Top News:
Benjamin Mullin / Poynter:
Sasha Frere-Jones to launch entertainment vertical at the LA Times — Sasha Frere-Jones, the former New Yorker music writer who left that magazine for the annotation startup Genius, will be a cultural critic at large for the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper announced Wednesday morning.
Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:
Judge Rejects New “Blurred Lines” Trial, Trims Damages to $5.3 Million — The judge has also ruled that Universal Music and T.I. should be held liable for copyright infringement. — The federal judge overseeing the high-profile lawsuit brought by the Marvin Gaye family against Robin Thicke …
Discussion:
The Wrap, Rolling Stone, The FADER, Associated Press, Variety and Pitchfork
Richard Horgan / FishbowlNY:
Bill Carter, Michael Wolff Join THR Contributing Editor Ranks — With Bill Carter, you get subject matter expertise like this: I interviewed David Letterman for the first time when I was reporting my book The Late Shift in 1993. He was then, and has remained, the most reliably great interview subject I can remember.
Ken Doctor / Capital New York:
Skift nears profitability, is focusing on trends and the future of travel — What are they thinking? Rafat Ali's go long, go deep vertical strategy — There's bootstrap, and there's “bootstrap plus.” Bootstrap plus is what digital media entrepreneur Rafat Ali calls his Skift modus operandi.
Discussion:
@raju
Steve Huffman / Reddit:
New Reddit CEO announces content policy update AMA on July 16, says some subreddits shouldn't exist and Reddit wasn't founded as “a bastion of free speech” — Content Policy update. AMA Thursday, July 16th, 1pm pst. — There has been a lot of discussion lately —on reddit …
Discussion:
Re/code, Gawker, New York Times, USA Today, Engadget, BuzzFeed, bizjournals, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Guardian, @jamesrbuk, The Next Web, @pmarca, @digiphile, VatorNews, Washington Post, @davechensky, Business Insider, Gizmodo, The Verge and Re/code
Press Gazette:
Mirror journalist Lee Harpin arrested at work on suspicion of phone-hacking — Mirror journalist arrested at work on suspicion of phone-hacking — A senior journalist at the Daily Mirror was today arrested on suspicion of phone-hacking. — Press Gazette understands that agenda editor Lee Harpin …
Discussion:
Guardian and @skynewsbreak
Sarah Lawson / Fast Company:
Water Deeply launches to focus on California's drought as a continuation of Lara Setrakian's pop-up news site model; Arctic Deeply to launch in October — News Site Water Deeply Will Tackle The California Drought Crisis — California's record-breaking drought crisis is now in its fourth year.
Discussion:
@waterdeeply, @lara and @kate_day
Justin Lafferty / SocialTimes:
Facebook out-performs Google and YouTube with targeted ads despite plummeting reach — Adobe Q2 Report: Facebook Beats Google/YouTube at Getting You to Click on Ads — The great social video war is on, and Facebook is making up ground on Google with effective, targeted advertising.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, WWD, Forbes, ZDNet, Re/code, Variety and AdExchanger
Steven Morris / Guardian:
Brighton council rapped for attempt to charge £200 recording fee for interview — Council took an uncharacteristically hardline approach when a journalist asked to record an interview with musician Martyn Ware on its beach — It was supposed to be a harmless interview with a pop star …
Discussion:
@al_therrien
Jasper Jackson / Guardian:
Ex-BBC director general Lord Birt says cuts to BBC budget five years ago led to reduction in original UK content, expects new cuts will lead to further decline — Ex-BBC director general accuses government of ‘raiding finances’ — Lord Birt defends corporation's ability to make programmes …
Barry Levine / VentureBeat:
AnyClip lands $21M for targeting movie and TV clips to the right Web page — EXCLUSIVE: — Online ads in video clips can deliver the highest rates online, so the trick for marketers is to get the most traffic by delivering the right video to each viewer.
Discussion:
Haaretz, Tubefilter, Multichannel News, AdExchanger, Variety and The Times of Israel
Shan Wang / Nieman Lab:
Browser policies, boost in Google search rankings, better analytics are slowly pushing news organizations to adopt HTTPS for secure, encrypted connections — S is for “secure”: Why news organizations are ditching (or should ditch) HTTP for HTTPS — Visit the Washington Post homepage …