Good morning. Here are 10 media stories. (And from Sam Kirkland: Your digital stories for the day.)
- Rebekah Brooks walks, Andy Coulson guilty in phone hacking trial: Brooks was the chief executive officer of News International before the phone-hacking scandal. Coulson was editor of News of the World. Coulson was found guilty of one count and the jury’s still out on other counts. (Guardian live blog)
- Jeff Bezos’ real plan for The Washington Post: “He hopes, according to reporters and editors at the paper with whom I have spoken, to develop a worldwide digital newspaper suitable for e-readers like the Kindle—a digital newspaper that might ultimately thrive on subscription revenue,” Steve Coll writes. (The New York Review of Books)
- U.K. journalists support jailed Al Jazeera journalists: “On Tuesday morning journalists from the BBC and other London media organisations gathered outside the corporation’s New Broadcasting House headquarters, while staff did the same in Salford, other UK offices and overseas bureaux.” (The Guardian) || “Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi says he will not interfere with judicial verdicts.” (VOA)
Journalists in London protest against sentencing of al-Jazeera staff in Egypt #journalismisnotacrime #FreeAJStaff pic.twitter.com/5NoFHxMO5M
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) June 24, 2014
- Soccer is popular:
Sunday’s USA-Portugal match “was ESPN’s most-viewed program ever outside of the NFL and college football.” (WSJ) || The U.S. audience “easily eclipsed the N.B.A. finals this year, which averaged 15.5 million viewers, as well as the 2013 World Series, which averaged 14.9 million viewers. The N.H.L. playoffs are not even remotely as popular as the World Cup, having averaged only five million viewers this season.” (NYT) - Mainstream journalists are trying to put a stop to SCOTUSblog’s unfiltered expertise: The journalists on the U.S. Senate Press Gallery denied SCOTUSblog a press pass, a decision, Eugene Volokh writes, that shows the body “is missing one of the key advances brought about by Internet media technology”: coverage “without the filtering, oversimplification, and distortion that usually happen when nonexpert journalists write about technical issues.” (The Washington Post) || “The members of the Standing Committee are traditional journalists who come from a proud and treasured tradition of complete independence from anything other than their craft. That is a fantastic model for journalism. But it is not the only one.” (SCOTUSblog)
- Gould out: “Emily Gould has left her job as editorial director at 29th Street Publishing.” (Capital) || June 20: “The company, which creates cross-platform content for new magazines and websites, helped [former Gawker Editor Gould] build Emily Books…. An e-book venture with some 150 subscribers, Emily Books resurrects cult favorites, out-of-print works and others by mostly female authors. The goal, Ms. Gould said, “is to make sure that the writers we cared about were not forgotten.” (NYT)
- Gawker could grow, a lot: The company “could double our editorial staff by the end of 2015,” Peter Sterne reports Gawker Media Editorial Director Joel Johnson said at an April staff meeting. (Capital) || Gawker’s Kinja platform now has a “product roadmap,” Johnson writes. “To be blunt, this is it for Kinja, in my opinion. Sink or swim.” (Joel Johnson)
- Language news: “Game changer” is a “trite term” and Bloomberg News journalists should avoid it, EIC Matthew Winkler writes. Bloomberg, Erik Wemple notes, hired the authors of “Game Change” to help build a politics vertical. (The Washington Post) || “It’s so much easier to hear ‘irony’ or ‘sarcasm’ than to read it.” (CJR)
- Why The Weather Channel doesn’t show Canada in its maps: “[O]ur maps generally outline the familiar shape of the U.S. to help better display where the weather is within its borders,” TWC’s David Blumenthal tells Dennis Mersereau. (The Vane) || Canadian media layoffs: Bell Media, which “operates numerous channels in the Toronto area,” plans to lay off “up to 120 people across its Toronto television operations.” (CBC News)
- Quartz keeps it short: “With a few exceptions, stories are kept short, typically 300 to 600 words. There’s not ‘a lot of throat-clearing,’ says Quartz Editor Kevin Delaney.” (USA Today)
Suggestions? Criticisms? Would like me to send you this roundup each morning? Please email me: abeaujon@poynter.org.
