Mediagazer: Ta-Nehisi Coates defines a new race beat (Chris Ip/Columbia Journalism Review)

6:00 PM ET, October 31, 2014

Top News:

Micah L. Sifry / Mother Jones:

Before 2012 election, Facebook increased hard news stories in 1.9M feeds, which added measurably to civic engagement and voter turnout — Facebook Wants You to Vote on Tuesday. Here's How It Messed With Your Feed in 2012. — The social network tries to promote voting …

Discussion: Politico, The Wrap, Gawker, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, Gigaom, New York Times, Gizmodo, @projomike, The Hill, @laurentmt, TechPresident, @moneyries, @ekansa, @aral, @mathewi, @zeynep, @jayrosen_nyu and @joshuabrustein

Evan Smith / The Texas Tribune:

New York Times-Texas Tribune content partnership to end Dec. 31, after four years — T-Squared: Trib, Times Will End Partnership … This was supposed to be a proud and grateful acknowledgement of the anniversary of our content partnership with The New York Times, which began four years ago today.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, @weberwest, @eramshaw, @jakesilverstein, New York Times, @lexinyt, @evanasmith, Capital New York and Poynter

Tom McCarthy / Guardian:

Matt Taibbi returning to Rolling Stone after split from First Look Media — Journalist who controversially left eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's organisation just days ago will have story in forthcoming Rolling Stone — Matt Taibbi is gathering no moss. The former Rolling Stone journalist …

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Sharyl Attkisson releases video of apparent computer hack — Sharyl Attkisson, the former CBS News correspondent who claims that her computers were hacked by the government while she was reporting on the Benghazi scandal, has released a video she took with her cellphone of one apparent hack.

Discussion: Mediaite, Washington Post, Talking Points Memo, @yurivictor and @jayrosen_nyu

Chris Johnston / Guardian:

BBC now has more staff outside London than in the capital — Corporation has hits target set in 2004, with 8,169 based in capital after relocation of more than 2,000 posts to Salford — The BBC now has more staff outside London than in the capital for the first time following the relocation …

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

How one-time dot-com darling iVillage fell to Earth — Today quietly marks the end of an era in online publishing, when the four remaining employees of iVillage fill out their last time sheet there. — Born in 1995, at the dawn of the dot-com boom, iVillage was synonymous with the frothiness of the new online economy.

Rafat Ali:

It's About To Get Ugly in Media Startupland — As I look out to 2015, so much froth in the media-tech market, and it is still all on the up, mostly Newton's law, but the cracks are beginning to show in medialand, and it will likely get ugly. The big-funded sub-standard media startups & brand …

Discussion: Politico, @nolanrosenkrans, @kantrowitz, @dwayneroper, @rafat, @kevglobal, @anildash, @jen_mcfadden, @chrisseper and @dangillmor

Gawker:
What Are The Odds These New Media Brands Will Survive? A Power Ranking

Discussion: @brianbeutler, @joshuafoust, @kavithadavidson, @nitashatiku, @ejpfauth, @joepompeo, @franciediep, @charlottelytton, @anildash, @palafo, @max_read, @mathewi, @om, @newsmary, @ravisomaiya, @majorcbs, @rafat, @zachprague, @edbott, @versharma and @fmanjoo

Chris Ip / Columbia Journalism Review:

Ta-Nehisi Coates defines a new race beat — The Atlantic writer looks to the past to confront contemporary racism — He is the most celebrated journalist writing about race today, and yet Ta-Nehisi Coates' ideas are surprisingly unoriginal. He would be the first to say so.

Discussion: @pottytheron, @lebaronsims, @nikhilgoya_l and @yaraki

FUSION:

Fusion Staffs Up Silicon Valley Bureau with Several New Hires — New York Magazine's Kevin Roose & Forbes' Kashmir Hill Among Those Joining Fusion Team Based in Bay Area — Fusion today announced several key hires for its new Silicon Valley bureau including Forbes' Kashmir Hill and New York magazine's Kevin Roose.

Discussion: @alexismadrigal, @caradefabio, @kashhill, @annaholmes, @kashhill and @jayrosen_nyu

Robert Channick / Chicago Tribune:

Tribune Publishing completes purchase of Sun-Times suburban properties — Tribune Publishing, parent of the Chicago Tribune, has closed a deal to acquire all of the Sun-Times Media suburban properties from Wrapports. — The agreement, confirmed Friday, brings six daily and 32 weekly suburban newspapers …

Discussion: Poynter, Chicago Sun Times, investor.tribpub.com, @niemanlab and @gerrykern

Ruth Reader / VentureBeat:

You can now connect to Facebook despite Internet censorship via new Tor link — In an early morning blog post, no doubt targeted at overseas users, Facebook said it is experimenting with providing direct access to it social network over the Tor network. — Tor is a secure network …

Discussion: The Next Web, Computerworld, Guardian, ReadWrite, Gizmodo UK, Mashable, The Verge, PandoDaily, Engadget and Gigaom

Caitlin Dewey / Washington Post:

Pianist asks The Washington Post to remove a concert review under the E.U.'s ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling — The pianist Dejan Lazic, like many artists and performers, is occasionally the subject of bad reviews. Also like other artists, he reads those reviews. And disagrees with them.

Discussion: @alisternburg and @mschruers

Tim Carmody / Nieman Lab:

From rumor to out: Tim Cook reminds us that “unpublishable” facts don't live in a vacuum online — Apple CEO Tim Cook's public acknowledgment that he's gay is a welcome moment for dozens of reasons. Cook becomes the first out CEO of a Fortune 500 company, at the most successful company in the world …

Discussion: Digiday, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, @tcarmody, @tcarmody and Here & Now

Jack Shafer:

Our appetite for fake Ebola stories and other bunk — As if the genuine horrors of Ebola weren't enough, a website called the National Report has taken to ginning up hoax “reports” about the disease. Over the past month, the site has published at least seven fake stories about Ebola …

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

On Obama's Asia trip, members of media will have to pay $60,000 each for flights — President Obama's trip to Asia next month should prove to be reasonably newsworthy, given its regional summit meetings in China and Burma and a stopover in Australia. For the news media, however …

Discussion: @mlcalderone, @phil_rosenthal, @chicoharlan, @byrontau, @djrothkopf and The Huffington Post

Brooks Barnes / New York Times:

Peter Chernin: A Solo Success in Hollywood, Where Many Fizzle — SANTA MONICA, Calif. — When Peter Chernin stepped down as Rupert Murdoch's second in command in 2009 and became an independent movie and television producer, the likeliest outcome was a long, painful fizzle.

Discussion: @bcswift

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:

New “orphan works” rule in UK makes millions of creative works available for public display — The UK government is trying a new approach to the orphan works problem that it says will make more than 91 million painting and books available to the public. — One of the most nagging problems …

Discussion: The Independent, GOV.UK departments and policy and The IPKat

John Falcone / CNET:

Roku adds Google Play Movies and TV in UK, Canada, Ireland, US; “coming soon” to Roku TVs — Roku adds Google Play channel — The Google video service becomes the latest addition to the Roku streaming box. — Add Google Play to Roku's long list of video channels.

Discussion: The Official Roku Blog, Multichannel News, PCMag UK and The Next Web