Mediagazer: Venezuela's Internet Crackdown Escalates into Regional Blackout (Danny O'Brien/Electronic Frontier …)

3:45 PM ET, February 20, 2014

Top News:

BBC:

Brooks denies knowing of NoW hacker — Rebekah Brooks has said she never heard of a private investigator who has since been jailed for phone hacking while she was editor of the News of the World. — Mrs Brooks said that during her leadership of the paper, she never heard investigator Glenn Mulcaire's name mentioned.

Discussion: Press Association, @bbcbreaking and Kirk LaPointe's …

Herald Scotland:

Rebekah Brooks acquitted of one charge of misconduct in phone hacking trial — Former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks has been formally found not guilty of one charge of misconduct in a public office but she remains on trial for four further counts.

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
Rebekah Brooks not on trial for having worked for Rupert Murdoch, court told

Discussion: New York Times and Deadline.com

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
Rebekah Brooks: NoW spent up to $250,000 on Divine Brown story

Discussion: @kamintone, Press Association and ITV

Gregg Carlstrom / Foreign Policy:

Why Egypt Hates Al Jazeera — The network's Cairo-based staff, who stand accused of running a terror cell from a luxury hotel, find themselves caught in the middle of a regional power struggle. Cairo — Last summer, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy was one of thousands of protesters who took to Tahrir Square …

Discussion: @daliaezzat_

Ahram Online:
Trial of Al Jazeera journalists adjourned until 5 March

Discussion: Poynter, Reuters, Al Jazeera Press Office and Al Jazeera America

Maggie Michael / Associated Press:
Trial of Al Jazeera reporters begins in Egypt as Human Rights Watch group denounces charges

Discussion: Guardian, @inigogilmore, Associated Press, Al Jazeera English, BBC, @leloveluck, Agence France Presse, allAfrica.com, Bloomberg, CNN, Los Angeles Times, @leloveluck, Agence France Presse and Guardian

ABC:
Peter Greste profile: Career of a foreign correspondent

Discussion: TheAustralian, Sydney Morning Herald, ABC Radio Australia, HeraldSun, ABC, Brisbane Times, @ivorytowerjourn, NEWS.com.au, @perryalexj and @sarahskynews

Uri Friedman / The Atlantic Online:

Why Venezuela's Revolution Will Be Tweeted — The country's street protests are playing out dramatically on the social network. — We can't seem to agree about whether social media fuels, merely facilitates, or actually hinders protest movements. But in Venezuela, where five people …

Discussion: The Dish, @hemlockmartinis, @anupkaphle, CNN and NPR

Danny O'Brien / Electronic Frontier Foundation: Venezuela's Internet Crackdown Escalates into Regional Blackout

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

FCC wants to improve quality of closed captioning — FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wants to improve closed captioning. — “Five wins and a very light power reese know” sounds more like gibberish than a weather forecast. — But that was the closed captioning on a WeatherNation report last month.

Discussion: TVWeek.com

Julian Hattem / The Hill:
FCC: ‘No intention’ of muzzling press

Discussion: Hit & Run, Hot Air and Mediaite

Om Malik / Gigaom:

Om Malik leaves day-to-day operations at GigaOm, becomes full partner at True Ventures, site raises $8M more — Now that Gigaom is all grown up, it's time for the next chapter — It's a new year (although it's well underway) and I'm excited to talk about the new phase at Gigaom.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Om Malik, @kentgoldman, @waltmossberg, @nitashatiku, @hblodget, @laurengoode, @carr2n, @satishd, @alexia, @rafat, @tomkrazit, @pkedrosky, @ashleymayer, Pulse 2.0, @msquinn, @caseynewton, @thekenyeung, @mikeisaac, @tonysphere and @om

Baltimore Sun:

Baltimore Sun Media Group to buy City Paper — Staff reports — The Baltimore Sun Media Group said today it is buying the alternative weekly City Paper for an undisclosed price. The transaction is set to close in March, the company said. — The move brings together two of the Baltimore area's most well-known news organizations.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, Poynter, @alexkoppelman, @suitsandsoot, @jfruh, @pinkgrammar, @carr2n and AAN

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Before Facebook Deal, WhatsApp Was Helping BuzzFeed and Shazam Go Viral With New Platform Tools — Unlike mobile messaging competitors like Line and WeChat, WhatsApp has taken a resolute stance against becoming a platform that distributes games and other apps.

