Mediagazer: Amazon Announces New Streaming Device, Fire TV Stick, Special Limited Pricing Of $19 (Dan Rayburn/StreamingMediaBlog.com)

9:40 AM ET, October 27, 2014

Top News:

As Facebook considers hosting content on mobile, publishers worry about losing control — Facebook Offers Life Raft, but Publishers Are Wary — For publishers, Facebook is a bit like that big dog galloping toward you in the park. More often than not, it's hard to tell whether he wants to play with you or eat you.

Discussion: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, @counternotions, @rpogrebin, @nytimesbusiness, @nspector4, Business Insider, @monkbent, @pkafka, @pmarca, @russb, @om, @chrisroper, @clarajeffery, @dangillmor, @poniewozik, @fieldproducer and @jswatz

Kurt Wagner / Re/code:

Whisper editorial staff placed on leave includes editor-in-chief Neetzan Zimmerman — Whisper Suspends Some Editorial Staff Following Guardian Report — Anonymous messaging app Whisper has suspended some members of its editorial staff in the wake of a troubling article from the Guardian …

Discussion: VatorNews and @jayrosen_nyu

Michael Heyward / Whisper:
Whisper responds to Guardian's “10 questions”, says members of editorial team put on leave

Discussion: Guardian, PandoDaily, Gigaom, SlashGear, TechCrunch, @hblodget, @jayrosen_nyu, @mathewi, The Drum, @paulcarr, @ryanchittum, @jayrosen_nyu and Business Insider

James Bradshaw / Globe and Mail:

Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi fired from CBC over public revelations of his private sex life, plans to sue for $50M — Ghomeshi says he was fired from CBC over sex life being made public — The CBC has ended its relationship with renowned broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi after receiving information that …

Discussion: Facebook, Toronto Star, CBC News, Toronto Star, Gawker, @nycsouthpaw, Slate, @glennf, @pwaldieglobe, @wolfewylie, Groupthink, Canada Blog … and Toronto Star

Brendan Nyhan / New York Times:

Studies show Americans don't in fact live in information cocoons of like-minded media sources — Americans Don't Live in Information Cocoons — In this polarized age, have citizens retreated into information cocoons of like-minded media sources? — A new Pew Research Center report found …

Discussion: @fheinderyckx, @ejdionne and @dangillmor

Dan Rayburn / StreamingMediaBlog.com:

Amazon Announces New Streaming Device, Fire TV Stick, Special Limited Pricing Of $19 — This morning Amazon announced a new HDMI streaming device called the Fire TV Stick, which is already available for pre-order and will ship before black Friday. (Nov. 19th) Amazon is offering Prime members …

Discussion: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, CNET, The Verge, Phandroid, Android Central and The Next Web

Jay Rosen / The Conversation:

Journalists need a point of view if they want to stay relevant — If extreme polarization is now an enduring feature of American politics — not just a bug — how does that change the game for journalists? I have some ideas, but mainly I want to put that question on the...

Discussion: @fabriceflorin, @molenews1, @mathewi, @derekwillis, @jayrosen_nyu, @albertocairo and @jayrosen_nyu

Angela Haggerty / The Drum:

Financial Times launches aggregation service FirstFT, curating must-reads from across the web — Financial Times unveils FirstFT email aggregator to cut through stream ‘information overload’ — The Financial Times has unveiled a FirstFT email aggregator for readers using news from FT …

Discussion: Financial Times

Alexander Klöpping / Medium:

Blendle, a Dutch news aggregator that charges by the article, announces $3.8M in funding from NYT and Axel Springer for European expansion — Today our journalistic startup got backed by The New York Times and Axel Springer — Less than six months ago we launched our journalism startup Blendle out of Utrecht in The Netherlands.

Discussion: Nieman Lab, Adweek, Gigaom, Business Insider, @anthonydb, @pilhofer, @davidbauer, The Next Web, @ejpfauth, @niklasf and The Atlantic Online

Roy Peter Clark / Poynter:

From AIDS to Ebola: Journalism, disease, and the mentality of fear — I remember a day back in the 1980s when I first met a person who I thought had AIDS. I was sitting at the front desk of the old storefront building of the Poynter Institute when a tall gaunt man entered through the glass doors and approached me with a question.

Discussion: Slate, @raju, @venkatananth and @poynter

BuzzFeed:
How a journalist is coping with life covering the Ebola outbreak in Liberia

Discussion: @maxseddon, @nilofer, @annehelen, @jimmacmillan, @snolen, @eleanorbarkhorn and @stevesilberman

David D. Kirkpatrick / New York Times:

Egyptian Media to Limit Criticism of Government — CAIRO — A group of Egyptian newspaper editors pledged Sunday to limit their criticism of state institutions, a day after Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, warned of a “conspiracy” behind a militant attack last week that killed at least 31 soldiers.

Discussion: @dlepeska and english.ahram.org.eg

Eric Blattberg / Digiday:

Q&A with Nate Silver on launch of Signals, FiveThirtyEight's data-driven film project — Nate Silver's model shows digital video winning for FiveThirtyEight — Seven months after launching FiveThirtyEight as an standalone site under ESPN, founder Nate Silver is bringing his data-flavored journalism to video.

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Ben Bradlee Could Teach Us All a Thing or Two About Real Disruption — When he died this week at 93 years old, the kudos for and remembrances of former Washington Post editor extraordinaire Ben Bradlee flooded across the Internet in a blast-from-the-past exudation.

Discussion: @delrey, @karaswisher, @markdubya and @dylanbyers

Jonathan Peters / Columbia Journalism Review:

The biggest threat to press rights may be a failure to understand them — Jeff Hermes of the Media Law and Resource Center discusses the legal needs of a new generation of news organizations — It's a cliché to say so, but we're at a moment of transition for American journalism.

Discussion: @cjr