Top News:
Peter Sterne / Politico:
As Gawker traffic stalls, writers told to work faster — “Traffic is flat,” Gawker Media's acting executive editor John Cook wrote in a memo to staff on Wednesday. “In prior iterations of this organization, that fact would have served as evidence of an abject editorial failure.”
Discussion:
The Wrap, Digiday, FishbowlNY, @mccarthyryanj, @cbmatthews and @digiday
Committee to Protect Journalists:
Somalia, Iraq, and Syria top CPJ's list of places where journalists are killed with impunity — Getting Away With Murder — CPJ's 2015 Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and the killers go free The ambush of a convoy in South Sudan and the hacking deaths …
Discussion:
Al Bawaba, InterAksyon.com, ColomboPage.com, The Daily Star, RAPPLER and Poynter
Mother Jones:
How Mother Jones won a defamation lawsuit filed by GOP super PAC donor Frank VanderSloot and his company, Melaleuca Inc. — We Were Sued By A Billionaire Political Donor. We Won. Here's What Happened. — Today we are happy to announce a monumental legal victory for Mother Jones …
Discussion:
@davidcorndc, Boing Boing, @felixsalmon, @swin24, Idaho Statesman, @celesteheadlee, Idaho State Journal, LGBTQ Nation, @freedomofpress, bookforum.com, @daveweigel, News, Boise Weekly, @siddharma, Spokesman.com, Mother Jones, @occupywallstnyc, @ggreenwald, @clarajeffery, @h_lev, @smencimer, @davidcorndc, @monikabauerlein, @jeffclement, @radleybalko, @fredbenenson, @clarajeffery, @swin24, @roseveleth, @smencimer, @monikabauerlein and The Legal Satyricon
Oliver Wright / The Independent:
FoI: Commission reviewing what public has right to know bans journalists from fully reporting its first briefing — The Kafkaesque briefing comes from a body which the Government claims is impartial and cross party — A controversial commission set up to review what the public has a right …
Discussion:
Press Gazette, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Channel 4 News, @oliver_wright, @independent and @marklittlenews
Barton Gellman / The Century Foundation:
Purdue University deletes video of keynote speech about national security journalism because it included classified documents related to Snowden leaks — Scholarship, Security, and ‘Spillage’ on Campus — This is an adventure in classified speech at an academic conference.
Wall Street Journal:
Yahoo Bans Employees from Paid Fantasy-Sports Sites — Fantasy-site purveyors have faced scrutiny over how much internal data employees can access — Yahoo Inc. is banning employees from playing in paid fantasy-sports contests, following similar moves by the two biggest daily fantasy-sports sites in the U.S.
Yuras Karmanau / Associated Press:
Journalists working in Belarus for Poland's Belsat TV and other independent news orgs face pressure as government tightens control ahead of Sunday's election — Belarus independent journalists targeted ahead of election — MINSK, Belarus (AP) — A secret apartment in an old Minsk building …
Discussion:
Guardian and Index on Censorship
Gabriel Arana / The Huffington Post:
The New York Times Looks Abroad To Meet Ambitious Expansion Plans — “Our goal is to have audience that is robust and deeply engaged.”
Sarah Jeong / Motherboard:
Inside the Matthew Keys case and why the government charged him under hacking laws — Why the Government Went After Matthew Keys — On October 4, 2012, two FBI agents visited the home of Matthew Keys, aged 25, in Secaucus, New Jersey. At the time, he was the deputy social media editor for Reuters.
Discussion:
@adrjeffries, Hit & Run, U.S. Department of Justice, International Business Times, Techdirt and Forbes
Rick Edmonds / Poynter:
What Gannett gets by getting bigger and why newspaper consolidation will continue — For three different reasons, Gannett's surprise acquisition Wednesday of Journal Media (the former Scripps papers and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) makes a lot of sense: — In the era of digital transformation, bigger is better.
Discussion:
New York Times and Florida Today
Brendan James / International Business Times:
Some digital journalists are embracing unions, but not the terms of old newspaper contracts — Unions Wage Turf Battle For Millennial Newsrooms, But What Will A New Labor Look Like? — For all the think pieces written about disruption in new media, not one “thought leader” …
Discussion:
The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, The Nation, Poynter and The Wrap
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix raises price of most popular plan to $10 a month in US, Canada, and Latin America for new customers, existing customers see no increase for 12 months — Netflix Hikes Price of Standard Streaming Plan to $10 per Month — Increase for new subscribers in U.S., Canada and Latin America follows 10% price rise in Europe
Discussion:
Forbes, Bloomberg Business, FierceCable, TechCrunch, Engadget, Mashable, Tech Times, Consumerist, moviepilot.com, Re/code, The Wrap, VentureBeat and TIME