Mediagazer: How The Daily Mail Will Boost Traffic By 30m Overnight With Surprise Metro Takeover Deal (Stephen Hull/The Huffington Post)

12:55 PM ET, March 5, 2014

Top News:

Torture claim in Egypt trial of Jazeera journalists — Cairo (AFP) - The trial of Al-Jazeera journalists accused of supporting deposed president Mohamed Morsi's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood resumed Wednesday, with defendants claiming torture and denial of medical treatment.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, World Bulletin, UK - The Huffington Post, english.ahram.org.eg, Business Insider India, Al Jazeera America, BBC and The Age

Patrick Kingsley / Guardian:

Al-Jazeera trial: prosecution presents contents of journalists' hotel rooms — Trial in Egypt descends into farce on day two as everything from journalists' hotel rooms is presented as evidence by prosecution — The second day of the trial of three al-Jazeera journalists in Egypt descended …

Patrick Kingsley / Guardian:
Peter Greste and other al-Jazeera journalists return to court in Egypt

Discussion: Al Jazeera English, @ajamphoto, @kenroth, Voice of America, @bbcandrewh, Sky News Australia, @bbcos and Committee to Protect …

Laurie Segall / CNNMoney:

CNN sells Zite to Flipboard, teams up to launch custom magazines for CNN shows, in deal valued as high as $60M — CNN sells Zite to Flipboard — CNN has sold its news reader app, Zite, to Flipboard, a social magazine application. As part of the deal, Flipboard has also teamed up with CNN …

Discussion: Gigaom, LinkedIn Pulse, Inside Flipboard, Forbes, Zite's blog, Adweek, TVNewser, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Business Insider, AdAge, The Wrap, Fast Company, Poynter, The Verge, TechCrunch, Re/code, App Advice, ReadWrite, @pkafka, MacStories, PandoDaily, CNET, Marketing Land, Electronista, Variety, @om, @davidbauer, The Next Web, Mashable, @peacockc, @mlcalderone, ReadWrite, @learmonth, @brianstelter, @antderosa and Engadget

Rachel Bartlett / Journalism.co.uk:

Guardian CEO: The paywall ‘horse has bolted’ for us — Andrew Miller, chief executive of Guardian Media Group tells Digital Media Strategies the time has passed for the news outlet to launch a paywall, but indicated that ‘membership’ could be a way of ‘adding value’ — Credit: Image by michael clarke stuff on Flickr.

Discussion: @mattmcalister

Paul McNally / Press Gazette:
News UK chief Mike Darcey says Guardian ‘very brave’ to ‘bet’ the business on a free website

Discussion: Guardian

Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:

CBS's Moonves says Dish's deal with Disney over the Hopper doesn't go far enough $CBS — Moonves Said Terms of Disney Deal Wouldn't Be Enough to Satisfy CBS — CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves said Tuesday the agreement Dish Network Corp. reached with Walt Disney Co. this week …

Discussion: Adweek, New York Times, Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood Reporter, Bloomberg, @wsjbusiness, Forbes, CNNMoney.com and CNET

Los Angeles Times:
Disney-Dish Network pact may alter TV viewing habits

Discussion: Gigaom

Peter Kafka / Re/code:
Dish's deal with Disney may bring TV over the Web, but don't expect major changes to bundling

Discussion: Wall Street Journal

Jeanine Poggi / AdAge:

Al Jazeera America at Six Months: Some New Advertisers, Few Viewers — Serious Cable News Network Is on the Right Path, Buyers Say — Al Jazeera America is averaging less than half its predecessor's audience — Krux — Al Jazeera America is starting to earn the trust of some advertisers …

Discussion: Politico, New York Magazine and Los Angeles Times

Reuters:

Brooks accused of knowing about UK phone-hacking cover-up — (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's former British newspaper boss Rebekah was accused by prosecutors on Wednesday of knowing for years that phone-hacking was far wider than her company had acknowledged and had engaged in a cover-up.

Discussion: Press Gazette, Guardian, BBC and BreakingNews.ie

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
Rupert Murdoch ‘asked Rebekah Brooks not to resign’ the day NoW shut

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Guardian, @lisaocarroll and Reuters

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Slate appends corrections to errors on social media using replies, ensuring visiblity in stream — Slate's good strategy for correcting errors on Twitter, elsewhere — On Saturday night, Slate made a very funny, embarrassing error on Twitter: … Javier Bardem and Vladimir Putin aren't exactly lookalikes.

