Mediagazer: Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi joins Omidyar's First Look Media to cover financial and political corruption (Ravi Somaiya/New York Times)

11:10 PM ET, February 19, 2014

Top News:

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi joins Omidyar's First Look Media to cover financial and political corruption — Start-Up Site Hires Critic of Wall St. — Matt Taibbi, who made a name as a fierce critic of Wall Street at Rolling Stone magazine, has joined First Look Media …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Forbes, New York Magazine, @timkarr, @jbenton, @mysecondempire, @occupywallstnyc, @the_intercept, Boing Boing, @pierre, @johncusack, @acarvin, @mattsurrusco, @alexpappas, @blogdiva, @mattbors and @coreyhutchins

Gautham Nagesh / Wall Street Journal:

FCC plans to issue new net neutrality rules. — The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday that it will craft new rules to prevent Internet service providers from charging companies like Netflix or Google a toll to reach consumers at the highest speeds.

Discussion: FCC.gov, Variety, New York Times, Home Media Magazine, The Switch, The Breakdown, BGR, PandoDaily, @theharryshearer, Ars Technica, Free Press Blog, @pkafka, TIME, @digitalsista, Mother Jones and AllAccess.com

Amy Schatz / Re/code:
Net Neutrality Rules Are Out: New Twist on Old Proposal

Discussion: The Verge, Policy Blog, VentureBeat, @karaswisher, Computerworld, ReadWrite, @mikeisaac and @amy_schatz

Timothy B. Lee / The Switch:
White House says it backs FCC in efforts to protect network neutrality

Discussion: White House.gov Blog, NYT Bits, TheHill, Computerworld, Broadcasting & Cable and CNET

Ted Johnson / Variety:

Utah Federal Judge Halts Aereo in Salt Lake City and Denver — A federal judge in Utah has imposed a preliminary injunction on Aereo's operations, a win for broadcasters as they seek to halt the startup streaming service in Salt Lake City and Denver. — “Based on the plain language …

Discussion: CNET, Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, Adweek, Bloomberg, The Wrap and @xpangler

Martin Evans / Telegraph:

Tony Blair offered to be unofficial adviser to Brooks and Murdoch over phone hacking scandal, court hears — In an hour-long phone conversation with Mrs Brooks the day after the News of the World was closed in July 2011, the former Prime Minister advised her to “tough up” telling her “it will pass”

Discussion: Guardian, @felixsalmon, @emilybell, @dansabbagh, @emilybell, @davidfolkenflik, The Dish, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, The Independent, Irish Independent, @callingengland, @theredrag and @aaronbastani

John Rentoul / The Independent:
Blair responds to Brooks email

Discussion: @johnrentoul and @dangillmor

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian: Phone hacking jury is told of Rebekah Brooks' plan to stay with News Corp prior to resignation

Fred Vultee / ACES:

Vice should hire a copy editor and A/B test the value of copy editing for readers — More advice for Vice: Why hiring copy editors is a really good idea — Everybody has some advice for Vice Media in its quest to hire a freelance copy editor, from the folks at Gawker who noticed …

Discussion: @ebrenner, @andybechtel, @lauren_kelley, @jbenton, @kellyhagen, @abrahamhyatt, Poynter, abrahamhyatt.com and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Tim Peterson / AdAge:
Vice Goes Into Food Business With ‘American Idol’ Producer FremantleMedia

Discussion: The Wrap, Variety, Digital Spy, @adamclarkestes, broadcastnow.co.uk, thedrum.com, Digiday and Variety

Jonathan Marino / The Deal Pipeline:

Fosun closes in on deal for Forbes; price short of $250M — When money management magazine and website Forbes Media LLC is sold, likely to Fosun International Ltd., the Chinese conglomerate that has taken the front-runner position in the company's auction, sources said …

Discussion: @hofrench, @joshsternberg and @jackshafer, Thanks:@jonmarino

Marisa Guthrie / Hollywood Reporter:

HLN's Surprising New Slate: Game Shows, Viral Videos and a #FOMO App (Exclusive) — From left: Fred Seibert, Rob Barnett and Tom Lynch — The cable news network that is home to Nancy Grace undertakes a major rebrand. — A version of this story first appeared in the Feb. 28 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Discussion: TVNewser, Deadline.com, Mediaite, Wired, @gobobbo, The Wrap, The Huffington Post and The Awl

Henry Blodget / Business Insider:

China's Tencent signs deal for access to exclusive Business Insider content — Business Insider Just Launched An Awesome New China Partnership With Tencent — Here's The Google-Translate Version — Business Insider just launched a cool new content partnership with China Internet behemoth Tencent.

