Mediagazer: China's Wanda Group Holds Talks to Buy Lions Gate, MGM in Hollywood Push (Bloomberg)

8:35 AM ET, December 2, 2014

Top News:

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.

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

Discussion: Gawker and Variety

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

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: St. Louis Public Radio, @wesleylowery, Western Journalism, @wesleylowery, @wesleylowery, @daveweigel, @daveweigel and @daveweigel

Brian Stelter / CNNMoney:

How Vox Media expects to turn a profit — and justify a $380 million valuation — $380 million: That's the value of digital media startup Vox Media following its latest big cash infusion. — It's a stunning number — stunning just like the August investment that valued BuzzFeed at $850 million.

Discussion: USA Today, LinkedIn Pulse and Re/code

Chris Sutcliffe / TheMediaBriefing:
Despite having similar reach, Vox is valued at less than half of BuzzFeed

Discussion: Gigaom, @rafat, FishbowlNY, FishbowlDC, Mashable, TechCrunch, The Awl and New York Times

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Lab:

Business reporters flock to Ello for a more intimate crowd, easy blogging, room for images — Finance media's hottest club is Ello — By now, you've probably heard of Ello, the anti-Facebook social networking site founded by a handful of graphic designers.

Discussion: Bloomberg View, @matt_parsons, @perlberg, @stevekovach, @mattzeitlin, @meghanemorris, @jyarow and @niemanlab

John Bohannon / Science:

Nature, 48 other journals in group will use ReadCube software to let subscribers share screen-only versions of papers for free — Nature publisher hopes to end ‘dark sharing’ by making read-only papers free — The publisher of the prestigious Nature family of scientific journals today unveiled …

Discussion: Nature, Chronicle of Higher Education, Techworld.com, CNET, Vox, Good E-Reader, @digiphile, @rickypo, Scientific American …, @surt_lab, @thewinnower, @richvn, @joe_pickrell and @louwoodley

Jeremy Barr / Capital New York:

Vice Media and Knight Foundation create $500k training fund at CUNY's Tow-Knight Center — Vice, Knight Foundation create ‘innovators’ fund at CUNY — Vice Media, Knight Foundation and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism announced plans Monday evening for a $500,000 journalism innovation fund …

Discussion: Poynter

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: C21Media, Los Angeles Times, Deadline, The Wrap and Variety

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

To Gain the Upper Hand, Amazon Disrupts Itself — Sometime last summer, a quarter-billion dollars went missing at Amazon. — Analysts were expecting the usual gangbusters third quarter. But it was about $250 million short of forecasts. — Here is one way to look at the disappointing results …

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

Penguin Hatches A Cloud Reader For Pelican Books — It likely hasn't passed you by that traditional book publishers aren't having the best of times these days. Indeed, when it comes to reading you could say it is the best of times and the worst of times. (TC's Jon Evans …

Discussion: Good E-Reader

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: Associated Press, RFA and Reuters

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.

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 …

Discussion: @celiadugger