Discussion: @niemanlab, @bydanielvictor, @poynter, @vivian, @elanazak and @antderosa

John Plunkett / Guardian:

BBC3 to be axed under director general's plans — Tony Hall expected to announce he will save BBC4 and make channel that first aired Gavin and Stacey online only — Poll: Has the BBC made the right decision to axe BBC3? — The closure of BBC3 is to be proposed by the BBC director general …

Discussion: The Next Web, @susancalman, Metro.co.uk, @mr_dave_haslam, @claire_phipps, thedrum.com, broadcastnow.co.uk and Pocket-lint

Rachel Bartlett / Journalism.co.uk:

NYT plans lower pricing to reach non-subscribers and premium products for devoted readers — New York Times to add ‘series of new products’ for digital subscribers — Research by the New York Times has identified opportunities to target both non-subscribers and 'devoted Times readers …

Discussion: Telegraph, @matthewkeyslive, mUmBRELLA and FishbowlNY

Jack Marshall / Digiday:

How Digiday's experiment in buying fraudulent traffic returned a 30% profit in 10 days — Fraudulent traffic: adventures in ad farming — Web advertising has a serious fraud problem, largely because it's easy for publishers to purchase suspicious traffic and to sell it to advertisers through networks and exchanges.

Discussion: @bmorrissey, @digitalshields, @digiday, @sleepwhendead, @niemanlab and Business Insider

William Launder / Wall Street Journal:

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos puts more money into Business Insider — Business Insider raised an additional $12 million in funding from investors including Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, the online news site said.

Discussion: Business Insider, @ajs, Re/code, Talking Biz News and cnbc.com

Todd Spangler / Variety:

HBO Go Launches on PlayStation 3 — HBO's Internet video service, HBO Go, is now available on Sony Computer Entertainment America's PlayStation 3 consoles — but it still isn't available for the newer PS4. — According to Sony, about 25 million PlayStation 3 consoles are in use in the U.S. Netflix …

Discussion: VentureBeat, PlayStation.Blog, Electronista, Polygon, The Next Web and TechCrunch

Erik Wemple:

AP removes misleading Trail Life USA photo from its archives — John Stemberger is chairman of the board of Trail Life USA, a scouting organization that doesn't allow participation from openly gay boys. The Associated Press's (AP) Nomaan Merchant recently completed an in-depth story …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and @poynter

Stephen Hull / The Huffington Post:

How The Daily Mail Will Boost Traffic By 30m Overnight With Surprise Metro Takeover Deal — It is famed for its sidebar of shame - and now the Mail Online is set to boost its traffic overnight by almost 30m. — Staff at Metro.co.uk, the digital version of the hugely successful morning freesheet …

Discussion: Guardian

John Reynolds / Guardian:

'Three-fifths of Twitter's UK users follow a newspaper or journalist' — Guardian and Times top list as research finds those following press accounts are twice as likely to tweet as those who don't — Nearly three-fifths of Twitter's 15 million UK users follow at least one national newspaper brand …

Timothy Hay / Wall Street Journal:

Beats Music Acquires Topspin Media to Boost Musicians' Sales and Marketing — Beats Music, the on-demand music service launched by high-profile headphones company Beats Electronics LLC, will now add a new offering geared toward musicians: a way to communicate with fans and sell merchandise and albums.

Discussion: Music Ally, Billboard, Bloomberg, USA Today, Digital Music News, Los Angeles Times, CNET and TechCrunch

Ed Pilkington / Guardian:

Attorneys for Barrett Brown want case on linking to hacked material dismissed — The US activist-journalist faces 100 years in prison for posting hyperlink to site containing hacked material in chat room — Lawyers acting for Barrett Brown, the activist-journalist facing more than 100 years …

Discussion: dissenter.firedoglake.com, @sparty_legal and @jayrosen_nyu

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

Marc Andreessen's news-business fairy tale — The news industry is not in for exponential growth — Marc Andreessen has some outlandish predictions about the future of the journalism business: … Sorry, but those numbers are crazy town, as Poynter's Rick Edmonds notes.

Reuters:

Vietnam sentences dissident blogger Truong Duy Nhat to two years in prison — Vietnam jails ex-journalist over anti-government blog — (Reuters) - A court in Vietnam sentenced a former journalist to two years in prison on Tuesday for speaking out against the country's communist rulers …

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …, Greenfield Daily Reporter, Voice of America, Voice of America and Committee to Protect …

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Newsquest's ‘little house of subbing horrors’ prompts NUJ protest — The National Union of Journalists has renewed its call on Newsquest/Gannett to change its mind about the subbing hub it has created in south Wales. — It follows a damning indictment of the hub's output by the former regional editor, Steve Dyson.

Discussion: HoldTheFrontPage, HoldTheFrontPage and National Union of Journalists

Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:

NSA chief criticises media and suggests UK was right to detain David Miranda — Keith Alexander says revelations have caused ‘grave damage’ and claims officials are making ‘headway’ on ‘media leaks’ — The outgoing director of the National Security Agency lashed out at media organizations reporting …