Top News:
J.K. Trotter / Gawker:
Internal documents: BuzzFeed had $46M revenue, $2.7M net profit, and spent $5.8M to boost traffic in the first half of 2014 — Internal Documents Show BuzzFeed's Skyrocketing Investment in Editorial — Late last month, Recode reported that NBCUniversal is preparing to invest $250 million in BuzzFeed …
Discussion:
@edmundlee, @jledbetter, @fmanjoo, @jyarow, @fmanjoo, @fmanjoo, @pkafka, @mims, @adamweinstein, @thestalwart, @gaberivera and @abeaujon
New York Times:
The Defense Department labels combat journalists “unprivileged belligerents” makes their work more dangerous and subject to censorship — The Pentagon's Dangerous Views on the Wartime Press — The Defense Department earlier this summer released a comprehensive manual outlining its interpretation of the law of war.
Henry Mance / Financial Times:
Pearson sells 50% stake in Economist Group for £469M; Exor becomes largest single shareholder with 43% stake — Pearson sells 50% stake in Economist Group for £469m — Pearson has agreed to sell its 50 per cent stake in the publisher of the Economist magazine for £469m in cash …
Discussion:
Economist, Economist Group, Guardian, Press Gazette, Globe and Mail, BBC, Bloomberg Business, Reuters, Associated Press, The Irish Times, New York Times, International Business Times, Agence France-Presse, Sky News, International Business Times, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, City A.M., Hollywood Reporter, Telegraph, Variety and Independent.ie
Ryan Faughnder / Los Angeles Times:
Rdio to add 460 AM/FM stations owned and operated by Cumulus Media to its service Wednesday amid increasing competition — Rdio cues up traditional radio stations, hoping to get an edge on competition — The increasingly crowded streaming music industry is starting to look a little more like old-fashioned radio.
Peter Sterne / Politico:
Invite-only link-sharing service This. raises $610K after spinning off from Atlantic Media — Now spun off from Atlantic Media, ‘This.’ raises $610,000 — Link-sharing service “This.” announced Tuesday that it has raised $610,000 in seed funding from a handful of angel investors …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Nieman Lab, @petersterne, Fortune and Medium
Society of Professional Journalists:
More than 50 journalism groups again urge President Obama to stop excessive controls on public information — INDIANAPOLIS - Fifty-three journalism and open government groups today called on President Barack Obama - yet again - to stop practices in federal agencies that prevent important information from getting to the public.
Discussion:
The Daily Caller, The Rural Blog and The Newspaper Guild
Derrik J. Lang / Associated Press:
Activist news organization Ryot releases virtual reality short film from within Aleppo town center in Syria — With virtual reality, a 360-degree view inside Syria — 3 photos — LOS ANGELES (AP) — The latest frontier in virtual reality could be closer to reality than fantasy.
Discussion:
@apentertainment, @ryotnews and RYOT News
Rob Price / Business Insider:
UK police report 73% decrease in top ad spending on piracy sites — Most big piracy sites don't charge their users a fee, but are still able to profit off of copyright infringement. Why? Because the operators plaster their pages in advertising. — But British police now say they are …
Discussion:
Music Week, Music Business Worldwide and Guardian
Joe Pompeo / Politico:
Tribune Publishing doing ‘top to bottom’ digital review — Tribune Publishing has initiated a “top to bottom” review of its digital business as it continues to struggle with revenue declines one year after it was spun off into its own publicly traded company.
Discussion:
Chicago Tribune, bizjournals, Business Wire, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Hollywood Reporter
Marco Arment / Marco.org:
The profusion of privacy-violating web trackers invalidates the already-shaky theory that ad-blocking violates an implied contract — The ethics of modern web ad-blocking — More than fifteen years ago, in response to decreasing ad rates and banner blindness, web advertisers and publishers adopted pop-up ads.
Discussion:
Columbia Journalism Review, @om, @choire, @mattbuchanan, @abrams, Washington Post, @choire, @neilmajor, @bbhlabs, @beep, @mclendaniel, @bdebow, @felixsalmon, @thestalwart and Daring Fireball
Paul Mason / Guardian:
Digital devices have shortened readers attention spans, increased skim-reading, and authors are now struggling to create immersive content — Ebooks are changing the way we read, and the way novelists write — Our attention spans have shortened, we're distracted, and authors have changed …
Discussion:
Telegraph, @nicolalitagent and The Awl
Bryan Logan / Business Insider:
Tinder just lost its mind on Twitter over a Vanity Fair story — Tinder is not happy with Vanity Fair. — The tech company's PR just went on a 30+ tweet tweetstorm lambasting the magazine for a recent feature story in the September issue of Vanity Fair. — The article, titled …
Discussion:
Adweek, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, BuzzFeed, TechCrunch, Digiday, Vox, Vox, Forbes, Wired, The Huffington Post, FishbowlNY, VentureBeat, Telegraph, The Verge, New York Times, Sky News, Guardian, Sky News, NBC News, The Independent, The Inquisitr News and Re/code