — Exclusive: An aggressive crackdown on Sina Weibo has seen numbers of postings on the Twitter-like microblogging site plummet according to research commissioned by the Telegraph — China has succeeded in neutering the country's …

Discussion: @telegraph, @christinelu and Tech in Asia

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Sina Weibo users set new messaging record, but is engagement on 'China's Twitter' falling? — China's Sina Weibo has broken its record for messages sent per minute, after 863,408 million ‘tweets’ were sent during the first minute of the Chinese New Year. — The record surpasses the previous best …

Discussion: Tech in Asia and Telegraph

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

The secret to having a successful paywall around your news is simple — it's about community — Everyone likes to point to the New York Times as the model for a news outlet with a successful paywall or online-subscription model, but as the authors of Columbia University's report on …

Discussion: @marklittlenews and The Dish

Ciara Byrne / Co.Labs:
Inside The Ad-Free, Crowdfunded Publication That Is Upending The Newspaper Business

Discussion: @fastcolabs, @mathewi and @mathewi

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook's New “Creative Labs” Lets The 6,000-Employee Giant Move Fast Like A Startup — It's tough to experiment with a billion people watching. At that scale, Facebook's mantras of “move fast and break things” and “Done is better than perfect” don't quite work.

Discussion: The Verge, Facebook, Businessweek, @annepascual, CNET and Business Insider

Lance Ulanoff / Mashable:
Facebook Paper Is Content — But Don't Call Facebook a Media Company

Discussion: Re/code, @agolis, @jason, Ars Technica, Kirk LaPointe's …, Wired, Guardian and Gigaom

Donna Tam / CNET:

Amazon considers $40 increase in Prime subscription fee — Amazon may increase its US Amazon Prime membership fee by $40 dollars more, the company's chief financial officer announced Thursday during an earnings call. — CFO Tom Szkutak said growing transportation costs may cause …

Discussion: Media & Entertainment, TechCrunch, Softpedia News, @gregbensinger, @fmanjoo, Home Media Magazine and Digits

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Amazon's Stock Price Stumbles After Hours On Revenue, Earnings Miss And Weak Guidance

Discussion: Amazon.com, Forbes, New York Times, Publishers Weekly, ZDNet, The Verge, Digits, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Business Insider and CNET

Alexandra Wake / Nieman Journalism Lab:

In Australia, an ambitious nonprofit news outlet has its funding pulled out from under it — Editor's note: When I speak to journalists or news executives from other countries, there's one part of the American news ecosystem they're always amazed by: our nonprofit news outlets.

Discussion: @niemanlab, @davidc7, The Conversation, @wakeinfright, The Global Mail, Sydney Morning Herald and mUmBRELLA

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

Be Careful at the Book Club, the Author Might Be There — The living room in the plush apartment on Central Park West was filled with all the trappings of a traditional book club. — A dozen people, mostly women, perched on sofas and armchairs with paperbacks on their laps.

Discussion: Melville House Books

Beth Healy / Boston Globe:

John Henry appoints Mike Sheehan CEO of the Globe, names himself publisher — Well-known Boston advertising executive Mike Sheehan will become chief executive officer of The Boston Globe, and the newspaper company's new owner, John Henry, will assume the role of publisher …

Discussion: Poynter, Associated Press and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Dylan Byers / Politico:

MSNBC president apologizes to RNC — MSNBC President Phil Griffin apologized to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Thursday for a tweet that suggested conservatives “hate” interracial marriages. — “The tweet last night was outrageous and unacceptable.

Discussion: TVNewser, The Wrap, Erik Wemple, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Erik Wemple, @stefanjbecket, @alexweprin, BBC, @reince, @buzzfeedben, @abumuqawama, @thestalwart, Poynter, @tvnewslab, Associated Press, Business Insider and New York Magazine

Reuters:

Editor of Spain's El Mundo exits after clash with government — (Reuters) - The influential founding editor of Spain's second-biggest newspaper, El Mundo, stepped down on Thursday after a decline in circulation and a series of revelations of alleged corruption in the ruling party.

Discussion: GlobalPost and In English Section

Kristen Hare / Poynter:

Purdue student paper, NPPA request investigation after a photographer is detained by police — Both the National Press Photographers Association and the Purdue Exponet have written letters to Purdue University asking for an investigation into the Jan. 21 detainment and treatment of a student photo editor …

Discussion: splc.org

BBC:

BT revenues up on demand for broadband and sports TV — BT's sales and profits have risen, driven by record broadband demand and its new sports television service. — The company reported pre-tax profits of £617m for the last three months of 2013, on revenues of £4.6bn.

