Mediagazer: BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith on the challenge of competing with every other piece of content on the Web (Nieman Reports)

1:15 AM ET, June 14, 2014

Top News:

Chelsea Clinton paid $600K by NBC — Chelsea Clinton earned an annual salary of $600,000 at NBC News before switching to a month-to-month contract earlier this year, sources with knowledge of the agreement told POLITICO. — Clinton, who joined NBC News as a “special correspondent” …

Miriam Berger / BuzzFeed:

Twitter Has Suspended An ISIS Account That Live-Tweeted Its Advance In Iraq — The Iraqi government on Friday also cut off access to social media, alleging it was necessary to stop ISIS' advance. — Twitter has suspended at least one account affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria …

Discussion: @wikileaks and Guardian

KUNA:
Iraq blocks Facebook, YouTube, Twitter

Discussion: International Business Times, VentureBeat, @policy, Mashable, Global Voices, Engadget, stream.aljazeera.com, RT, New York Times and SocialTimes

GoLocalProv:

Providence Journal sold to GateHouse for an estimated $50-60M, sources say — Providence Journal Sold to GateHouse, Sources Tell GoLocal — The sale of the Providence Journal is almost complete. — Unless the deal collapses, GateHouse Media, which recently emerged from bankruptcy …

Discussion: Boston Globe, @tednesi, Talking New Media, @dankennedy_nu and Media Nation

Nieman Reports:

BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith on the challenge of competing with every other piece of content on the Web — When Ben Smith joined BuzzFeed as editor in chief in 2012, the site was better known for cute cat videos and fun lists than for serious journalism.

Discussion: Poynter

Alex Weprin / Capital New York:

Al Jazeera launches standalone online video service — Al Jazeera quietly launched its digital video news channel Al Jazeera + on Friday. — Dubbed “AJ+” for short, the service seems to be cut from the same cloth as other video startups like NowThis News and Vice News.

Discussion: Gigaom

Nikki Finke:

Deadlline's Jay Penske threatens legal action against Nikki Finke for contract violations — Penske Trying To Shut Me Down — Oops, someone spilled the party dip at my launch party. Last night my lawyers received a nasty legal letter from Jay Penske (aka Little Lord Fauntleroy) trying to shut down my new website.

Discussion: @morninggloria, @laceydonohue and @tomgara

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

Native Ad Production Values Keep Growing With ‘Orange is the New Black’ Promo — A fairly elaborate, nearly 1,500-word native ad for Netflix's original series “Orange is the New Black” appeared on The New York Times website Friday, using video, charts and audio to supplement text about female incarceration in the U.S.

Discussion: The New York Observer

Engin Onder / Nieman Reports:

The co-founder of Turkey's 140journos on building a citizen-sustained news agency from scratch

Tim Cushing / Techdirt:

Academic Publisher Fights Publication Of Paper Criticizing Publishers' Price Increases And Profits — The world of academic publishing is highly profitable — and, apparently, highly sustainable. There's no shortage of content seeking publication as researchers, professors, etc. seek to have their work published and cited.

Discussion: @tvol, @winston_chang, @neurobonkers and @openscience

Aimee Heckel / NetNewsCheck Latest:

Colorado Papers Form Digital Syndicate — How do you create more, higher quality content with a smaller, busier staff? — Here's a riddle that haunts modern newsrooms across the country: How do you create more, higher quality content with a smaller, busier staff? — We've set out to answer that question.

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

Here's What Happened To BuzzFeed's Facebook Traffic, Which Seems To Be Tanking — BuzzFeed, a digital media company with 130 million monthly unique visitors, gets a lot of traffic from Facebook. But recently Facebook shares and likes seem to be drastically down for the company.

Discussion: @fmanjoo, @michaelroston, Globe and Mail, @mikeisaac and @niemanlab

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Google Passes World Cup Searchers to ESPN — The World Cup starts up again this afternoon, when Mexico plays Cameroon. And if you go to Google looking for a highlight video during the match, the world's biggest search engine won't show you one. — But as part of a new deal …

Discussion: Fast Company, Search Engine Land, Los Angeles Times, @jyarow, @edmundlee, @reformedbroker, Business Insider, The Next Web, Multichannel News, Quartz, Gigaom, Variety, Mashable, @thenextcorner and The Verge

Jason Abbruzzese / Mashable:

Reddit's Newsgathering Comes of Age After Growing Pains — In the hours and days after the Boston Marathon bombing, the hive mind of Reddit sprang into action. Redditors studied pictures from the scene, listened to police scanners and pieced together information in attempts to identify the suspects.

Discussion: @marklittlenews