Mediagazer: With Four New Adam Sandler Films, Netflix Takes Aim at Theaters (Emily Steel/New York Times)

11:25 AM ET, October 2, 2014

Top News:

A mixed bag on apps: What The New York Times learned with NYT Opinion and NYT Now — The New York Times' announcement today that it was cutting 100 positions in its newsroom was coupled with changes to two of its most closely watched experiments, each just a few months old: NYT Now and NYT Opinion.

John Herrman / The Awl:
NYT Opinion was interesting software but op-ed franchise stopped accumulating fans decades ago

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Talking New Media, ZDNet, PandoDaily, Washington Post, The Huffington Post, CNBC, @jfruh, @nbj914, @timfernholz and @mathewi

Emily Steel / New York Times:

With Four New Adam Sandler Films, Netflix Takes Aim at Theaters — Netflix plans to announce on Thursday that it has struck a deal with the comedian Adam Sandler to produce and star in four new feature films that will appear exclusively on the streaming service.

Discussion: Variety, Netflix, Forbes, The Wrap, Hollywood Reporter, @andygreenwald, @ditzkoff, Engadget, UPROXX and Gigaom

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

The NFL's Flirtation With the Web Is Over (For Now) — One day, a tech giant like Google or Apple might stream pro football games to American homes. But not anytime soon: DirecTV has renewed its deal to carry the NFL's “Sunday Ticket” subscription package.

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

Google threatened with $100M lawsuit for failure to remove nude images of hacked celebrities — Celebrities Threaten “Despicable” Google for “Facilitating” Hacked Nude Photos — In a letter that rips Google for acting “like the NFL” and turning a blind eye, a lawyer representing celebrities warns of consequences

Laura Hazard Owen / Gigaom:

Amazon's crowdsourced publishing platform, WriteOn, will launch soon for mystery, romance and sci-fi authors — Amazon's crowdsourced publishing initiative, Kindle WriteOn, is for romance, mystery/thriller and sci-fi/fantasy authors, and will open to the public in a couple of weeks.

Discussion: Publishers Weekly

Denise Lavoie / Associated Press:

New York Post settles lawsuit over “bag men” cover — BOSTON (AP) — The New York Post has settled a defamation lawsuit over a cover three days after the Boston Marathon bombing that featured a photo of two Massachusetts residents with the headline “Bag Men.” — Neither side would disclose terms of the settlement.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Washington Post and Mediaite

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Sun journalist faces retrial over alleged payment to police officer — Jury fails to reach a verdict on first journalist to be charged under Met police's Operation Elveden — The first Sun journalist to be charged for payments to police leaking stories will face a retrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict at the Old Bailey.

Edmund Lee / Re/code:

Financial Times Editor Lionel Barber: “Now Software's Driving the Journalism” (Q&A) — Lionel Barber, the 59-year-old, Oxford-educated editor of the Financial Times, comes across exactly the way you'd expect a 59-year-old, Oxford-educated editor of a significant newspaper to act: Gracious, opinionated, maybe a bit deliberative.

Discussion: The New York Observer, @galbraithjeremy, @starexplorer, @niemanlab, @sub8u, @shannonpareil and Talking Biz News

David D. Kirkpatrick / New York Times:

Egypt Seizes Newspapers to Censor an Article — CAIRO — The Egyptian authorities on Wednesday confiscated all the copies of one of the country's largest private newspapers in order to censor an article, just days after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed in an American television interview that there was …

Discussion: @nervana_1, @rajivwashpost and Daily News Egypt

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

£600k salary for outgoing Newsquest chief Paul Davidson as company makes £53m profit in 2013 — The UK's third largest newspaper group Newsquest made an operating profit last year of £52.8m on turnover of £289m. — Both profit and turnover were down from the 2012 totals …

Discussion: Guardian

Andrew Chung / Reuters:

Sirius XM will appeal copyright ruling in $100 million lawsuit — Satellite radio provider Sirius XM Holdings Inc will appeal a California federal judge's decision finding it liable of copyright infringement for airing pre-1972 songs by the band, The Turtles, and failing to pay royalties.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Radio Ink Magazine and AllAccess.com

Reuters:

France's Orange to market Netflix in November - CEO — France's biggest telecom operator Orange has reached an agreement with Netflix to offer the video streaming service on its set-top boxes from November, its chief executive Stephane Richard told Le Monde newspaper on Wednesday.

Discussion: The Next Web and Bloomberg

Elsa Keslassy / Variety:
Report: Netflix Attracts Over 100,000 French Subscribers in Two Weeks

Discussion: Bloomberg, TBI Vision, Rapid TV News, Broadband TV News, Home Media Magazine and VentureBeat

Press Association:

Music consumption helps drive UK technology sales by £11bn — Each 1% increase in demand for music translates to 1.4% boost in sales of smartphones and 2.2% for tablets, study finds — Music consumption in the UK has had the knock-on effect of driving technology sales to the tune …

Discussion: allmediascotland, Music Ally, Music-News.com and Herald Scotland

Krishnadev Calamur / NPR:

One System, Two Media: How China, Hong Kong Are Covering The Protests — Hong Kong media are providing wall-to-wall coverage of the protests calling for the resignation of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, but in mainland China there has been little to no mention of the unrest.

Discussion: New Yorker and Agence France-Presse

Nic Christensen / mUmBRELLA:

BBC ramps up Australian online news operation — The BBC is following its British counterparts The Guardian and The Daily Mail in ramping up its Australian news operation, but will look to add a more international perspective to local news. — As part of the push the British public broadcaster …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Twitter UK TV Ratings Go Live This Month, The First Of 6 New Markets With Kantar — Twitter is today putting in place the latest piece of its global “social TV” strategy, which involves measuring how its users share and discuss TV programs and related content on Twitter's network.

Discussion: Rapid TV News, Telecompaper and Broadband TV News

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

Publishers give the movie review a refresh — Digital technology has brought wholesale change to the way people watch TV and movies, from viewing on demand to skipping ads to on their own schedule, skip through ads and fast forward. Against that backdrop, publishers are modernizing the review.

Discussion: @efelsenthal

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Ed Richards to step down as Ofcom chief executive — Executive who shaped the Communication Act that created the media and communications regulator to leave after 11 years — Ed Richards is to leave media regulator Ofcom after 11 years. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian

Discussion: Press Association, Telegraph, London Evening Standard, The Drum, broadcastnow.co.uk and Mobile Today