Mediagazer: Buyer interested in Advocate, which now sells about 22,000 copies a day in New Orleans (Andrew Beaujon/Poynter)

12:35 PM ET, January 28, 2013

Top News:

Christine Haughney / New York Times:

The New Republic Reimagines Its Future — WASHINGTON — There are not many firsts for a politically savvy, 98-year-old publication like The New Republic. But Franklin Foer, its 38-year-old editor, experienced one recently when he passed a Hudson News store at Union Station here and saw …

Discussion: Poynter, Capital New York and Adweek

Chris Hughes / The New Republic:

Welcome to Our Redesign - A letter from The New Republic's publisher and editor-in-chief — This is the age of endless facts. Every question is now seemingly answerable; just swipe your finger over the device in your pocket. Want to know every important opinion about the question of the moment?

Discussion: AllThingsD

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Reading the new New Republic — Last week, I attended a panel in New York City on “the unexpected future of media” hosted by The New Republic. Chris Hughes, the 29-year-old owner, publisher, and editor-in-chief of the magazine, said a few introductory words.

Discussion: @morning_joe and Daily Download

Dan Kennedy / Media Nation:
TNR's new owner crosses a line with Obama interview

Discussion: Mother Jones, The Daily Caller and Forbes

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

B&N Aims To Whittle Its Stores For Years — Barnes & Noble Inc. expects to close as many as a third of its retail stores over the next decade, the bookseller's top store executive said, offering the most detailed picture yet of the company's plans for the outlets.

Discussion: Gawker, paidContent, PublishersWeekly.com, Fast Company, TechCrunch, CNET, InvestorPlace, The Consumerist, The Loop and Bookseller news

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Buyer interested in Advocate, which now sells about 22,000 copies a day in New Orleans — A private buyer is interested in buying the Baton Rouge paper, Timothy Boone reports. Circulation at The Advocate is up since the seven-day-a-week paper made a play for readers of the New Orleans Times-Picayune …

Christine Haughney / Media Decoder:

Newspapers Vie for Reality Show — Who knew that ink-stained newsmen and newswomen would be so eager to break into show business? — In the 10 days after NBC put out a casting call for small-town newspapers to participate in a reality television show, the network received more than 150 responses from newspapers across the nation.

Discussion: Poynter, College Media Matters and Pressing Issues

Stephen Cohen / Poynter:

Inside Advance's Post-Standard newspaper as it transforms this week to digital first — There's a small statue of a paperboy inside Stephen A. Rogers' plush corner office overlooking Clinton Square in downtown Syracuse. In his right hand, the paperboy holds a colorful miniature newspaper …

Yeganeh Torbati / Reuters:

Iran cracks down on media before election — (Reuters) - Iranian authorities have arrested more than a dozen journalists in the past two days over their links to “anti-revolutionary” media, Iranian media reported, in what appeared to be a coordinated crackdown on the press.

Discussion: Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNN and Alarabiya.net English

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Gina Chon, WSJ reporter who resigned after McGurk affair, lands at Quartz — Gina Chon, the Wall Street Journal reporter who resigned after details emerged of her intimate relationship with former-NSC staffer Brett McGurk, has landed a job as corporate reporter at Quartz, the Atlantic's global business news site.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Talking Biz News

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

HuffPo's new ‘Conversations’ will improve comments — and make money for AOL — I'm not a regular reader of the Huffington Post but when I go there, I'm astounded how many people leave comments on a given story. Last week, for instance, more than 20,000 readers offered their two cents …

Discussion: mediabistro.com and Kirk LaPointe's …

Nathan Ingraham / The Verge:

Hardcore porn briefly climbs to the top of Vine's 'Editor's Picks,' Twitter blames it on ‘human error’ — The launch of Twitter's video-sharing service Vine has brought with it another look at pornography on Apple's tightly-controlled iOS platform, and that scrutiny may be about to increase …

Discussion: CNET, Forbes, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Gawker, ZDNet and PandoDaily

William Wan / Washington Post:

Police visit Chinese blogger who exposed sex scandal — BEIJING — Two months after exposing a scandal involving sex tapes, blackmail and lucrative government contracts, which resulted in 11 officials losing their jobs, blogger Zhu Ruifeng received a surprise visit from Chinese security officials Sunday night.

Discussion: Reuters and Shanghaiist