Mediagazer: Behind First Look Media's inception, star hires, staff turmoil, and uncertain future (Sarah Ellison/Vanity Fair)

2:35 PM ET, December 3, 2014

Top News:

Sarah Ellison / Vanity Fair:

Behind First Look Media's inception, star hires, staff turmoil, and uncertain future — Can First Look Media Make Headlines That Aren't About Itself? — When a crusading but conflict-averse billionaire bankrolls several of journalism's most prominent mavericks to create …

Marlow Stern / The Daily Beast:
Q&A with Laura Poitras on privacy, Snowden documents, and startup hurdles at First Look Media

Discussion: @glinner and @glynmoody

Megan Geuss / Ars Technica:

NYC public libraries will offer 10,000 portable WiFi hotspots for checkout to eligible patrons — New York Public Library will rent Wi-Fi hotspots to people who need it most — Sprint Wi-Fi hotspots will be funded partly by a $1 million donation from Google.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Crain's New York Business, CNET, WNYC News, International Business Times, AM New York, DNAinfo New York, Capital New York, Fast Company, Gothamist, Neowin, 9to5Google, bizjournals, @corvida, 7online.com and LJ INFOdocket

Frank Pallotta / CNNMoney.com:

As new viewing options gain ground, live television viewership is slipping — Americans continue to watch most of their TV shows the old-fashioned way, but new Nielsen data proves that the old-fashioned way is fading. — According to a Nielsen trends report released on Wednesday …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, TIME, Capital New York, Home Media Magazine, Broadcasting & Cable, Yahoo! News, Associated Press, USA Today, Reuters, The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Variety, Deadline, Wall Street Journal, FierceOnlineVideo News and TV Media Insights

Mike Fleming / Deadline:

In memo to staff, Sony execs Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal confirm confidential data was stolen — Sony's Michael Lynton & Amy Pascal On Hacking: “Malicious Criminal Acts” — EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures has been largely quiet as it has dealt with a massive pre-Thanksgiving cyberattack …

Discussion: Business Insider, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Vulture, The Wrap and Los Angeles Times

Kevin Roose / Fusion:
More from the Sony Pictures hack: budgets, layoffs, HR scripts, and 3,800 social security numbers

Discussion: Business Insider, Re/code, BuzzFeed, BBC, Forbes, PandoDaily, Techdirt, Talking Biz News, TorrentFreak, Neowin, @kevinroose, Variety, Businessweek, Mediaite, The Wrap, Engadget, The Wrap, Business Insider, Mashable, @robhale77, TIME, @pencilsareneat, @kashhill, @fredbenenson and @kevinroose

Abigail Edge / Journalism.co.uk:

Ophan: Key metrics informing editorial at the Guardian — The outlet's in-house analytics platform, designed to promote the ‘democratisation of data’, recently launched new features including a bigger focus on attention time — Credit: Michael Bruntonspall on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Discussion: metamedia

Chris Ip / Columbia Journalism Review:

New narrative journalism startups, like Latterly Magazine, launch as quickly as others fail in a crowded marketplace — New narrative journalism startups, like Latterly Magazine, launch as quickly as others fail in a crowded marketplace — Jill Abramson and Steven Brill's upcoming longform outfit …

Discussion: Medium and @sulliview

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Demand Founder Raises $20M at a $100M Valuation for Legal TV-Clipping Startup Whipclip — Longtime Los Angeles entrepreneur Richard Rosenblatt is launching a startup called Whipclip in private beta today, striking a series of deals with big media companies and attracting a roster of entertainment …

Discussion: @demandrichard and @gsrubenstein

Karl Bode / DSLreports:

Verizon's Tech News Website Sugarstring Quietly Dies — Verizon's experiment in technology blogging appears to be over. At the tail end of October news broke that Verizon would be entering the blogging business via a new website dubbed SugarString. The effort appeared to be Verizon's attempt …

Discussion: The Verge, Gizmodo, New York Times, @taylorlorenz, PandoDaily, @caseynewton, Engadget, Talking Biz News, @paulwallbank, @karlbode and @mmasnick

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Vimeo Revamps Its Mobile Website, Adds Features For Logged Out Users — Video service Vimeo is out this morning with a faster, revamped mobile website that reduces clutter, improves performance and lets users interact with the service while logged out. On the updated site …

Discussion: The Next Web, Ubergizmo, WebProNews, SlashGear, Tubefilter and VentureBeat

Jason Abbruzzese / Mashable:

Live from everywhere: ABC News journalists will stream video to your screen — ABC News is giving its journalists the ability to live stream video to viewers, embracing a popular tool among citizen journalists. — The project, called GoStream, will allow any of ABC's field journalists …

Discussion: TVNewser, ABC News and Variety

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Twitter tries to stem its abuse problem with new reporting tools — For some time, Twitter has been criticized for having an abuse and harassment reporting process that many victims say is too cumbersome and time-consuming to be useful. On Tuesday, the company announced that it is rolling out a new …

Discussion: The Twitter Blog, ClickZ, Boing Boing, KXAN-TV, CNN and @mathewi

Jean Lee / The Daily Californian:

Regents approve $7,500 supplementary fee for UC Berkeley journalism school — At their Nov. 20 meeting, the UC Board of Regents approved the implementation of an annual supplemental fee of $7,500 on top of the current UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism basic tuition.

Wendy Davis / MediaPost:

Federal judge finds ESPN's transmission of Roku serial number to Adobe doesn't violate the Video Privacy Protection Act — ESPN Defeats Video Privacy Case — A federal judge in Seattle has dismissed a potential class-action lawsuit accusing ESPN of violating a federal video privacy law …