Mediagazer: Writers Guild of America: Companies Seeking $60 Million in Rollbacks (EXCLUSIVE) (Dave McNary/Variety)

8:40 AM ET, January 31, 2014

Top News:

Cable TV is likely to star in contract talks set to begin Monday between Hollywood and the Writers Guild — LOS ANGELES—Cable television is likely to play a starring role in coming contract negotiations between the nation's entertainment producers and the Writers Guild of America.

Discussion: Deadline.com

Dave McNary / Variety:

Writers Guild of America: Companies Seeking $60 Million in Rollbacks (EXCLUSIVE) — Negotiations starting Monday — Setting the stage for contentious bargaining, leaders of the Writers Guild of America have told members that production companies are proposing $60 million in rollbacks at upcoming negotiations.

Discussion: The Wrap

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: Tech in Asia, @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?

Discussion: Telegraph

Agence France-Presse:

China hits back at US criticism over foreign journalists — China on Friday hit back at Washington's condemnation of its treatment of foreign journalists, as tensions rise over a New York Times reporter who left Beijing after not receiving a visa. — PHOTOS

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:
U.S. ‘Deeply Concerned’ Over Press Freedom In China As New York Times Reporter Forced Out

Discussion: Poynter, Gawker, New York Magazine and Weekly Standard

Eugene Volokh / Washington Post:

‘Doom’ is for the unprepared — “Is National Review doomed?” asks Damon Linker (The Week). “It's doubtful that National Review could survive” losing Michael Mann's libel lawsuit, or having to settle it out of court. “National Review may be fighting for its life.” The “magazine has now been placed in jeopardy.”

Damon Linker / The Week:
Is National Review doomed?

Discussion: @sunny_hundal, @clarajeffery, @unstableisotope, @endhateradio, The Raw Story, @michaelshermer and @theweek

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

Lauren Kirchner / Columbia Journalism Review:

Reporting in the post-Snowden era — A panel at Columbia discussed challenges and triumphs — In an auditorium so large that Columbia's Journalism School typically only uses it for its graduation ceremonies, hundreds attended the panel discussion “Journalism After Snowden” on Thursday evening.

Discussion: Tow Center for Digital … and Politico

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, @gregbensinger, @fmanjoo, Softpedia News, 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 and Business Insider

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

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

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

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, @reince, BBC, @buzzfeedben, @abumuqawama, @thestalwart, Poynter, @tvnewslab, Associated Press, Business Insider and New York Magazine

Kazuaki Nagata / The Japan Times:

SKY Perfect JSAT plans all-Japan channel in Indonesia — SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. announced Thursday it will launch a channel next month in Indonesia that will show Japanese programs around the clock to popularize Japanese content in the growing economy and promote Japan itself.

Discussion: AJW and Variety

Sam Kirkland / Poynter:

How Digital First Media hopes to transform workflow, culture of ‘newspaper factories’ — Digital First Media has unveiled plans to transform its newsrooms and put its money where its name is. “Project Unbolt” aims to address the problem of digital efforts at the mercy of existing newspaper infrastructure.

Discussion: Digital First Media, The Buttry Diary, The Buttry Diary and 10,000 Words

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: @poynter and splc.org

David D. Kirkpatrick / New York Times:

Egypt Tries to Reassure Journalists From Abroad — CAIRO — The government on Thursday tried to reassure foreign correspondents that they are free to report in Egypt after prosecutors filed criminal charges accusing 20 journalists for Al Jazeera television of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood.

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

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

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 …