Political journalism shakeups precede midterms

Good morning. The weekend is in sight. Here are 10 media stories.

1. Political journalism shakeups: Bloomberg canceled Al Hunt‘s “Political Capital” and laid off staff. The move reflects a shift away from Washington and toward New York in the company’s political coverage, Dylan Byers writes. (Politico) | CNN eliminated positions in its digital politics team and told staffers “they would have to re-apply to new positions with new job descriptions,” Peter Sterne reports. (Capital) | The plan is to replace “commoditized,” “wire-like” coverage, CNN veep Ed O’Keefe tells Erik Wemple. (The Washington Post)
2. The New York Times shifts on “torture”: “[F]rom now on, The Times will use the word “torture” to describe incidents in which we know for sure that interrogators inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information,” Executive Editor Dean Baquet writes. (NYT) | “File this one in the ‘about time’ folder.” (The Washington Post) | From 2012: The Times “tied itself in linguistic knots during the Bush years to avoid describing waterboarding as torture.” (HuffPost) || Sort of related: How the Times’ story yesterday on airstrikes in Iraq changed. (NewsDiffs)
3. Just auditing: The FBI has abandoned a solicitation for a contractor to grade news stories about the agency. (The Washington Times) | Earlier this week Jim McElhatton reported the agency’s solicitation told “potential bidders to ‘use their judgment’ in scoring news coverage as part of a new ‘daily news briefing’ service.” (The Washington Times)
4. Ashton Kutcher-funded media venture copied stories: Aplus.com deleted “every post published to the site before July” after The Daily Dot inquired about stories copied “from BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, Cracked, Matador Network, and elsewhere—all seemingly without the authors’ permissions and with little in the way of source credits.” (The Daily Dot) | “Hey that’s *my* list of things I found on Reddit!” (@pkafka) | Flashback: BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said he “considers a BuzzFeed list — its sequencing, framing, etc — to be a transformative use of photos.” (The Atlantic)
5. Economist gets blocked in Thailand: After this story publishes. (@TheEconomist) | Related: How the BBC is using Facebook to get around Thai censorship. (BBC) | “It’s similar to the approach we’ve taken with BBC Turkish which is now a ‘social first’ service, but Thai is the first to be launched exclusively on social media,” a BBC spox told Kristen Hare last month. (Poynter)
6. Wrong number leads to story: Reporter David Andreatta phoned retired can company employee Joe Bulman by mistake, looking for New York State Assembly Majority Leader Joe Morelle. This happens all the time, Bulman says: Their numbers are one digit off. (Democrat & Chronicle, via FishbowlNY)
7. Maybe just don’t Photoshop heads on bodies? The Sydney Daily Telegraph apologized after it put the head of a rival paper’s former journalist on top of the body of a Boston Marathon bombing victim. It was an “inadvertent but regrettable mistake for which The Daily Telegraph apologises unreservedly.” (BuzzFeed)
8. Aug. 8 is Journalists Day in Iran: President Hassan Rouhani spoke about the day, but “did not address or even make indirect references to the fate of imprisoned journalists such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian or the dozens of other Iranian journalists currently in jail.” (Al-Monitor)
9. ESPN suspends Dan Le Batard for two days: Billboards he placed in Cleveland mocking LeBron James do “not reflect ESPN’s standards and brand.” (Deadspin)
10. Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin: Mesfin Fekadu has been named music editor for the Associated Press. Formerly, he was a music writer there. (AP) | Rich Walsh will be sports anchor at KDKA in Pittsburgh. Formerly, he was a sports reporter at WPXI in Pittsburgh. (TVSpy) | Peter Yates will be executive creative director of international branding for Hearst Magazines International. Formerly, he was creative director there. (minonline.com) | Job of the day: KMPH in Fresno is looking for a news producer. Get your résumés in! (Journalism Jobs) | Send Ben your job moves: bmullin@poynter.org.

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