Mediagazer: Memo: Ottawa Citizen offering buyouts; five laid off at Postmedia's parliamentary bureau (Tamara Baluja/J-Source)

8:00 AM ET, February 7, 2014

Top News:

Alex Hayes / mUmBRELLA:

News Corp Aussie newspapers lose 17 per cent of revenues — Australian newspaper revenues for News Corp dipped further in the final three months of last year, losing 17 per cent year-on-year with CEO Robert Thompson blaming a “challenging advertising market” for the global company's revenues …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Forbes, Variety, The Wrap and Business Wire

William Launder / Wall Street Journal:

Advertising Declines Weigh On News Corp, Times Co. — 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: @yahoofinance

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
Dow Jones to set ‘more flexible’ subscription prices for DJX

Discussion: Talking Biz News

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: @brianstelter, @astepanovich, @emptywheel, The Huffington Post, Mashable, Politico, Softpedia News, CNET, Guardian, @maassp, @pierre and New York Magazine

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 …

Robert Graham / Errata Security:

NBC story on visitors to Sochi Olympics getting hacked is misleading — That NBC story 100% fraudulent — Yesterday (Feb 5 2014) NBC News ran a story claiming that if you bring your mobile phone or laptop to the Sochi Olympics, it'll immediately be hacked the moment you turn it on.

Tamara Baluja / J-Source:

Memo: Ottawa Citizen offering buyouts; five laid off at Postmedia's parliamentary bureau — Today the Citizen is announcing a new Voluntary Buy-Out offering for the newsroom. You will find details of the offering in the attached document, as well as posted on a board outside the HR office.

Discussion: Guardian and ctvnews.ca

Brian Lowry / Variety:

Leno Signs Off ‘The Tonight Show’ for Second Time — “I don't like goodbyes; NBC does,” Jay Leno said in his latest last opening monologue, as he bid farewell to “The Tonight Show” — again — on Thursday night. — Characteristically, Leno wasn't particularly maudlin or sentimental at first …

Discussion: Capital New York, Latest News & Headlines, Mediaite, The Week, LA Observed, Softpedia News, Hollywood Reporter, @brianstelter, Reuters, @davelee, NY Daily News, Speakeasy, Variety and Gawker

Ciara Byrne / Co.Labs:

How The Guardian Uses “Attention Analytics” To Track Rising Stories — A day after Philip Seymour Hoffman had died of a drug overdose, a year-old article by comedian and actor Russell Brand on why he gave up drugs suddenly burst into the Guardian's top 10 most read list.

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

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

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

Caitlin Dewey / WorldViews:

Viral Twitter account rounds up all of Sochi's problems — Officials from both the International Olympic Committee and the Russian government have insisted to media outlets the world over that Sochi is ready for the Olympic Games. But on social media, at least, the Sochi-readiness narrative …

Discussion: Digiday, Softpedia News, SBNation.com, @buzzfeed, @fieldproducer, Mashable and CNET

David S. Cohen / Variety:
Winter Olympics: How NBCUniversal's Army Of Techs Conquered Sochi

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, iMediaConnection Blog, Latest News & Headlines, Gigaom, The New Yorker Blog, World Internet TV, Forbes, CNET, AdAge, Softpedia News, Washington Post and The Huffington Post

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 and @joepompeo

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:
New York Times digital subscriptions grew 19% in 2013

Discussion: Newsonomics, investors.nytco.com, Columbia Journalism Review, AdExchanger, @bgrueskin, @edmundlee, @pkafka, AdAge, The Huffington Post, New York Times and @mathewi

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

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Spotify Premium membership offer for Times subscribers — News UK strikes deal for year's membership to digital music service for all subscribers to newspapers' digital pack — Subscribers to the Times and Sunday Times will be offered a free year's membership to Spotify Premium as part …

Discussion: @zseward, @raju and thedrum.com

Kyle VanHemert / Wired:

To Grow, Netflix Must Learn From the Quietly Brilliant UI of Regular TVs — “Smart” TVs have failed because they've always assumed more is better. Instead of evolving the television experience, TV makers have simply added to it, heaping more streams, more services, and more content onto …

Discussion: @mancini, Hit & Run and Gigaom

Economist:

CNN's transformation says a lot about what is working today in television — CNN's transformation says a lot about what is working today in television — JEFF ZUCKER, boss of CNN Worldwide, a cable-news firm, likes to start his morning with a shot of numbers.

Jeff McQ / MIMO:

Pandora Now Accepting Digital Submissions from DIY Artists — If you're an indie musician wanting to get your music out there, one of the most important places to do that is on Pandora. Unfortunately, many DIY musicians have been disqualified from the submission process because Pandora …

Discussion: Pandora Blog, ClickZ and The Next Web

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Guardian has been a journalism leader. Can it build a business strategy that can match its growing global reach? — LONDON — The Guardian is an enigma. — Long a storied editorial brand, it's been propelled toward the top of global news audience, both by its open strategy and its hard-nosed journalism.

Discussion: @emilybell, @arusbridger, @gallaghereditor and @niemanlab

Skift:

Travel Channel Pulls New President From Executive Ranks as It Tries to Find a Vision — U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nashville District resident engineer explains the operation of installing a barrier wall to Travel Channel's Off Limits host Don Wildman. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nashville District / Flickr

Caysey Welton / Folio:

Condé Nast Entertainment now has eighth branded video channel — Condé Nast Entertainment now has eigth branded video channel. — SELF magazine rolled out its new video channel on Feb. 5, which includes editorial-inspired original content. — SELF's new channel …

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