Mediagazer: Super Bowl Ads Score Before Big Game With Massive Viewership (Marc Graser/Variety)

1:45 PM ET, January 31, 2014

Top News:

Luke Harding / Guardian:

Footage released of Guardian editors destroying Snowden hard drives — GCHQ technicians watched as journalists took angle grinders and drills to computers after weeks of tense negotiations. New video footage has been released for the first time of the moment Guardian editors destroyed computers used …

Discussion: Guardian, The Huffington Post, @libertygirl8, @aral, @seb_ly, Poynter, The Verge, @guardianus, @tomgara, @radleybalko, Lawfare, Mashable, @emptywheel, @mlcalderone, @petersterne, @paul__johnson and @timkarr

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, 10,000 Words and @mjenkins

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: The Huffington Post, The Wrap, The Wrap, Capital New York and Tow Center for Digital …

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, @marshallmanson, @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

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.

Discussion: @sherryamin13, @williamsjon, @mlcalderone and Prof Chris Daly's Blog

Al Jazeera America: Egypt's ‘severe clampdown’ on journalists condemned by UN

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

Erich Schwartzel / Wall Street Journal:
Cable TV is likely to star in contract talks set to begin Monday between Hollywood and the Writers Guild

Discussion: Deadline.com

Bloomberg:

Time Inc. Said to Weigh Leaving NYC Time & Life Building — Time Inc., the magazine unit soon to be spun off from Time Warner Inc. (TWX), is considering leaving the Time & Life Building on New York's Avenue of the Americas and moving its offices to lower Manhattan, three people with knowledge of the company's plans said.

Discussion: Mediawire Daily

Marc Graser / Variety:

Super Bowl Ads Score Before Big Game With Massive Viewership — Scarlett Johansson's banned spot for SodaStream is the most viewed ad so far — Many of the marketers who spent $4 million for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl have already scored with their commercials.

Discussion: Gigaom, Forbes, Lost Remote, The New Yorker Blog, CNET, AdAge and Latest News & Headlines

Kevin Loker / American Press Institute:

Correction strategies: 6 good questions with Regret the Error's Craig Silverman — Craig Silverman is the quotable, go-to source for your publication's stories on media errors. Outside his job as director of content at Spundge, he writes the popular Regret the Error column at Poynter …

Discussion: Fast Company and The FJP

Matthew Lynch / Capital New York:

Cathy Horyn to leave New York Times — Cathy Horyn, The New York Times chief fashion critic, is resigning from the paper effective immediately. — Times executive editor Jill Abramson and Styles section editor Stuart Emmrich made the announcement in a memo to staff Friday morning.

Discussion: Poynter, Fashionista, New York Times, FishbowlNY, The New York Observer, Capital New York, New York Magazine, Hollywood Reporter, @sartoriallyinc and Refinery29

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

Mark Ward / BBC:

UK government tackles wrongly-blocked websites — Net filters that are supposed to prevent children from inappropriate material have blocked access to educational and charity sites — The government is drawing up a list of sites inadvertently blocked by the filters it asked internet service providers (ISPs) to implement.

Discussion: VentureBeat, @adrianshort, Wired.co.uk, The Independent, @computersandlaw, UK News and Opinion, DailyTech, Softpedia News, CNET and The Next Web

Conor Dillon / Deutsche Welle:

Citizen journalism: hyper-local news app Apparazzi lures young gossipers — A new app plans to deliver hyper-local news through geo-targeted mini-posts. It may revolutionize citizen journalism - and neighborhood gossip. It could also send the odd “reporter” to court.

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Richard Branson by Bower - journalists have not held him to account — Tom Bower, the author who so often strikes fear into his subjects, has taken a second critical look at Richard Branson. — His new book, some 14 years on from his first biography, is being serialised in the Sunday Times …

Jason Abbruzzese / Mashable:

Facebook Steps Onto Twitter's TV Data Turf — What's This? — Twitter's firehose of data is about to meet a tsunami from Facebook. — After announcing its news reader app, Paper, on Thursday, Facebook has also announced that it will begin to publish anonymized data …

Discussion: Facebook, AdNews, thedrum.com, NASDAQ.com, B&T and The Next Web

Jeremy Barr / Poynter:

Journalists await new drone regulations. And wait, and wait... Across the U.S., journalists are sitting, watching, and waiting on the sidelines while the Federal Aviation Administration develops rules for the safe operation of small drones. — A few journalists have experimented with drone technology …

Discussion: @trnels, @athertonkd and @poynter

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

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 and Free Press Blog

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

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.”

Discussion: TheBlaze.com, @sunny_hundal, @theweek and The Week

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: Kirk LaPointe's …, @johncbussey and @nytimesworld

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

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.