Mediagazer: How Quartz passed 5m traffic record in January (Abigail Edge/Journalism.co.uk)

1:30 PM ET, February 10, 2014

Top News:

First Look Media announces new magazine, The Intercept — Welcome to The Intercept — We are very excited to welcome everyone to The Intercept, a publication of First Look Media (FLM). The Intercept, which the three of us created, is the first of what will be numerous digital magazines published by FLM.

Lloyd Grove / The Daily Beast:

Welcome to Glenn Greenwald, Inc.? — The controversial columnist is the public face of a billionaire-backed new media play. And that could mean problems for a venture with ambitions way beyond the Snowden-verse. — Investigative reporter and columnist Glenn Greenwald was barely five minutes …

Discussion: Mediaite, The Intercept, The Huffington Post, @justinjm1, @thedailybeast, Hit & Run and Softpedia News

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Bill Keller, Former Editor of The Times, Is Leaving for News Nonprofit — Bill Keller, a columnist at The New York Times and its former executive editor, will leave the paper to become editor in chief of The Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism start-up focused on the American criminal justice system.

Peter Lauria / BuzzFeed:

HLN Wants To Be The Cable News Network For The Social Media Generation — “Our headlines will be ripped from social media,” says Albie Hecht in his first interview after being named to lead the channel. A possible slogan: “We're not the news. You are.” — HLN Executive Vice President Albie Hecht.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, TVNewser, TVWeek.com, TVbytheNumbers, Corporate Intelligence, Hit & Run, @jayrosen_nyu, PandoDaily, Los Angeles Times, @tomgara, @buzzfeedben, @shiralazar, @jonathanwald, @brianstelter and @mlcalderone

George Packer / New Yorker:

Is Amazon bad for books? — Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books?

Discussion: The Awl and Business Insider

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

The Time That Jeff Bezos Had Henry Blodget Explain the Web to the Washington Post — George Packer has a very nice profile of Jeff Bezos in the New Yorker today. It's in front of the paywall, so you ought to read it, and if you don't want to take my word for it, trust Bezos expert Brad Stone.

Discussion: Politico

Leslie Kaufman / New York Times:

Time Inc. Appoints Editor in Chief for Entertainment Weekly — Matt Bean, a Sports Illustrated editor with extensive digital experience, has been named the new editor of Entertainment Weekly, Time Inc., said Monday. — His appointment is part of extensive reshuffling of executives at Time Inc …

Discussion: Variety, The Wrap and Capital New York

Abigail Edge / Journalism.co.uk:

How Quartz passed 5m traffic record in January — Editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney explains how the site creates content ‘optimised for the free, open social web’, and is now recording 15 per cent UK traffic — Business news site Quartz has reported “a new traffic record” for January, of more than five million unique visitors.

Discussion: @kevinjdelaney

David Carr / New York Times:

Local Papers Shine Light in Society's Dark Corners — A lot of important journalism begins with a simple, seemingly obvious question, like why traffic is snarled in New Jersey on the way into New York. — Traffic coverage may be the lowest species in the dog-bites-man pantheon of news, except when it is not.

Discussion: @nickconfessore, @ejdionne, @carr2n, @mikehuckman, @jeffjarvis, @timothy_oconnor, @tcarmody, @edpilkington, @jensmanuel, @om, @rsingel, @gloriapazmino and @semelm

Dylan Byers / Politico:

CNN hires Smerconish for weekend show — Michael Smerconish, the satellite radio host and MSNBC contributor, has been hired by CNN to host a Saturday morning show, network president Jeff Zucker announced Monday. — Smerconish is perhaps best known as the guest-host for MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Discussion: Erik Wemple, TVNewser and @davidcorndc

Michael Malone / Broadcasting & Cable:

Scripps to Acquire Granite Stations In Detroit, Buffalo For $110 Million — Will make a duopoly in Motown alongside WXYZ — Scripps has agreed to acquire WMYD Detroit and WKBW Buffalo, the Granite Broadcasting-owned MyNetworkTV and ABC affiliates, respectively, for $110 million.

Discussion: Radio & Television …, Wall Street Journal, PR Newswire, RTTNews and TVNewsCheck.com