Discussion: Guardian, Telegraph, This is Money, BelfastTelegraph.co.uk, RTTNews and London News

Christie Chisholm / Columbia Journalism Review:

Albuquerque's next newspaper is print first — The Free Press hopes to fill reporting gaps, one news rack at a time — In the spring of 2008, the Albuquerque Tribune published its last issue. Though known for its solid reporting and stalwart voice—it had won a Pulitzer in 1994 …

Josh Stearns / Groundswell:

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bite-Sized News — Last week the BBC launched Instafax, a short-form video newswire designed for Instagram where videos are limited to 15 seconds. For now, the BBC is describing their project as an experiment, but the move is part of a much larger trend that, at one point, I scoffed at.

Discussion: @jcstearns

New York Times:

Hong Kong Paper Ousts Top Editor, Stirring Concern — HONG KONG — This city's Ming Pao newspaper has long stood for sober independence in a media market that is both brashly commercial and buffeted by political winds from China, its reporters pursuing and often breaking stories that irk the territory's overseers in Beijing.

Discussion: @nytimesworld

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Let's face it: social TV is dead — Okay, video startups, it's time to get real: That social TV thing you've been trying for the last couple years? It's not working. — The evidence is all around us: A few days ago, Yahoo announced that it was shutting down Intonow, the social TV service it had acquired three years ago.

Discussion: @jenali, @sashaboersma, AdAge and Yahoo! Finance

Adrianne Jeffries / The Verge:

Net neutrality petition gets a million signatures — The advocacy group Free Press, along with a broad coalition of organizations, has delivered the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a petition with a million signatures asking to restore the federal protections for net neutrality that were struck down in court two weeks ago.

Discussion: Free Press Blog

Reed Albergotti / Wall Street Journal:

Facebook Uses Data to Charm Advertisers — Facebook Refined its Tools that Allow Advertisers to Target Users Based on Spending Habits in Brick and Mortar Stores — To make the journey from underachiever to advertising juggernaut, Facebook Inc. had to do some advertising of its own.

Discussion: @reedalbergotti

Sydney Morning Herald:

Australia's prime minister ready to pull the plug on public broadcaster's foreign service — Tony Abbott ready to pull the plug on ABC's foreign service — Prime Minister Tony Abbott has given a clear indication the government is moving towards stripping the ABC of its foreign broadcast service, the Australia Network.

Discussion: The Stream and Guardian

Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:

Fox News once again most and least trusted name in news — PPP's 5th annual poll about trust in TV news continues to find what it does every year: Fox News is both the most trusted and least trusted name in news. — 35% of Americans say they trust Fox News more than any other TV news outlet …

Discussion: TVNewser, @robtr2, @atompkins, The Huffington Post, @bponsot, @umairh, @ppppolls and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Adam L. Penenberg / PandoDaily:

Inside the mind of Jason Calacanis — Not long after Jason Calacanis raised $20 million in venture capital for Mahalo, his startup that was initially predicated on human-powered search, I flew to Los Angeles to profile him for a magazine. I'm a native New Yorker who earlier in life …

Discussion: @sarahcuda and @pkafka

P.J. Bednarski / MediaPost:

Machinima COO Reeves Leaves to Rejoin Start-Up — Nanea Reeves, Machinima's chief operating officer since March 2012, left the company at the beginning of the year, is no longer with the company, VideoInk is reporting. — VideoInk said multiple sources confirmed that Reeves left the online gamer network …

Discussion: VideoInk

Jennifer Silber / Folio:

La Presse+ Sees Significant Gains in First 9 Months — New digital edition installed on more than 400,000 iPads. — The free digital edition of Montreal-based daily newspaper La Presse has seen tremendous increases in the last nine months. Since its launch in April last year …

Sarah Laskow / Columbia Journalism Review:

Pacific Standard is upping its Web game to “get the magazine in front of more eyeballs” — Pacific Standard is upping its Web game to “get the magazine in front of more eyeballs” — Pacific Standard has had an exciting January. It's been the magazine's biggest traffic month ever, on track to hit 1.25 million uniques.

Bill Mickey / Folio:

Outside Magazine Gets into the Travel Business — Launches Outside Go to begin booking customized adventure excursions. — Mariah Media's Outside magazine has launched a new division that will begin booking the kind of adventure travel it's long been writing about.