Mediagazer: UK politics site Guido Fawkes launches environment, tech, and media channels in new redesign (Guardian)

7:55 AM ET, February 12, 2015

Top News:

Longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon, 73, dies in car crash in New York City — CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, 1941-2015 — NEW YORK — Bob Simon, the longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent and legendary CBS News foreign reporter died suddenly tonight in a car accident in New York City.

David Uberti / Columbia Journalism Review:

Jon Stewart served as an irreverent media critic for a generation turned off by broadcast news — Why the media will miss Jon Stewart — The fake newsman gave viewers what many legacy outlets could not — I was a sophomore at Northwestern University in 2010 when The Daily Show's Jon Stewart …

Discussion: Washington Post, USA Today, Mediaite, Slate, @cjr, @daviduberti, Media & Entertainment, WGBH News, The Huffington Post, New Yorker, Rolling Stone and Bloomberg Business

David Carr / New York Times:
Jon Stewart and Brian Williams were both kings of their crafts, with similar backgrounds and divergent futures

Discussion: @nytimesbusiness, Washington Post, @nomadicnyer and @dangillmor

Peter Kafka / Re/code:
Jon Stewart Helped TV Learn to Love the Internet (Because It Didn't Have Any Choice)

Discussion: Mashable, @tcarmody, @pkafka, Mediaite, The New York Observer, Associated Press, The Wrap, Guardian, The Huffington Post and CNNMoney

Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab:

Insider view of Jeff Bezos' involvement in product development for the Washington Post's Kindle Fire app — How involved has Jeff Bezos been at The Washington Post? Here's one data point — One question that's been asked a lot since Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post is how involved he is in the newspaper's evolution.

Discussion: @josephjames and Fast Company

Emily Steel / New York Times:

Behind NBC's decision to suspend TV anchor Brian Williams, after an internal probe into his tales of facing danger in Iraq and New Orleans — Frantic Efforts at NBC to Curb Rising Damage Caused by Brian Williams — Hours before Brian Williams took the anchor's chair for the nightly newscast on Feb. 4 …

Discussion: Washington Post, CNNMoney, TVNewser, Salon, Inside Cable News, The Buttry Diary, PoliticusUSA, Broadcasting & Cable and The Wrap

Andrew Tyndall / Tyndall Report:
Unlike on cable, network news anchors are dispensable and separable from their shows

Discussion: Guardian, TVNewser, Mediaite, Poynter, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business, New York Times, The Daily Beast, NewsLab, Broadcasting & Cable, Forbes, @mlcalderone, @greenfield64, @tednesi, Variety and Poynter

Melody Kramer / Medium:

64 Ways To Think About a News Homepage — Last September, I went to Chicago for a conference. On the third day of the conference, I slipped away to my friend Max's apartment on a mission. The mission was to gather together a lot of very smart people who don't work in news—and ask them to design a new news homepage.

Discussion: @mattliddy and @amylangfield

Peter Sterne / Capital New York:

Rocco Castoro out as Vice Magazine editor in chief, replaced by Ellis Jones; Alex Miller now global head of content — Vice E.I.C. Rocco Castoro out at Vice — Rocco Castoro is no longer the editor in chief of Vice magazine, he announced during an event at the University of Chicago on Wednesday evening.

Discussion: Guardian, Politico and @nbj914

BBC:

Al Jazeera trial: Egypt court frees journalists on bail — A court in Egypt has ordered the release on bail of two Al Jazeera journalists, at the start of their retrial on the charge of spreading false news to help a terrorist group. — Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were imprisoned …

Discussion: Guardian, Telegraph, Associated Press, ITV, Voice of America, Reuters, Al Jazeera English and Associated Press

Reporters Without Borders:

Freedom of information declined in 2/3 of the 180 countries surveyed for World Press Freedom Index — World Press Freedom Index 2015: decline on all fronts — The Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index ranks the performance of 180 countries according to a range of criteria …

Discussion: Voice of America, Agence France-Presse and DW.DE

Guardian:

UK politics site Guido Fawkes launches environment, tech, and media channels in new redesign — Guido Fawkes website adds environment section in redesign — Political site will also introduce separate technology and media channels - and no longer wants to be known as a ‘blog’

J.K. Trotter / Gawker:

Mic.com's News Director Jared Keller appears to have plagiarized at least 20 passages from at least eight sources in the past several months — Plagiarist of the Day: Mic News Director Jared Keller — Mic.com, the news and opinion website aimed at millennials, has a very millennial problem …

Discussion: Politico, The New York Observer, Talking Points Memo, @gabrielmalor, @nxthompson, @cathyreisenwitz, @existentialfish, @ryanlcooper and Capital New York

John McDuling / Quartz:

Napster still exists, and it has millions of streaming subscribers — Napster was the original online music startup. — For a brief, glorious period in the late 90s and early oughts, the service was being used by many high-school and college students to share and download media files, mainly MP3s.

Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:

YouTube experimenting with personalized radio feature, based on YouTube Mix video playlists — YouTube Radio — YouTube has a feature called YouTube Mix, which automatically creates a playlist with many videos related to the video that's currently playing.

Committee to Protect Journalists:

South Sudan daily Nation Mirror ordered to stop publishing — The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ban on independent newspaper Nation Mirror, which was ordered to stop publishing by National Security Service agents in South Sudan's capital Juba, and calls on authorities to immediately reverse the order.

Discussion: Agence France-Presse