Mediagazer: Fairfax posts jump in profit (Jake Mitchell/Sydney Morning Herald)

4:55 AM ET, February 20, 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: Forbes, @the_intercept, @occupywallstnyc, @johncusack, @mattbors, @acarvin, @timkarr, @coreyhutchins, @alexpappas, @mattsurrusco, @blogdiva, @jbenton, @pierre, @mysecondempire, New York Magazine, FishbowlNY and Boing Boing

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: Hollywood Reporter, MediaPost, CNET, Reuters, Salt Lake Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, @xpangler, Engadget, multichannel.com/rss, Adweek, The Verge, Consumerist, The Wrap and Deadline.com

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

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

Discussion: The Verge, @mikeisaac, @karaswisher, Techdirt, Electronista, GeekWire, TechCrunch and @amy_schatz

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.

Discussion: @hblodget and Tech in Asia

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

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

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

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.

Discussion: allAfrica.com, Al Jazeera English and BBC

Patrick Kingsley / Guardian:
Peter Greste and fellow journalists to finally appear in Egyptian court

Discussion: TheAustralian, ABC, Sydney Morning Herald, NEWS.com.au, ABC, ABC Radio Australia, Brisbane Times, HeraldSun, @lindblomkarin and @con_agius

Nic Christensen / mUmBRELLA:

The Guardian to launch Melbourne office and ramp up staff to more than 50 — The Guardian is to open a Melbourne office and launch a new hiring spree, with its overall Australian staff to grow to more than 50 in the coming weeks, Mumbrella can reveal. — The opening of the Melbourne office …

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

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

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: @heiditworek and @sebchan

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, @freedomofpress, Latest News & Headlines, GlobalPost, Kirk LaPointe's …, The Huffington Post and The Newspaper Guild

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: Stuff.co.nz, Wall Street Journal, B&T, Business Insider, Business Insider, AdNews, HeraldSun, mUmBRELLA, TheAustralian and Crikey

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 …

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: Poynter and @knightfdn

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, The Wrap, @gobobbo, The Awl and The Huffington Post

Matthew J.X. Malady / The Awl:

How To Bust Out Of Blogging Into The Magical World Of Television — People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask. In this edition, writer Cord Jefferson tells us more about his new job. … Cord! So what happened here? — In mid-January I got a call saying …

Discussion: @heavenrants, @matthewjxmalady, @michelledean, @cordjefferson and @annfriedman

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, @politicohen_, @atotalmonet and @martinrickman

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 …

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

How Vizzuality wants to bring mapping to the masses — A recent grant from the Knight Foundation will fund experiments in data visualisation and storytelling, but ‘democratising maps’ is a key idea for the team behind open source mapping tool CartoDB — Credit: By ToastyKen on Flickr.

Jesse Hicks / The Verge:

How Wikipedia's robots and cyborgs snuff out vandalism — How Wikipedia's robots and cyborgs snuff out vandalism — At midnight on February 13th, 2014, a Wikipedia user named Lightningawesome added to the list of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic characters a lengthy biography of Lightning Dash …

Discussion: @simbul

John Rentoul / The Independent:

Blair responds to Brooks email — Statement by a spokesperson for Tony Blair: — “This was Mr Blair simply giving informal advice over the phone. He made it absolutely clear to Ms Brooks that, though he knew nothing personally about the facts of the case, in a situation as serious …

Discussion: @johnrentoul and @dangillmor