Sara Morrison / Poynter:

Media is ‘failing women’ — sports journalism particularly so — The Women's Media Center released its third annual Status of Women in the U.S. Media report today, and if you've been paying any attention to gender imbalances across print, broadcast and online platforms, it's more of the same.

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post, @atotalmonet, @martinrickman and @politicohen_

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

1 journalist dead, many injured in Ukraine violence — Vyacheslav Veremyi was “dragged out of his taxi by unknown assailants” in Kiev early Wednesday morning, Reporters Without Borders reports. The reporter for Ukrainian newspaper Vesti “was violently beaten up, and according to witness accounts …

Discussion: Reporters Without Borders, Latest News & Headlines, GlobalPost, @freedomofpress, Kirk LaPointe's …, The Huffington Post and The Newspaper Guild

Josh Feldman / Mediaite:

CNN Reporter: Venezuelan Cops Confiscated Our Equipment at Gunpoint — Kiev isn't the only part of the world protesting this week, protestors in Venezuela have been standing up against the government of President Nicolas Maduro. Since protests began in Venezuela, there have been five fatalities …

Discussion: CNN, TVNewser, The Huffington Post and Hot Air

Jake Mitchell / Sydney Morning Herald:

Fairfax posts jump in profit — Fairfax Media has reported 48.5 per cent growth in underlying profit to $86.4 million for the half year ended December 31, with the print, digital and radio businesses focusing on cutting costs and targeting new revenue streams.

Discussion: Crikey

Agence France Presse:

Egypt to put Jazeera journalists on trial — Cairo (AFP) - Al-Jazeera journalists, including four foreigners, go on trial in Cairo Thursday for allegedly supporting the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood in a case that has sparked accusations Egypt is muzzling the media.

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

What to do when your video is winning social media, but it's a copy that's getting the clicks? — What should a news organization do when an unauthorized copy of video they produced is going viral on YouTube? — That's the question Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA faced when a commentary …

Discussion: @standupkid, The Texas Tribune Fellowships and Upworthy

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Are quizzes the new lists? What BuzzFeed's latest viral success means for publishing — Lately, it seems like the hardest content format to avoid on the social web is the BuzzFeed quiz. — What city should I actually live in? Paris. How will I die? Eaten by piranhas. Should I learn to code?

Discussion: @sebchan and @heiditworek

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

Murdoch's hard-paywall success — I've criticized Rupert Murdoch for his hard-paywall strategy at The Times of London, arguing that a metered model a la the Financial Times or New York Times would be the much better option. — I still think The Times should move to a meter …

Alan D. Mutter / Editor and Publisher:

Newsosaur: Big Data Zeros in on Ad Inefficiency — John Wanamaker, the innovative Philadelphia merchant who pioneered the modern department store in the Gilded Age, was such a fan of newspapers that he is credited with buying the first full-page ad. — But even Wanamaker knew …

Kathleen Bartzen Culver / Mediashift:

Taking Action: EdShift Launches to Move Journalism Education Forward — When I do multimedia trainings for college educators with Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, we get to a particular point in the arc of the sessions and see a specific response. We stand before these teachers …

Discussion: @knightfdn and Poynter

Christoph Koettl / Mediashift:

‘The YouTube War’: Citizen Videos Revolutionize Human Rights Monitoring in Syria — When I started working on human rights crises seven years ago, a promising and groundbreaking way to monitor violations were satellite images. The idea seemed simple enough: a single sensor in space taking pictures …