Mediagazer: Sony Hack Attack: Studio Has Made Progress in Restoring Critical Business Systems, Insider Says (Greg Gilman/The Wrap)

11:25 PM ET, December 1, 2014

Top News:

What the forces of disruption look like inside NYT, where another buyout deadline is approaching — When the Forces of Disruption Hit Home — I've been around long enough to have once marveled at the improbability of the fax machine — that can't be real! — but I like to think of myself as modern.

Discussion: Gigaom, Media & Entertainment, FishbowlNY, @mathewi, Prof Chris Daly's Blog and @raju

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Bill Carter, Veteran New York Times TV Reporter, Taking Buyout — NEW YORK — Bill Carter, who has covered the television industry at The New York Times for more than 25 years and remains one of the best known writers on the industry, is taking a buyout. — Carter told The Huffington Post …

Discussion: TVNewser, Variety, FishbowlNY, The Wrap, AdAge and Talking Biz News

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

New York Times didn't publish police officer Darren Wilson's address; executive editor Dean Baquet outraged at targeting of two reporters — Should The Times Have ‘Left It Out’ — and What, Exactly, Was ‘It’? — When in doubt, leave it out. So goes the old expression about editing a news story.

Discussion: @davebaldwinjax, @amychozick, @timobrien, @gcraig1, @chuckcjohnson, @palafo, @wesleylowery, @chuckcjohnson, @carrasquillo and @bydanielvictor

David Weigel / Bloomberg Politics:
NYT reporters Julie Bosman and Campbell Robertson harassed by Darren Wilson supporters after publishing name of street where he owns home

Discussion: @wesleylowery, @wesleylowery, @wesleylowery, @daveweigel, @daveweigel, @daveweigel and St. Louis Public Radio

Kevin Roose / Fusion:

Documents from hack of Sony Pictures reveal salaries of over 6k employees, including top execs — Hacked documents reveal a Hollywood studio's stunning gender and race gap — Sony Pictures Entertainment, one of the largest film studios in Hollywood, appears to have been the subject of a massive, devastating computer hack.

Discussion: The Wrap, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, TIME, @sharonwaxman, @kevinroose, @toriahouston, @kashhill, @kevinroose, @lexialex, @thrmattbelloni, The Hill, CNNMoney.com, Rolling Stone, FishbowlNY, Inside Movies, Electronista, PC Advisor and Mashable

Greg Gilman / The Wrap:

Sony Hack Attack: Studio Has Made Progress in Restoring Critical Business Systems, Insider Says — Sony Pictures Entertainment is working with law enforcement to combat last week's hack that paralyzed the studio's email, phone system and computers, and slowly making progress to get systems back up.

Discussion: Latest News & Headlines, Gawker, Variety and Variety

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Number of full-time US daily newspaper journalists has plunged to 36,700 from 55,000 pre-2008 — Taking stock of newsroom head counts — During an appearance at New York University in October, New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and deputy executive editor for digital Ian Fisher …

Discussion: WWD, LA Observed and @mathewi

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

AOL Adds More Video Help by Buying Content Syndicator Vidible for Around $50 Million — AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has spent a lot of time building out his video business. Now he is buying Vidible, a startup that's supposed to make it easier for publishers to get their video on other people's websites.

Discussion: Beet.TV, VentureBeat, AOL Corp, Mashable, TechCrunch and Variety

Agence France-Presse:

Vietnam arrests anti-China blogger for posting ‘bad content’ — 20 hrs ago — Vietnamese police said they had arrested a blogger for posting “bad content” about the government, as part of a long-running crackdown on online dissent in the communist country.

Discussion: Reuters, Associated Press and RFA

Nick Cumming-Bruce / New York Times:

Ailing U.N. News Service Gets $25 Million — GENEVA — Media enterprises have not figured on the list of billion-dollar deals backed by the Hong Kong-based investor Jho Low in recent years, but his family's charitable foundation is putting up $25 million to save an ailing United Nations-owned news service …

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

David Carr on the state of media: ‘The consumer is making out really well’ — From media columnist David Carr's perch at The New York Times, it's a good time to be in publishing. In local news, as he pointed out in a recent column, the Texas Tribune is evidence of a thriving site.

Discussion: @tessag_tweets, Thanks:@steverubel

Anjali Shastry / American Journalism Review:

Q&A with Emergent's Craig Silverman on accuracy in journalism and the spread of rumors on the web — Rumors, Lies and the Internet: 7 Questions for Craig Silverman — Craig Silverman, 37, is the founder of Emergent.info, a fact-checking website for consumers.

Bloomberg:

China's Wanda Group Holds Talks to Buy Lions Gate, MGM in Hollywood Push — Dalian Wanda Group Co., which controls the second-biggest U.S. cinema chain, is in talks to acquire a stake in film studio Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., billionaire chairman Wang Jianlin said.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Deadline, The Wrap and Variety

Chris Sutcliffe / TheMediaBriefing:

Despite having similar reach, Vox is valued at less than half of BuzzFeed — Why has Vox Media been valued at less than half of BuzzFeed? — Vox Media's $380 million funding round announced today makes the company theoretically much more valuable than the Washington Post's sale price …

Discussion: Gigaom, The Awl, Mashable and New York Times

Jim Bankoff / LinkedIn Pulse:
Vox Media CEO lists four key areas of focus in “memo” to employees on occasion of $46M round, announces 150M monthly unique visitors across all sites