Mediagazer: Chinese Online Movie-Ticket Sales Rose 43 Percent Last Year, Study Finds (Clifford Coonan/Hollywood Reporter)

8:20 AM ET, September 29, 2014

Top News:

Softbank in Talks to Acquire DreamWorks Animation — Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp. is in talks to acquire DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, The Wrap, Silicon Republic, VentureBeat, Engadget, The Verge, Business Insider, PC World, Reuters, Bloomberg and Deadline

Catalina Albeanu / Journalism.co.uk:

Polish newspaper launches interactive data journalism platform — Gazeta Wyborcza set up BIQdata.pl, ‘the first website of its kind’ in Poland, to offer more visuals and interactive data analysis to its subscribers — Credit: By Luke Legay on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Variety:

Instagram, Chinese Media Restricted as Hong Kong Riots — Media in mainland China has limited its coverage of the severe social unrest taking place on the streets of Hong Kong. — In contrast, Hong Kong and international media have been carrying non-stop reports from the barricades …

Discussion: Reuters, Guardian, USA Today, PC World, BBC, Washington Post, TheBlaze.com, Foreign Policy, New York Times and The Verge

Jeremiah Patterson / Online News Association:

Seattle Times, Pro Publica, NPR take home 2014 Online Journalism Awards — CHICAGO — Coverage of natural disasters and health care as well as the making of a T-shirt took top honors Saturday night at the 2014 Online Journalism Awards, which ended the Online News Association Conference.

Discussion: @raju and Los Angeles Times

Clifford Coonan / Hollywood Reporter:

Chinese Online Movie-Ticket Sales Rose 43 Percent Last Year, Study Finds — The number of people who paid for tickets with mobile phones increased by 109 percent — China's box-office boom, which has seen theatrical revenue rise by 20 percent a year, has been accompanied by a jump …

Nasser Karimi / Associated Press:

Iran State TV: BBC Tried To Steal From ‘archives’ — TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian state television accused the BBC on Sunday of trying to steal “artistic, historic and cultural documents” from government archives in the Islamic Republic. — The BBC had no immediate comment on the claim …

Discussion: International Business Times

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Association of Magazine Media launches new metric to track audiences beyond print — Magazines to Count Readers in New Way — Publishers Seize Chance to Show Growth With Metric Tool That Tracks Audiences Across Categories — Magazine publishers have long argued that traditional industry print metrics …

Discussion: AdAge, WWD, New York Times, Adweek and Capital New York

Ben Austen / New York Magazine:

Chasing Mayhem With Peter Nickeas, the Chicago Tribune's Overnight Crime Reporter — “Did you guys have a shooting on the expressway? No? Okay, I’ll try back later.” — Shares — “Cold is the best crime deterrent,” says Peter Nickeas, the overnight reporter covering violence …

Discussion: @yayitsrob

Jackie Spinner / American Journalism Review:

The Big Conundrum: Should Journalists Learn Code? — In the new multimedia world journalists inhabit, Fernando Diaz, the managing editor of Hoy, Chicago's Spanish-language daily, is placing his bets on computer codes. — His last two hires were both developers: Nick Bennett …

Discussion: @markstencel and @cerenomri

ABC:

Australia Network, broadcasting to 46 countries, goes off the air after May budget cuts — Australia Network set to go off the air in the Asia and Pacific region — The Australia Network goes off the air from today after the Federal Government withdrew funding for the broadcaster earlier this year.

Discussion: @mo09, @grahamrabbott, @docevatt, @julianburnside, @clivefpalmer and @qldaah

Brady Dale / Columbia Journalism Review:

How tech reporters can deepen their beat — Ask a tech journalist about the latest cool features from the likes of Google Maps or Spotify, and they are likely not only to be able to rattle them off, but also to give astute opinions about whether those features position a product for success.

Discussion: @s_m_i

Trevor Timm / Freedom of the Press Foundation:

Eric Holder was the worst Attorney General for the press in a generation. We deserve better. — Attorney General Eric Holder announced he would resign yesterday, after serving as the nation's top law enforcement official since President Obama came into office in 2009.

Discussion: @jonathanwpeters, @onekade, @anamariecox, @seanlahman, @freedomofpress and Jack Shafer