Mediagazer: Big media still has plenty of muscle (Joe Flint/Los Angeles Times)

12:50 PM ET, February 5, 2014

Top News:

Jeremy Hodges / Bloomberg:

News Corp. Paper Made 6,813 Phone-Hacking Calls in 2 Years — News Corp. (NWSA) journalists and a private investigator employed by the company's News of the World tabloid made 6,813 calls targeting 282 voice mails during 2005 and 2006, according to billing data analyzed by police.

Discussion: London News and Yorkshire Post

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
Phone-hacking jury sees letter exposing Brooks and Coulson affair

Discussion: @guardian

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian: Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and others may not know fate until summer

Ken Kurson / The New York Observer:

The Tyranny and Lethargy of the Times Editorial Page — Reporters in ‘semi-open revolt’ against Andrew Rosenthal — IT'S WELL KNOWN AMONG THE SMALL WORLD of people who pay attention to such things that the liberal-leaning reporters at The Wall Street Journal resent the conservative-leaning editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.

Discussion: Mediaite, FishbowlNY, @rkylesmith, @mattyglesias, @kerpen, @nytfridge, @tamarsternthal, @dlknowles, @alexrkonrad, @nbj914, @nathanking, @africasacountry, @jackmirkinson, @efune, @gadyepstein, Gawker, bookforum.com and New York Magazine

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Abramson hits back at Observer editor's ‘crazy rant’ — The New York Times is hitting back at The New York Observer's latest cover story, an exhaustive takedown of the paper of record's opinion pages and the man who oversees them, Andy Rosenthal. — In an email to Capital …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Mediaite, Capital New York and @fstonenyt

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

Animated Videos, Tweets, Overseas Dispatches All Part of NBC News Digital Overhaul — With control of its digital properties under its sole control at long last, NBC News said it would present a radically different face for web and mobile users in the hopes of giving the NBCUniversal unit …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab and @hilella

Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:
NBCNews.com Gets a Remake for Its Post-Microsoft Life

Discussion: The Huffington Post and NewscastStudio

Jason Abbruzzese / Mashable:

The Big Bet: NBC Thinks More Digital Coverage Means Better Olympics Ratings — What's This? — NBC's last Olympics was either a rousing success or a spectacular failure, depending on who you ask. — The failures, as some called aspects of the coverage, were painstakingly documented …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, MGOBLUE.COM, Forbes, Variety and Mashable

Ronald Grover / Reuters: NBC boosts sports cable channel with live Olympic events

John McDuling / Quartz:

Netflix might have more subscribers, but HBO makes more money — HBO, the premium cable channel behind hit shows like Girls, Game of Thrones and True Detective, just capped off a record year, according to its parent, Time Warner Inc, which reported results this morning.

Discussion: Reuters, BuzzFeed, Business Insider, @zseward and The Verge

Bree Fowler / Associated Press:
Time Warner 4Q net income falls 12 pct

Discussion: New York Times, USA Today, Variety, Corporate Intelligence and Wall Street Journal

Jennifer Saba / Reuters:

Insight: Dow Jones CEO's sudden exit followed revenue slide — (Reuters) - Lex Fenwick's surprise exit from Dow Jones came after some banks and other financial clients balked at the former chief executive's ambitious new product, DJX, which sent sales tumbling, according to people familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
Interim Dow Jones chief charts course correction

Discussion: Forbes

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

Snowden's leaks: Are journalists ‘fencing stolen material’? — It's against the law to steal classified government material. But is it also a crime for a journalist to sell a story to a newspaper or Web site based on that material? — Some elected officials and government appointees …

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …, @pjcrowley, @20committee, @justinraimondo, @free_snowden, @washingtonpost, @froomkin, @froomkin, Techdirt and @lorenzofb

Josh Gerstein / Politico:
Intelligence chairman accuses Glenn Greenwald of illegally selling stolen material

Discussion: BuzzFeed, Talking Points Memo, @buzzfeedben, New York Times, thenation.com/blogs/174784, @politico, Washington Post, Mediaite, Guardian, @froomkin, @mathewi, @puellavulnerata, @kgosztola and @declanm

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Guardian hires Matt Sullivan as U.S. opinion editor — Matt Sullivan is leaving The New York Times to become opinion editor for The Guardian's American digital news operation, replacing a staffer who in turn left for The Times. — In his new role, Sullivan, 29, will corral contributors …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, @sullduggery and @matthewwells

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

As The New York Times debuts its template for native ads, will other newspapers follow? — When The New York Times offered the first native ad on its website Jan. 8, reviews were mixed. Some thought the Times offered too much of a good thing with a half-dozen disclaimers that the story-like piece was advertising.

Discussion: Forbes, @niemanlab, iMedia Connection and the Econsultancy blog

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

Guild angry at Reuters over pay snafu — The Newspaper Guild of New York, which represents business journalists at Reuters, sent the following letter to James Smith, the chief executive officer of Thomson Reuters:

Discussion: FishbowlNY and The Huffington Post

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

Big media still has plenty of muscle — ESPN and anchor Chris Berman drive value for Disney. — There may be 500 channels and almost $80 billion in advertising and subscriber revenue in the television industry, but most of that content and cash is controlled by a handful of companies.

Discussion: @latimesbiz

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Guardian says News UK criticism of its business model ‘flawed argument based on flawed data’ — Guardian News and Media has accused News UK chief executive Mike Darcey of using “flawed data to inform flawed arguments” when he criticised the group's business model yesterday.

Discussion: @leshinton and Guardian

Guardian:

Have 24-hour TV news channels had their day? — The former director of BBC News, Richard Sambrook, and its ex-head of strategy, Sean McGuire, argue that digital technology has left rolling news channels outmoded — CNN's Peter Arnett reports from Baghdad in 1991: rolling news's finest hour?

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

Google goes to war on ‘fraudulent’ YouTube video views — Says inflated counts are misleading fans and 'undermining one of YouTube's most important and unique qualities' — YouTube visitors watch more than six billion hours of video every month, but not all of those eyeballs are real.

Discussion: Google Online Security Blog, Business Insider, Sky News, BetaNews and WebProNews

Jason Del Rey / Re/code:

Amazon Lays Foundation for Giant Video Advertising Business — In many ways, Amazon's advertising business still remains a mystery. The company doesn't break out the size of it in its earning reports, and Amazon exec presentations on it at industry events are often low on details.

Re/code:

Long-Time Google Ads Exec Susan Wojcicki is YouTube's New Boss — Susan Wojcicki, SVP of advertising for Google, will lead its YouTube unit, sources said. — The news was first reported as likely by The Information late Tuesday night. — Wojcicki was employee No. 16 at Google …

Discussion: The Information, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Gigaom, Los Angeles Times, bizjournals, @ytmargaret, CNET, Mashable, Variety, WebProNews, Business Insider, Marketing Pilgrim, @zseward, @om, @lizgannes, Softpedia News, hypebot and SocialTimes

Gideon Spanier / London Evening Standard:

The media industry must measure up — The media business does not do a good enough job of measuring its own performance. Newspapers and magazines have been particularly poor at producing meaningful circulation and readership figures that combine print and digital.

Discussion: @leshinton and @niemanlab