Discussion: Facebook, Sequoia Capital, DealBook, Fortune, CNNMoney.com, TechCrunch, Gawker, The Verge, The New Yorker Blog, @nishachittal, @mattbuchanan, The Verge, Quartz, @buzzfeedben, @ezraklein and @antderosa

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

LinkedIn's competitive advantage over other publishers: $1.5B in annual revenues — LinkedIn has the one thing other publishing platforms would kill for — We've been writing a lot lately about the increasingly blurry lines between platform and publisher, a world in which new-media entities …

Discussion: Forbes, blog.linkedin.com, Nieman Journalism Lab, Re/code, @emilybell, Real Lawyers Have Blogs, Engadget and ZDNet

Alex Weprin / Capital New York:

M.L.B., N.B.A., N.H.L. and others to launch joint digital sports channel with Time Inc. — Three of the “big four” U.S. sports leagues are teaming up to launch a new digital video channel, in conjunction with Time Inc. The channel, called 120 Sports, will launch later this spring …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Variety, Business Insider, Adweek, PR Newswire, @kevinmdraper, @dylanbyers, @capitalnewyork and Tubefilter

Dylan Byers / Politico:

POLITICO taps Hotline EIC for Campaign Pro — POLITICO has hired National Journal Hotline editor-in-chief Steve Shepard to help launch the latest venture in its growing subscription-service empire: Campaign Pro, “a vertical aimed at political, PAC and campaign professionals.”

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

New Report Says How Much Advertising Is Going to Piracy Sites $227 million in 2013 — In the longstanding fight to combat online piracy, there's been growing pressure on the advertisers whose ads appear on sites that steal copyrighted material. The Obama administration has called for private-sector actions to reduce piracy.

Discussion: Techie News, WorldScreen.com, @lamyj, copyrightalliance.org …, PR Newswire, @respectcreators and TorrentFreak

Bloomberg:

Sochi Olympics a ‘Tremendous Success’ for NBC, CEO Says — NBCUniversal, overcoming smaller prime-time TV audiences, views its Winter Olympics coverage in Sochi as a “tremendous success,” Chief Executive Officer Steve Burke said. — “In 2011 we made a major commitment of over $4 billion …

Discussion: CBS News and Forbes

Jon Chesto / Boston Business Journal:

Patch's move to bring back laid-off editor is a sign that the firm is hiring journalists again — When Susan Petroni learned on Jan. 29 that she would lose her job as Framingham editor for the Patch network of news sites, the news didn't come as a big shock.

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 …

Arif Durrani / MediaWeek:

Guardian Labs looks beyond ads to engaging content — Anna Watkins is on a mission at The Guardian. Full of purpose and radiating energy, she is out to prove just what her favourite news brand is capable of when it comes to creating long-term, engaging commercial partnerships.

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:

How The Syrian Electronic Army Hacked Us: A Detailed Timeline — Early Thursday morning, a Forbes senior executive was woken up by a call from her assistant, saying that she'd be working from home due to a forecast predicting the snowiest day of the year. When she ended the call …

Discussion: @ejhilbert and Digiday

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

Author James Patterson sets up $1M fund to help independent bookstores innovate — James Patterson Giving Cash to Bookstores — Independent bookstores, with their paper-thin profit margins and competition from Amazon, have found themselves a Daddy Warbucks.

Discussion: Publishers Weekly, Associated Press, Bookmarks and bookforum.com