Mediagazer: Why the Oxford Mail is experimenting with WhatsApp (Alastair Reid/Journalism.co.uk)

4:05 PM ET, June 18, 2014

Top News:

Timothy B. Lee / Vox:

Disruption is a dumb buzzword. It's also an important concept — Jill Lepore isn't a fan of Clay Christensen's concept of disruptive innovation. Writing in the New Yorker, she laments the growing ubiquity of the term in business in general and Silicon Valley in particular.

Discussion: Digitopoly, Slate, PandoDaily, Techdirt, The Awl, ReadWrite, Guardian, stratechery and Forbes

Clay Shirky:

Kushner's wrong; trying to save print journalism steals resources from planning for the future — Nostalgia and Newspapers — Aaron Kushner, CEO of Freedom Communications and the architect of a contrarian plan to expand southern California newspapers, began erecting hard paywalls …

Juan Antonio Giner / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“From a news business to a networked business”: The FT pushes its workflows to digital — Editor's note: Every year, Innovation Media Consulting prepares a report for WAN-IFRA on the state of innovation at newspapers around the world. The new edition is out now — here's an excerpt …

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review and Financial Times

Sam Petulla / The Content Strategist:

The Financial Times on Why They Ditched CPMs For a New Ad Currency: Time Spent — “Engaged time” has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the media universe of late, as publishers and brands seek a unit of measurement that accurately values how much time people are spending with content.

Discussion: AdExchanger and Business Insider, Thanks:@steverubel

Angela Haggerty / The Drum:

ASA bans Outbrain's native ad ‘recommended’ links on publisher websites — The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a ‘recommended links’ promotion for failing to make clear that linked-to articles were paid for by advertisers. — The ruling against content distribution business Outbrain …

Discussion: Press Gazette, mediaweek.co.uk, @niemanlab, marketingweek.co.uk and Guardian

Derek Thompson / The Atlantic Online:

Why Audiences Hate Hard News—And Love Pretending Otherwise — Ask readers what they want, and they'll tell you vegetables. Watch them quietly, and they'll mostly eat candy. — You may not realize this, but we can see you. Yes, you. The human reading this article.

Discussion: @jonathanstray, @davidcochrane, The New York Observer, @emmamayalex, @tomchivers, @misspress, @stacyherbert, @jonathanhaynes, @jimmyorr, @kctvphotogbrett, @rebeccaschinsky, @michaellinhorst and @onceupona

Sheera Frenkel / BuzzFeed:

Al Jazeera Is Shutting Down Its Offices In Egypt And Terminating All Employee Contracts — Exclusive: Al Jazeera notified dozens of employees Wednesday that it was ending their contracts. The Qatar-based network has not been operating in Egypt since December 2013, but has kept offices in the country.

Discussion: @dadakim and @buzzfeedben

Danielle Wiener-Bronner / The Wire:
Hunger-Striking Al Jazeera Reporter Set Free

Discussion: Press Gazette, Voice of America, Gawker, Associated Press and Al Jazeera English

Elizabeth Jensen / New York Times:

WETA to Take Ownership of ‘PBS NewsHour’ — WETA, the Washington, D.C., public broadcaster, is expected to take over ownership and control of “PBS NewsHour” on July 1 from the program's longtime owner, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, the station announced Wednesday.

Discussion: Washington Post and PBS

John McCarthy / The Drum:

YouTube will be the dominant media platform in five years according to Dreamworks CEO — YouTube will be the dominant platform in which we consume media in half a decade, dwarfing current television giants, according to Jeffrey Katzenberg CEO of DreamWorks Animation.

Discussion: The Wrap

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Daily Telegraph's Brogan departs as group seeks 40 new recruits — Ex-deputy editor leaves newspaper along with columnist and blog editor Damian Thompson — Benedict Brogan, the Daily Telegraph's former deputy editor and its chief political commentator, has left the newspaper.

Discussion: Guy Fawkes' blog, Financial Times, UK - The Huffington Post, BREITBART.COM and Press Gazette

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

Why the Oxford Mail is experimenting with WhatsApp — The regional daily has received positive feedback for its WhatsApp service after experimenting with new ways to reach its audience more directly — Credit: By Sam Azgor on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Discussion: HoldTheFrontPage

Gautham Nagesh / Wall Street Journal:

FCC Report on Broadband Speeds: DSL Lags Behind Cable and Fiber — FCC Says Broadband Providers Close to Advertised Speeds Most of the Time — DSL companies are lagging behind cable and fiber broadband providers when it comes to download speeds, according to a new report from the Federal Communications Commission.

Discussion: Multichannel News, Deadline.com, USA Today and DSLreports

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

National press ad revenue forecast to fall below £1bn in 2014 — Total UK ad revenue set to increase by 5.4%, fuelled by football World Cup ITV broadcasts, says WPP's GroupM — UK national newspaper advertising revenue will fall below £1bn for the first time in 2014, according to one new industry forecast.

Discussion: @mediaguardian

Bob Dietz / Committee to Protect Journalists:

Conditions for international reporters deteriorating in China — The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China released at the end of May its annual report on conditions for international journalists working in the country. As we have done in the past, we're posting this year's report as a PDF.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @chinahotline and @asiaronn

Megha Rajagopalan / Reuters:

China bans unauthorised critical coverage by journalists — (Reuters) - Reporters in China are forbidden from publishing critical reports without the approval of their employer, one of China's top media regulators said on Wednesday. — The rule comes as the government intensifies a crackdown …

Discussion: Guardian News Website

Shalini Ramachandran / Wall Street Journal:

Viacom, 60 Cable Firms Part Ways in Rural U.S. — After Carriage-Fee Dispute, Both Sides Say They Can Live Without the Other — For roughly two months, about 900,000 households in small towns across the U.S. haven't been able to watch Nickelodeon, MTV or Comedy Central …