Mediagazer: Building an analytics culture in a newsroom: How NPR is trying to expand its digital thinking (Joseph Lichterman/Nieman Journalism Lab)

1:50 PM ET, May 1, 2014

Top News:

Susan B. Glasser / Politico:

“The New York Times Is Not Going to Turn into BuzzFeed” — A frank conversation with the former editors of the Post and the Times. — Between them, Bill Keller and Marcus Brauchli have edited all three great American newspapers—the New York Times for Keller, both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post for Brauchli.

Discussion: @abeaujon, @sbg1, @brianstelter, @ethanklapper and @neil_irwin

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

NYT's big circulation gains include copies of international edition — Average Monday-Friday circulation at The New York Times was 15 percent higher for the six months ending March 2014 than it was in the same period the year before, new figures from the Alliance for Audited Media say.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, FishbowlNY, investors.nytco.com and @poynter

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York: USA Today, Journal and Times top circulation list, as usual

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Television Revenue Drives Viacom Profit — Viacom, the media powerhouse that includes the movie studio Paramount and cable television channels like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, generated $502 million in profit for its latest fiscal quarter, driven by increased advertising …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable and Deadline.com

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Viacom to Acquire U.K.'s Channel 5 for $760 Million — Entrepreneur Richard Desmond had bought the broadcaster for $171 million a few years ago. — LONDON - After Discovery Communications and British pay TV giant BSkyB dropped out of the auction, Viacom is set to announce a deal …

Discussion: Guardian, Financial Times, Capital New York, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Variety, Los Angeles Times, MediaTel, ABC News, Gizmodo UK, London News, Bloomberg, broadcastnow.co.uk, Reuters and Telegraph

Mark Sweney / Guardian:
Sky Media expected to pick up £330m-a-year deal, giving it more than 30% of the market

Discussion: AdAge and @marksweney

Leo Mirani / Quartz:

Why LinkedIn is morphing from a social network into an online newspaper — On May 5th, LinkedIn will be celebrate its 11th birthday. It announced last month that 300 million people had signed up for the professional social network. This evening, LinkedIn will report earnings for first quarter …

Wall Street Journal:

AT&T considering acquisition of DirectTV, in deal likely worth at least $40B — AT&T Has Approached DirecTV About Possible Acquisition — AT&T has approached DirecTV about a possible acquisition of the satellite TV firm, say people familiar with the situation, the latest sign of a possible shakeup in the television industry.

Howard W. French / Columbia Journalism Review:

How the rise and fall of Bloomberg's China investigative unit harmed the news org's reputation — Bloomberg's folly — For foreign correspondents in China, breaking stories that the censored Chinese press can't touch has long been a core part of the mission.

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Fuse lays off staff after sale — The music-oriented TV channel Fuse is laying off staffers Thursday, its ownership tells Poynter. “We announced in early April that we reached an agreement to sell Fuse to SiTV Media, and these changes are part of that transition,” the company says in a statement.

Nicole Levy / Capital New York:

Time Inc. to build a standalone portal for video — Time Inc. is launching a platform for digital video content from all its magazine brands, the company announced at its inaugural presentation for the Digital Content Newfronts on Thursday morning at the Hudson Theater in midtown.

Discussion: Adweek and Business Wire

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

For White House reporter Lesley Clark, so close and yet so far — Reporter Lesley Clark once got close enough to President Obama at an international summit to notice that he was chewing gum. “I think it was that nicotine stuff,” she recalls. — Okay, not exactly a major scoop.

Bloomberg:

Sony cuts earnings forecast by 67.5% due to quickly shrinking Blu-ray sales, restructuring expenses — Sony Cuts Earnings a Third Time as Recovery Founders — Sony Corp. (6758), the maker of Xperia smartphones and PlayStation consoles, cut its earnings for the third time in a year …

Discussion: BBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Hollywood Reporter

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

Suing romance novelists believe that Harlequin used foreign subsidiaries to create artificially low net receipts on eBooks.

Hollywood Reporter:

Australia's Commission of Audit has recommended cutting Screen Australia's funding by 50 percent and eliminating the country's pan-Asian public TV network altogether.

Gideon Spanier / London Evening Standard:

Google Maps and BBC iPlayer traffic surges during tube strike — Londoners used up a fifth more data on their smartphones during the Tube strike as millions of commuters were forced to make journeys above ground, according to mobile giant EE. — The owner of the Orange and T-Mobile networks …

Ken Doctor / Politico:

Why Silicon Valley VCs suddenly love the media. Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/ story/2014/05/1-destroy-the-village-2- save-it-105923.html#ixzz30T2DCWHG — Are we living in the golden age of digital media? It certainly looks that way to Ken Lerer.

Alexandra Steigrad / WWD:

ASME Crowns Year's Best Cover, Talks Video — ASME CROWNS BEST COVER, TALKS VIDEO: Media types braved the rain Wednesday to attend the American Society of Magazine Editors luncheon in Manhattan, during which the organization crowned the best magazine cover of the year.

Discussion: @alexsteigrad

Alex Weprin / Capital New York:

Twitter has bet the farm on television, but does TV care? — Twitter has bet the farm on television. In its stated goal to become “The Global Town Square,” the service has tied itself to TV networks and companies through its “Amplify” program, arguing that when people watch something on TV …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Slate, TechPresident, Quartz, NPR and Talking Biz News

Garrett Goodman / TheMediaBriefing:

A lesson in metrics: how Bleacher Report gamified journalism for 1.3 billion monthly pageviews — There's a peculiar dichotomy in the media at the moment: while digital editors debate the merits of metrics, and whether writers should be shown analytics about their own pieces …

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Online video could soon come to your cable box, with help from Frequency — Some cable providers may still not like the idea of having a Netflix app on their cable box, but everyone wants to have access to short-form online content, said Frequency CEO Blair Harrison during an interview at the Cable Show in Los Angeles Wednesday.

Andrew Bossone / Columbia Journalism Review:

Foreign journalists know they'd be lost, or even dead, without the locals they hire, but do they give them credit back home? — The thankless work of a ‘fixer’ — Foreign journalists know they'd be lost, or even dead, without the locals they hire, but do they give them credit back home?

Discussion: @_ms_r, @moealin and The Newspaper Guild

Joseph Lichterman / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Building an analytics culture in a newsroom: How NPR is trying to expand its digital thinking — Being a digital staffer at a traditional news organization means doing digital work, sure — but it often also means serving as an evangelist for the web. That can take a mixture of convincing, cajoling, and showing by example.

Erich Schwartzel / Wall Street Journal:

DreamWorks to Put Short-Form Content on YouTube — Computer-Animation Studio Pushes Its Expansion Beyond Movies — DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. 's recent track record in movies has been spotty: Three of its last four films—including the March release “Mr. Peabody & Sherman”—have come up short at the box office.