Mediagazer: News Corp Net Falls Due to Year-Earlier Gain (William Launder/Wall Street Journal)

7:15 PM 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.

Discussion: Newsonomics, New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Capital New York, FishbowlNY, Mashable and @romenesko

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, AdAge, AdExchanger, @mathewi, @edmundlee, @pkafka, The Huffington Post and @bgrueskin

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Times chief lays out ‘a critical year’ for ad revenue — 2014 will be a “critical year in the story of advertising” at The New York Times Co., chief executive Mark Thompson said this morning. — On a conference call with Wall Street analysts following the release of the Times' fourth …

Discussion: @joshsternberg

John McDuling / Quartz: Can the New York Times's online readership offset its prolonged ad slump?

Pierre Omidyar and Eric Bates / First Look Media:

First Look launches its first digital magazine — Last week, First Look Media announced that it will publish a family of new digital magazines - each with its own editorial voice, its own look and feel, and each led by veteran journalists with deep expertise in their fields.

Discussion: Guardian, @emptywheel, @maassp, @pierre, @astepanovich and @brianstelter

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

First Look adds more journalists, plans to launch first publication next week — Pierre Omidyar and Eric Bates announced Thursday that First Look Media would launch the first of its planned publications next week. Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill will lead the site, whose …

Brian Beutler / Salon:

Exclusive: Despite escalating government intimidation, Greenwald will “force the issue” and visit U.S. — Months after the first insinuations that he risks arrest if he visits the US, Greenwald is more concerned than ever — When big-name public figures and Edward Snowden critics …

Discussion: Mediaite and @buzzfeedben

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 …

Discussion: MediaPost, NetNewsCheck Latest, Capital New York, Re/code, VentureBeat, Deadline.com, Forbes, @aoladvertising, FishbowlNY, TechCrunch and CNET

Steven Jacobs / Street Fight:

AOL's Armstrong: 'We're Not Giving Up on Patch' — Aol's tenure as Patch's sole owner may be over, but the company's chief executive is not giving up on the hyperlocal network just yet. During an interview on CNBC Thursday morning, Tim Armstrong, who helped found the initiative and spearheaded …

Discussion: @vouchey

Leslie Kaufman / New York Times:
AOL Reports Solid Revenue, but Patch Tamped Down Profit

Discussion: Re/code, @joepompeo and Silicon Republic

Kara Swisher / Re/code:
Staffers Unhappy With 401(K) Changes and “Distressed Babies” Remark Sending AOL's Armstrong a Message

Discussion: Capital New York, Wonkblog, New York Magazine, CNBC, Business Insider, @gawker, Business Insider, ThinkProgress, Mother Jones and Gawker

Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:

Turks bid farewell to the Internet in the face of brutal censorship/surveillance law — Turkey's brutal new Internet law grants the Turkish Telecommunications Directorate the power to arbitrarily censor Web-pages to the individual URL level, much like the Great Firewall of China …

Discussion: Gigaom, Medium, @zeynep, Associated Press, Committee to Protect … and Index on Censorship

Today's Zaman:
Turkey orders deportation of Azerbaijani journalist after his tweets criticizing government

Discussion: FOCUS Information Agency, BBC, @nervana_1, @acarvin, UPI, News24, USA Today, World Bulletin, GlobalPost, Wall Street Journal and Al Jazeera English

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: Guardian and NetNewsCheck Latest

Eric J. Smith / NetNewsCheck Latest:
Gannett: USA Today Inserts To Hit 35 Markets

Discussion: Reuters

Michael Wolff / USA Today:

Revenue prospects are dim for the recent flurry of new journalism start-ups — Revenue prospects are dim for the recent flurry of new journalism start-ups — The great foment in the news business involves journalists leaving established news organizations to strike out on their own …

Discussion: Jon Slattery, @jayrosen_nyu, @carr2n, @robenfarzad, @jamesbreiner, @myriamrobin, The Huffington Post and The Atlantic Online

Alex Barinka / Bloomberg:

Aereo Reopens New York Online-TV Service to New Subscribers — Aereo Inc., the online-television company that's battling broadcasters in the Supreme Court, reopened its service to New York subscribers after regaining enough capacity to handle demand. — People who were on a waiting list …

Discussion: The Verge, TechCrunch, @sai and @engadget, Thanks:@alexbarinka

Brent Lang / The Wrap: Fox Is ‘Cautiously Optimistic’ Supreme Court Will Stop Aereo

William Launder / Wall Street Journal:

News Corp Net Falls Due to Year-Earlier Gain — News Corp's revenue fell 4% in its fiscal second quarter as a drop in advertising and subscription revenue at the news and information business offset growth at its other businesses. — Net income dropped to $150 million from $1.4 billion …

Discussion: The Wrap, Variety, mUmBRELLA, @yahoofinance and Business Wire

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Celebrity Weeklies, Fashion Magazines Continue to Struggle on Newsstand — Today, the Alliance for Audited Media released its consumer magazine circulation data for the second half of 2013, and once again, the narrative remains the same. Overall circulation remained relatively flat versus …

Discussion: Capital New York, Folio, AdAge, NetNewsCheck Latest, Alliance for Audited Media, Media & Entertainment, New York Times, FishbowlNY, @mflamm_reporter and Talking Points Memo

David S. Cohen / Variety:

Winter Olympics: How NBCUniversal's Army Of Techs Conquered Sochi — For viewers, the Winter Olympics are just 18 days of sports and entertainment. — But for NBCUniversal, they're part of vast exercise in planning and logistics that stretches back to the end of the 2012 summer games in London …

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, Forbes, CNET, AdAge, Latest News & Headlines and Softpedia News

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:
For NBC, a challenge in covering the Sochi Winter Olympics objectively

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, Forbes, @washingtonpost, @joesudbay, @brianstelter and ThinkProgress

Amy Schatz / Re/code:

Twitter Hints at Legal Action to Release More Data on Government Requests — Twitter said Thursday it was considering its legal options in its effort to release more detailed information about the requests for information it receives from U.S. agencies. — Company officials …

Discussion: The Twitter Blog, NYT Bits, Softpedia News, @mikeisaac, Digits and @marciahofmann

Nick Summers / The Next Web:
Twitter transparency report shows government takedown and account info requests are on the rise

Discussion: Twitter Transparency Report, emptywheel, BetaNews, Twitter Transparency Report and Twitter Transparency Report

American Press Institute:

American Press Institute announces major project to improve fact-checking journalism — ARLINGTON, VA—The American Press Institute ("API") announced today that it has received a grant of up to $400,000 over two years from the Democracy Fund. The grant will support research to improve political fact checking.

Discussion: @jessicaplautz, @ampress, @jcstearns and @cjr

Rachel Bartlett / Journalism.co.uk:

Buzzfeed to appoint news editor to growing UK team — The new addition to the team will represent more than a five-fold increase on Buzzfeed UK's editorial staff since launch last March — Credit: Image by kaibara87 on Flickr. Some rights reserved — Buzzfeed UK is to add a news editor …

Discussion: @richjamesmetro

Matthew Kassel / The New York Observer:

Borowitz Lite: A Twitter King Scales Back His Online Presence — Before heading uptown to a book party at Andy Borowitz's spacious West End apartment last night, I checked his Twitter feed to see if he'd said anything interesting that day. The comedian's hilariously satirical Twitter presence …

Discussion: @itsdgc and @stefanjbecket