Mediagazer: Are pen names ever OK in journalism? (Jeremy Barr/Poynter)

10:55 PM ET, March 10, 2014

Top News:

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Gawker's John Cook Joins First Look Media — First Look Media, the independent news organization created by Pierre Omidyar, has poached Gawker editor John Cook, Gawker staffers were informed today. Cook is First Look's latest high profile addition in recent months.

Matthew Shaer / New York Magazine:

Raging Against Hacks With Muckraker Turned Magazine-Maker Matt Taibbi — Matt Taibbi, the former enfant terrible of political journalism, limps into a cozy diner on Chambers Street, in Tribeca a Russian-style fur cap pulled over his ears, a half-formed apology for his lateness already on his lips.

Discussion: @kierafeldman, @nymag, @sarahljaffe, The Corsair and The Raw Story

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Sharyl Attkisson resigns from CBS News — CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson has reached an agreement to resign from CBS News ahead of contract, bringing an end to months of hard-fought negotiations, sources familiar with her departure told POLITICO on Monday.

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

“I want it to be 25 years ago!” Newsweek's blown cover story on bitcoin. — “How was some guy in a basement who happens to have an obsessive interest in your subject going to bust into your peer group and start shooting up your journalism in a way that raises doubts about you and your magazine?

Discussion: @mollycrabapple, @i4_1, @kashhill, @brett_fujioka, @thetecheconomy, @felixsalmon, @mmasnick, @binarybits, @miamijournalism, @losowsky, @barryeisler and @ericuman

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:
Newsweek and ‘trust us’ journalism

Discussion: Guardian

Felix Salmon:
Satoshi: Why Newsweek isn't convincing

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, @davidfolkenflik, @balajis, @autom8, @sarahcuda, All, @neetzan, Guardian, @johnmcquaid, @jayrosen_nyu, Forbes, @mathewi, @ericuman, @thebrowser, @tylercowen and @ftrain

Michael King / Austin Chronicle:

Greenwald on politics, privacy, journalism — Reporter/editor says bigger Snowden revelations to come — Glenn Greenwald, the Constitutional attorney who became a blogger and then reporter - and Ed Snowden's go-to journalist to publish his cache of National Security Agency documents …

Discussion: VentureBeat and @imagethink

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Snowden has shown the ‘huge disparity of surveillance and power’, says Gellman — Government needs reminding that they work for us, says Pulitzer-winning reporter Barton Gellman, who describes Edward Snowden as ending an era of indifference to surveillance — Encryptions tools must …

Discussion: @trevortimm

Matt McFarland / Washington Post:
Edward Snowden: 'They're setting fire to the future of the Internet'

Discussion: VentureBeat, Fast Company, Guardian, USA Today, Politico, The Next Web, It's a Gadget, @arusbridger, Hollywood Reporter, TechCrunch, Lastest ITProPortal news, NPR, Re/code, Daily Dot, TIME, @steveklabnik, Daily Mail and The Switch

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

Netflix reportedly reaches another Comcast-style agreement, but with a Norwegian ISP — Netflix's oddly public peering agreement to connect directly with Comcast has, as many expected, been followed closely by a similar deal. What may surprise some is that this arrangement is with Norway's Telenor …

Discussion: Telecompaper and Electronista

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Netflix got a bit faster on Comcast after opening its wallet

Discussion: Netflix US & Canada Blog, ZDNet and Wired

Elizabeth Jensen / New York Times:

New York Public Radio Receives Grant for $10 Million — New York Public Radio will announce on Monday that it has received a $10 million grant from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation, which it says is the largest single gift ever made to a public radio station.

Discussion: BuzzMachine, @prx, FishbowlNY, New York Magazine, AllAccess.com and Radio Ink Magazine

Alex Weprin / Capital New York:

ESPN to combine FiveThirtyEight, Grantland and ESPN Films into new unit — ESPN is bringing together its FiveThirtyEight, Grantland and ESPN Films franchises under one umbrella. — The new unit, dubbed “Exit 31” (a reference to the exit off of Interstate 84 in Bristol, Connecticut where ESPN is based) …

Discussion: Variety, FishbowlNY and NetNewsCheck Latest

Peter Kafka / Re/code:
ESPN's Bill Simmons on ESPN's Nate Silver, Being a Boss and Building His Site

Discussion: FishbowlNY and @laurengoode

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

Wall Street Journal Adopts Native Ads, Tactic Its Editor Has Said Can Lead to Faustian Pacts — The nation's top newspapers are carefully embracing native advertising despite reservations from some in the editorial ranks. The New York Times rolled out its own native ad units in January.

Discussion: Dow Jones, Capital New York, Forbes and FishbowlNY, Thanks:@msebastian

Bloomberg:

Sean Combs Said to Bid $200 Million for Fuse TV Network — Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul now known as Diddy, has bid about $200 million for the Fuse cable-TV channel, said three people with knowledge of the situation. — Combs, 43, rose to fame as rapper Puff Daddy and has since founded fashion …

Discussion: The Wrap, Deadline.com, Mashable and Variety

John McDuling / Quartz:

“The Upshot” is the New York Times' replacement for Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight — “The Upshot.” That's the name the New York Times is giving to its new data-driven venture, focused on politics, policy and economic analysis and designed to fill the void left by Nate Silver …

Discussion: @neil_irwin, @mattyglesias, @kiernan_mathews, FishbowlNY, @azizonomics, @mattfrehner, @dleonhardt and New York Magazine

Tamara Baluja / J-source.ca:

Toronto Star builds technology to post professional camera photos instantly on live blogs — Imagine a gadget that attaches to a professional DSLR camera and sends photos directly to a live blog, almost as fast as you can snap them. Taras Slawnych did—and then he built one.

Discussion: Poynter, @coreymintz, @russellphotos and @tara_deschamps

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Journalist Lyra McKee uses Beacon to crowdfund investigation into a 33-year-old Belfast murder — Journalist tries to fund investigation with ‘dispatches from the trail’ — Irish journalist Lyra McKee is using Beacon, a crowdfunding service for writers, to raise money to finish a book …

Discussion: muckraker.me

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

Strictly algorithm: how news finds people in the Facebook and Twitter age — Many people assume important news will find them online, but don't understand the algorithms defining how — From Spotify and Netflix recommendations to Facebook's news feed or Google's search results …

Discussion: Capital New York

Sam Petulla / The Content Strategist:

How Buzzfeed Manipulates Fast and Slow Thinking to Win the Internet — After the rapid rise of BuzzFeed and Upworthy over the past year — and the backlash that followed — engagement has become the talk of the town. — The big question: If “You Won't Believe What Happens Next” …

Jeremy Barr / Poynter:

Are pen names ever OK in journalism? — If your name is “Jason Huntmann,” then your name should be Jason Huntmann. — That's the guiding principle I was operating under earlier this winter when I wrote about The Washington Post's decision to pull down an op-ed piece after I questioned the author's identity.

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Baljeet Singh, developer of skippable pre-roll ads for YouTube, joins Twitter — Twitter poaches YouTube executive in new push for video ads — Twitter has hired former YouTube executive Baljeet Singh as a product director in its revenue organization, where he will work to improve …

Discussion: SocialTimes, @kevinweil, Business 2 Community, VentureBeat and Silicon Republic