Mediagazer: Ailing U.N. News Service Gets $25 Million (Nick Cumming-Bruce/New York Times)

4:15 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: Latest News & Headlines, 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, @gcraig1, @chuckcjohnson, @davebaldwinjax, @chuckcjohnson, @timobrien, @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: Western Journalism, St. Louis Public Radio, @wesleylowery, @wesleylowery, @wesleylowery, @daveweigel, @daveweigel and @daveweigel

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, @jasonwsj, New York Times, The Wrap, AdAge and Talking Biz News

David Carr / New York Times:
What the forces of disruption look like inside NYT, where another buyout deadline is approaching

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

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: AdAge, USA Today and LinkedIn Pulse

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

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

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 …

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

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

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: AOL Corp, VentureBeat, Mashable, TechCrunch and Variety

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: @digitalshields and @tessag_tweets, Thanks:@steverubel

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

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 …