Mediagazer: A Website Asks Readers to Finance Independent Journalists (Sydney Ember/New York Times)

11:20 PM ET, March 19, 2014

Top News:

Justin B. Smith / Medium:

Bloomberg Media—A New Direction — Bloomberg L.P. has built a significant media business over the last 20 years. Our television, digital, magazine, radio and live event platforms span the globe. Our influence is considerable, but Bloomberg Media's greatest potential has yet to still be realized.

Discussion: Poynter, @atossaaraxia, @daweiner, @brianstelter, @msquinn and Talking Biz News

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Watch out, business publishers — Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith says he is coming for you — Justin Smith — who helped turn around the fortunes of the ailing Atlantic Media empire, in part by expanding the 150-year-old magazine's digital reach — has laid out a manifesto about how he wants …

Discussion: @thestalwart and @brianstelter

Matt Turck:
Can the Bloomberg Terminal be “Toppled”?

Discussion: @rafat

Brian Morrissey / Digiday:
Justin Smith's plan for where Bloomberg Media goes next

Discussion: TVNewser, Mediawire Daily and Talking Biz News

Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke / The New York Observer:

How a Fleet Street Scandal Sheet Conquered the Internet — In the cutthroat world of British tabloids, where the explosive Fleet Street editor is a stock character, Martin Clarke still stood out as a particularly fearsome newsroom presence. Even more so when he came to New York in 2011 to expand the Daily Mail's digital footprint.

The Atlantic Online:

David Frum Named Senior Editor at The Atlantic — Washington, D.C. (March 19, 2014)— The veteran political commentator and author David Frum is joining The Atlantic as a senior editor beginning March 31, James Bennet, editor in chief of The Atlantic, announced today.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, @tinyrevolution, Politico, @mlcalderone, @shanedingman, New York Times, Capital New York, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, @jaywattsiii, @over_rated, @atrios and @gzornick

Allison Schrager / Quartz:

The problem with data journalism — The recent boom in “data-driven” journalism projects is exciting. It can elevate our knowledge, enliven statistics, and make us all more numerate. But I worry that data give commentary a false sense of authority since data analysis is inherently prone to bias.

Discussion: @kleinmatic, @sisiwei, @jimmacmillan, @glichfield, @dataeditor, @moorehn, @urbaninstitute, @noahpinion and @jenlucpiquant

Mary Clare Fischer / American Journalism Review:

No Analytics for You: News Sites Grapple With Who Can See Data — Editor's Note: This is the second post in a series examining the influence of analytics on how news is produced. — When journalist Russell Brandom first came to The Verge, he was on the “weird” beat.

Discussion: @petersgoodman, @antderosa, @reckless, @utknightcenter, @mathewi and AJR.org

Leon Wieseltier / The New Republic:

Nate Silver could learn a lot from those op-ed columnists he maligns — Nate Silver could learn a lot from those op-ed columnists he maligns — I wish to say a word or two in defense of “bulls**t.” That is Nate Silver's meticulously chosen term—he does nothing imprecisely—for opinion journalism.

Abigail Edge / Journalism.co.uk:

Why The Information chose to follow a paywall model — Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information, outlines the site's approach to paywalls, which she believes should be driven by high-quality content — Credit: Dreamer, via Wikimedia Commons

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

How data from Financial Times readers lead to more readers and revenue — The Financial Times “broke the law of large numbers last year,” Ryan Chittum wrote in CJR: It added digital subscribers at a fast rate, seven years after it launched its paywall. It now has 652,000 paying subscribers …

Discussion: Strange Attractor, @raju and @poynter, Thanks:@ryanngastwirth

Ben Branstetter / Daily Dot:

Newsweek's Bitcoin facepalm got Internet culture wrong — When Newsweek ceased publishing their print edition at the end of 2012, ending an 80-year stint as a stalwart of the American news industry, it was largely seen as the first national casualty of the digital era, a titan felled …

Discussion: Computerworld, PandoDaily and The Huffington Post

Eugene Volokh / Washington Post:
Reverse defamation, the Newsweek Bitcoin story, and Satoshi Nakamoto

Discussion: @jerrybrito and @marshallyoum

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

NAA's new chairman says newspaper biz should have collaborated sooner — At the Newspaper Association of America's mediaXchange conference Tuesday, Robert Dickey, the president of Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing division, said U.S. papers should have collaborated more before the meteor hit:

Discussion: Newspaper Association …, NetNewsCheck Latest, @markbriggs, @jayrosen_nyu, Financial Times, PandoDaily and Nieman Journalism Lab

Sydney Ember / New York Times:

A Website Asks Readers to Finance Independent Journalists — With news publications increasingly charging for their once-free websites and apps, they face a critical question: Will readers pay for digital content? Now, one Internet start-up has put a twist on that question: Will readers pay for a journalist?

David E. Frank / Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly:

Jury returns $563K libel verdict against Boston Herald — A Suffolk Superior Court jury has found that the Boston Herald committed actual malice in a story which falsely reported a woman had engaged in “sexual acts” with a Bridgewater inmate during a 2009 visit.

Discussion: Media Nation, bizjournals, The Boston Globe and Boston Herald

Alan Yuhas / Guardian:

Associated Press removes Ukraine from dateline of Crimea stories — AP says new Crimea dateline is consistent with style guide for territories that are ‘geographically distinct’ such as Sicily — As every self-respecting copy editor knows - and as every writer and reader ought to know - style is politics, and politics inform style.

Discussion: THE DEFINITIVE SOURCE, New York Times, The Verge and Slate

Francesca Bacardi / Variety:

Sundance Institute to Launch Lab for TV and Digital Series — Sundance Institute is expanding its purview in a big way with plans to launch a development lab for writers and others focused on episodic projects for TV and online platforms. — The move is an extension of the workshop process …

Discussion: Deadline.com and Hollywood Reporter

Emerging Technology From the arXiv:

Data Mining Reveals How Conspiracy Theories Emerge on Facebook — Some people are more susceptible to conspiracy theories than others, say computational social scientists who have studied how false ideas jump the “credulity barrier” on Facebook. — During the Italian elections last year …

Discussion: @ndiakopoulos, @kissane, @daveedgr, @kdnuggets, @dailygrail and @musafurber

Michael Holden / Reuters:

News Corp executives pressured ex-reporter to take phone-hacking rap - court — (Reuters) - The former royal editor at Rupert Murdoch's now defunct News of the World told a London court on Wednesday senior figures at News Corp.'s British newspaper arm put pressure on him to take the flak for phone-hacking to protect others.

BBC: Phone-hacking trial: Andy Coulson ‘urged silence on hacking’