Mediagazer: Salon.com Recognizes Union, Ending Monthlong Standoff With Editorial Staff (Brendan James/International Business …)

2:48 AM ET, August 2, 2015

Top News:

Shan Wang / Nieman Lab:

A look at the Washington Post's Knowledge Map, which provides context within articles, and how it could work in the future — How The Washington Post built — and will be building on — its “Knowledge Map” feature — Say you're reading a long story — one that picks up on a lot …

Discussion: @storyneedle, @swatigauri and Washington Post

Lucy Dalglish / Philip Merrill College of Journalism:

American Journalism Review to cease publication; archives and site to remain available — AMERICAN JOURNALISM REVIEW TO CEASE ONLINE PUBLICATION — COLLEGE PARK, Md. - American Journalism Review will no longer be published by the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

Discussion: Poynter, @sdkstl, @chadsinclair, @dennisedit, @stevebuttry, @sdkstl, @pottsmark, @jbenton, @jbenton, @jbenton, @smussenden, @dangillmor and LA Observed

Brendan James / International Business Times:

Salon.com Recognizes Union, Ending Monthlong Standoff With Editorial Staff — The liberal website Salon.com on Friday recognized its editorial staffers' request to form a union late Friday, ending a monthlong standoff between writers and managers at the 20-year-old publication, International Business Times has learned.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Gawker, Mediaite, @joanwalsh, Writers Guild of America East, @deep_beige and The Daily Caller

David Byrne / New York Times:

Music labels and streaming services need to be more transparent about how they split money — Open the Music Industry's Black Box — THIS should be the greatest time for music in history — more of it is being found, made, distributed and listened to than ever before.

Discussion: @mikeisaac, @pkafka, @pkafka, @felixsalmon, @felixsalmon and hypebot

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

LinkedIn asks its top 500 “Influencers” for blanket permission to syndicate posts, with no money changing hands — LinkedIn Starts Building a Syndicated Content Network — LinkedIn has gotten a lot of mileage out of the free content that famous people like Richard Branson write for the social network.

Discussion: @startupljackson

Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:

Rite Aid and Food Lion to shield Cosmopolitan magazine covers to hide sexual content following “Cosmo Harms Minors” campaign spearheaded by Victoria Hearst — Cosmopolitan Magazine Covers to Be Shielded by 2 Retailers — Is Cosmopolitan so racy it needs to be covered up?

Discussion: WWD, Fashionista, Daily Mail, Hollywood Reporter, The Week, The Huffington Post and Fox Business

Ben Mook / Current:

American Public Media Group lays off 10 in Minnesota, ends Wits radio show, finalizes sale of South Florida stations — American Public Media Group lays off 10 in newsroom, cancels ‘Wits’ — Comedian Patton Oswalt evokes the Karate Kid in a 2013 appearance on Wits. The show announced its cancellation this week.

Discussion: Star Tribune and MinnPost

Bill Carter / Hollywood Reporter:

How Jon Stewart Changed Media (and Made Megyn Kelly Cry) — On Nov. 4, 2008, the night Barack Obama was elected president, I was sitting with the audience of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart in its studio on the west side of Manhattan. No one would have been gobsmacked by the rooting interests …

Nicole Frankenhauser / WAN-IFRA:

How the BBC is using WhatsApp to boost engagement — “We very much started from a completely blank page because there weren't any other news organisations doing this stuff at the time. We didn't have anything to compare ourselves against or to see what was working elsewhere or not working …

Jennifer Palmieri / Hillary for America:

Clinton campaign writes New York Times Executive Editor Dean Banquet, slamming the rush to publish and the delay in correcting its story on emails — Letter to the New York Times' Dean Baquet — Dear Mr. Baquet: — I am writing to officially register our campaign's grave concern …

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Samsung Invests $2 Million in User-Video Aggregator Jukin Media — Jukin Media, which has built a business based on user-generated video with more than 1 billion monthly views on YouTube and other platforms, has raised $2 million in funding from consumer-electronics giant Samsung.

Discussion: VideoInk

Janko Roettgers / Variety:

How Al Jazeera's AJ+ Became One Of The Biggest Video Publishers on Facebook — Al Jazeera isn't exactly the media brand that comes to mind as a top choice for today's news junkies. And yet, a year after its launch, Al Jazeera's AJ+ offshoot has emerged as a huge success story, thanks largely to Facebook video.

Discussion: @etharkamal, @tomgara, @tarek, @franifio, @malsaafin and Poynter

Kate Connolly / Guardian:

Germany halts treason inquiry into journalists after protests — ‘For the good of media freedom’, Germany's prosecutor general suspends investigation into reporters who said state planned to boost surveillance — A treason investigation into two journalists who reported that the German state planned …

Discussion: The Intercept

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:
Germany is investigating two journalists at Netzpolitik tech and politics site for treason after they published secret spy documents