Mediagazer: Former Obama spokesman explains the toxic relationship between media and the White House (Reid Cherlin/Rolling Stone)

8:00 PM ET, August 4, 2014

Top News:

Josh Schwartz / Chartbeat Blog:

Traffic to Chartbeat customers fell 3% during Facebook outage; mobile went 8.5% down; desktop went 3.5% up — Traffic During the Facebook Outage — As you've all but certainly heard, Facebook had a major outage midday on Friday. Overall traffic on news sites dropped by 3% …

Discussion: niemanlab.org, Poynter, @justinnxt, Re/code, BuzzFeed and Tech Times

Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:

Source: Gannett agrees to pay $1.8B for the 73% of Cars.com it doesn't already own — Gannett Said to Agree to Buy Rest of Cars.com for $1.8 Billion — Gannett Co. (GCI), the owner of USA Today, has agreed to pay $1.8 billion for the 73 percent of auto-sales website Cars.com it doesn't already own …

Discussion: @jonmarino and New York Times

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google News Gives Publishers More Control Over How It Indexes Their Sites — While European publishers have a rather contentious relationship with Google News, U.S. publishers have no such qualms and are more than happy to be indexed by the search giant's crawlers.

Discussion: Google News Blog, WebProNews and The Next Web

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Mike Nizza named executive editor of Bloomberg's politics site — Bloomberg has hired Mike Nizza away from Esquire as part of the company's efforts to develop a new suite of media brands aimed at a consumer audience, Capital has learned. — Nizza, who currently serves as Esquire's digital editor …

Discussion: Politico, @antderosa and @mikenizza

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Tribune Co. Changes Name to Tribune Media — The company, led by CEO Peter Liguori, recently approved the spin-off of Tribune Publishing, which houses the Los Angeles Times and whose stock is set to start regular trading on Tuesday. — Tribune Co. said Monday it was changing its name to Tribune Media Co.

Discussion: niemanlab.org, New York Times, Broadcasting & Cable, Variety and Politico

Matthew Keys / The Desk:
Los Angeles Times CEO Eddy Hartenstein to resign Monday

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Joseph Lichterman / Nieman Lab:

John Oliver uses slot on HBO to attack NYT, others for using native advertising — John Oliver goes off on native advertising — In June, The New York Times published what many considered the “Snow Fall” of native ads. The post, sponsored by Netflix to promote the second season of Orange …

Discussion: Mediaite, Gawker, The Week, Adweek, Business Insider, @joepompeo, Re/code, The Wrap and AdAge

Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:

Chegg Finds Partner to Handle Its Textbooks — For years, Chegg worked to become one of the biggest players in the business of renting textbooks to students. But since going public late last year, the company has suffered from a big investor concern: that its signature business was becoming obsolete.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Reuters, Fox Business, Digital Book World and Re/code

Reid Cherlin / Rolling Stone:

Former Obama spokesman explains the toxic relationship between media and the White House — The Presidency and the Press — The White House distrusts the media, reporters feel persecuted - a former Obama spokesman on the history of the toxic relationship

Discussion: Washington Post, @mhess4, @b_fung, @daviduberti, @briannolan1974, @glennthrush, @mlcalderone and @hadas_gold

Aki Tsuchiya / Guardian:

Television must mine bigger data or risk being Netflixed — Figures relating to consumer habit fuels decisions across a growing range of industries - and it's time for TV to catch up — In retail, Amazon and Tesco have blazed trails, mining insight from millions of consumers at scale …

Discussion: Capital New York

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Rhapsody Acquires SoundTracking And Exfm To Boost Music Sharing And Discovery — Rhapsody, the stalwart music streaming service with 2 million paying subscribers, today acquired Schematic Labs, makers of “Instagram for songs” app SoundTracking, and Exfm, a social music discovery service that had been shut down since May.

Discussion: Share the soundtrack …, Gigaom, Billboard, VentureBeat, hypebot, The Next Web and @jherskowitz

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Cablevision Hires Ex-Yahoo Tech Exec David Dibble as CTO — Cablevision Systems named David Dibble, who had until last year oversaw Yahoo's global infrastructure, as chief technology officer. — Dibble, 54, will start at the Bethpage, N.Y.-based cable company in September 2014, reporting to Cablevision CEO James L. Dolan.

Discussion: Multichannel News

Natalie Jarvey / Hollywood Reporter:

Amazon Studios Head Roy Price on Competing With Netflix, Xbox Studios' Demise (Q&A) — Amazon doubles down on drama as its rivals fall. — A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. — Roy Price comes from a long line of Hollywood executives.

Discussion: @laceyvrose