Mediagazer: “The Guardian” Is Testing A New-Look, Easy-To-Read Website (Patrick Smith/BuzzFeed)

9:00 AM ET, February 6, 2014

Top News:

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Times Co. Reports Digital Subscriber Increase, but Continued Ad Declines — The New York Times Company said it added digital subscribers and slowed declines in print and digital advertising revenues during the fourth quarter of 2013, a year of transition for the newspaper publisher.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

New York Times digital subscriptions grew 19% in 2013 — The number of digital subscriptions to New York Times Company products grew from 640,000 at the end of 2012 to 760,000 at the end of 2013, a gain of nearly 19 percent. Revenue from circulation was up about 4 percent over the previous year …

Discussion: investors.nytco.com, @bgrueskin, @edmundlee and @pkafka

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

Gannett's print-focused paywalls flounder — The quality imperative and charging for news online — Gannett's fourth-quarter newspaper results, announced Tuesday, were basically miserable. — Revenue at its publishing segment dropped 4.6 percent in the fourth quarter from last year …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Guardian, Gannett Blog and Poynter

Eric J. Smith / NetNewsCheck Latest:

Gannett: USA Today Inserts To Hit 35 Markets — Gannett today said it will continue to roll out USA Today inserts in its local papers during the first quarter of 2014 and plans to implement the plan across its top 35 markets by the first week of April. The company saw publishing revenue …

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Marc Andreessen talks about the evolution of the news business and why he is optimistic — Everyone seems to have an opinion about what's wrong with the news business — whether it's the best of times or the worst of times for journalism, whether paywalls are the answer, and so on …

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, @pmarca, @gigaom, @emilybell, @emilybell, @gaberivera, @mg, @marklittlenews, @cmschroed, @ceciliakang, @mikeisaac and Featured stories

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Marc Andreessen: The 'problem with local news is most people don't care' — Internet pioneer and investor Marc Andreessen spun out some thoughts about the news business on Twitter Wednesday. 2005 was the last year of an era that lasted since World War II, he said — one in which news …

Discussion: Street Fight, @pmarca, @pmarca, @nitin_mangtani, @pmarca, @anildash, @meganbungeroth, @c_s_green and @themurdochtimes

Sruthi Ramakrishnan / Reuters:

AOL revenue rises 13 percent as ad sales jump — (Reuters) - Digital media and entertainment company AOL Inc reported a better-than-expected 13 percent rise in quarterly revenue as its advertising revenue rose, especially from video. — The company's total revenue rose to $679 million …

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

AOL Gets Its Final Patch Bill — Last month AOL announced a plan to rid itself of Patch, its ill-fated local news play. But up until last Wednesday, when AOL's deal with Hale Global closed, Patch employees were still on AOL's books. — Which means that last week, when Patch underwent mass layoffs …

Discussion: Deadline.com, TechCrunch, Silicon Republic and CNBC

Jasper Jackson / TheMediaBriefing.com:

Metric warfare on the advertising battlefield: What News UK's debate with the Guardian is all about — The mini war of words between News UK CEO Mike Darcey and the Guardian is being billed as a choice between two models of journalism, between free vs paid, between mass media vs quality media.

Discussion: @rorybrown and Press Gazette

Robinson Meyer / The Atlantic:

Facebook aims to become digital publishing kingmaker by sending massive traffic to news sites — And Just Like That, Facebook Became the Most Important Entity in Web Journalism — The graph above tells maybe the most interesting—and definitely the most surprising—story of the past year of digital media.

Discussion: @theatlantic, @lauraolin and Kirk LaPointe's …

Michael Wolff / British GQ:

Bezosmania! — In August 2013, Amazon founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos bought the Washington Post - the newspaper that revealed the Watergate scandal in 1972 - for $250m. If business success is about control, will the man who dominates our digital life be able to influence US politics?

Discussion: @coryhaik and @miamijournalism

Patrick Smith / BuzzFeed:

“The Guardian” Is Testing A New-Look, Easy-To-Read Website — If you log on to The Guardian today, this is what you might see: a new “responsively” designed website that should look the same on your desktop PC and your mobile. — theguardian.com — It's being A/B tested right now …

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Google Confirms Susan Wojcicki Is New YouTube Head — Susan Wojcicki is Google's new SVP of YouTube, Google confirmed today. We wrote about the shift last night. — Google CEO Larry Page said in an emailed statement, “Salar and the whole YouTube team have built something amazing.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Silicon Republic, Inc.com, SocialTimes, ZDNet, The Verge, VatorNews, Gigaom, Search Engine Land, Wired, Variety, Engadget, TechCrunch, SiliconBeat, Electronista and Pocket-lint

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Seiken wins over Telegraph journalists as he plots its digital future — Jason Seiken, chief content officer and editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday stablemate, has not had a good press since the departure of Tony Gallagher. — The Independent described him a “bald American” …

Laura Slattery / The Irish Times:

Television journalism reshaped for the Vice generation — Brash outsiders are increasingly becoming insiders, if not institutions in their own right — An odd thing happened on Newsnight recently and it didn't involve either an interview with the Cookie Monster or Kirsty Wark doing …

Christopher McKinlay / Medium:

Sorry, Guy: I Won't Come Work For Buzzfeed — Last week Wired magazine published a feature article on how I hacked the dating website OkCupid and met my fiancée. I subsequently received the following job offer via email from Buzzfeed's Director of Partnership Development:

Discussion: @luthorceo, @adamweinstein and @neetzan

Nicole Levy / Capital New York:

Time Inc. to hold $1.3 billion in debt at spin off — When Time Inc. spins off from parent company Time Warner later this year, it will do so with $1.3 billion in debt on its books, Time Warner chief financial officer Howard Averill said Wednesday on a conference call with Wall Street analysts and shareholders.

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Post's Marty Baron responds to the departure of three more Wonkbloggers — Washington Post's Brad Plumer, Sarah Kliff Joining Ezra Klein's Vox Venture — NEW YORK — The Washington Post's Brad Plumer and Sarah Kliff are joining Ezra Klein's new venture to be launched with Vox Media …

Discussion: USA Today, Politico, JIMROMENESKO.COM and Talking Points Memo

Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic Online:
How Will Ezra Klein's ‘Project X’ Add Context to News?

Discussion: @1bobcohn and @jayrosen_nyu

Merrill Knox / TVNewser:

CNN Shutters CNN Latino — CNN is shutting down CNN Latino just a year after its launch. The eight-hour syndicated news and entertainment block will shutter later this month, Media Moves reports. — “CNN Latino was a bold effort to continue CNN's commitment to the U.S. Hispanic marketplace.

Discussion: Media Moves, MiamiHerald.com, The Huffington Post and Hispanic Marketing and Media

Alexis Sobel Fitts / Columbia Journalism Review:

An ambiguous Medium — An essay about an inappropriate love affair tears open the problems with the two-tiered platform — Last week, Medium editor Arikia Millikan published a coming-of-age essay chronicling a stilted affair she'd had with a married (and much older) journalist, whom she'd met while an intern.

Discussion: Gawker, @johnjcook, @mattbuchanan and @abeaujon

CNBC:

Twitter skids 17% on user growth, but earnings beat — Mobile active Twitter users increase 37% — Twitter is reporting active monthly users at 241 million, with CNBC's Jon Fortt and Julia Boorstin; David Sowerby, Loomis Sayles & Co.Jon Steinberg, BuzzFeed; and CNBC contributor Stephanie Link.

Discussion: Forbes, Business Insider, New York Times, The Wrap, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Gigaom, @johnhalton, @tantanobel, The Twitter Blog, Lost Remote and cnbc.com

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Twitter beats earnings expectations, but stock slides as user growth plateaus

Discussion: @twitterir, Forbes, Digits, CNNMoney.com, Los Angeles Times, @tim, @corytv, @verge, @tim, @jowens510, Mercury News, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, @benpopper and NetNewsCheck Latest

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

Times May Publish Response From Woody Allen on Dylan Farrow's Accusations — Woody Allen has asked for, and may get, a chance to respond — in an Op-Ed piece in The Times — to a recent column and blog by Nicholas Kristof in which the filmmaker's adopted daughter detailed her memories of his sexually abusing her.

Catherine Taibi / The Huffington Post:

NBC News' Richard Engel: My Computers, Cellphone Were Hacked ‘Almost Immediately’ In Sochi — Being a reporter at the Sochi Olympic Games just got even worse. — NBC News' Richard Engel said that upon arriving in Russia to cover the upcoming event, he was hacked “almost immediately” …

Discussion: Poynter, ABC News, Erik Wemple, Business Insider and Mediaite

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

In Q4, Pandora posts highest profit as public company — Pandora Media, the operator of the Web's top radio service, reported its biggest quarter of profit since it went public, affirming expectations that investments to soup up its advertising engine would pay off.