Andrew Beaujon
June 19, 2013
7:22 am
The reporter Michael Hastings died Tuesday, BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone reported.
"
He knew how to tell it," BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith writes.
He knew that there are certain truths that nobody has an interest in speaking, ones that will make both your subjects and their enemies uncomfortable. They’re stories that don’t get told because nobody in power has much of an interest in telling them — the story, for instance, of how a president is getting rolled by his generals.
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Andrew Beaujon
June 18, 2013
1:13 pm
Guardian US Editor-in-Chief Janine Gibson and deputy editor Stuart Millar were on hand when the site produced
its chat with NSA leaker Edward Snowden Monday. Also staffing the effort: community coordinator Ruth Spencer and Open Editor Amanda Michel.
The Guardian moderated participants' questions, which were submitted via comment threads or Twitter, Guardian US spokesperson Gennady Kolker told Poynter in an email: "Questions were selected on the basis of both quality (number of “recommends”) and quantity (number of similar questions)."
And...that's about it for the technical details the Guardian is sharing. Kolker said the Guardian proposed the chat to Snowden. He is reportedly hiding out in Hong Kong. (In a piece last week, some former intelligence officials said
what they'd do if they were in his shoes.) Kolker said the chat got nearly a million page views and was shared more than 35,000 times on Facebook. The hashtag #AskSnowden
trended on Twitter.
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Andrew Beaujon
June 18, 2013
12:03 pm
PaidContent
Idaho photographer Kai Eiselein is suing BuzzFeed in U.S. District Court, claiming the site should pay not only for infringing his copyright when it ran his image but
also for all the sites that subsequently posted it.
"Since BuzzFeed was the original poster of this set of images and provided them for distribution; the defendant is unequivocally responsible both directly and indirectly for all subsequent infringements," Eiselein's complaint reads.
That's an admirably avant-garde legal theory, an area of scholarship in which BuzzFeed is already a thought leader: BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti has argued the site's lists
constitute a transformative use of others' photos, and thus fall under fair use. Jeff John Roberts writes that it's unlikely Eiselein's “contributory infringement” can "succeed on a legal basis — if he does, the case would throw a large chill over the sharing culture that has become a fixture of the social web."
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Andrew Beaujon
June 18, 2013
11:25 am
Fortune
Allan Sloan found something "Buried in the tax footnotes" of the
financial results Tribune Co. released Monday: The IRS and other authorities are seeking nearly $300 million in taxes and penalties from former owner Sam Zell's 2008
deal to sell Newsday to Cablevision.
And the company's potential troubles don't end there. Tribune sold its interest in the Chicago Cubs using a similar deal structure, and it's being audited. "Apply the same penalties as the IRS is seeking in the Newsday deal, and the total exposure is about $300 million," Sloan writes.
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Andrew Beaujon
June 18, 2013
10:07 am
Isaac Chotiner's
Q&A with Politico honchos John Harris and Jim VandeHei has plenty of fun moments, but my favorite part is when Harris and VandeHei discuss Nate Silver, who is
not a fan of their news organization.
Especially fascinating: Harris and VandeHei appear to carefully balance each of their knocks on Silver with a compliment (or something close to one). Compliments are in italics, zings are in bold. Text that doesn't lean too far one way or the other in roman.
Harris:
I know why people found him interesting and entertaining, and some people found him illuminating.
There are people in our gang who think he is overblown and get worked up about Nate Silver. I don’t give a damn*.
VandeHei:
Some of his stuff goes on and on, trying to use numbers to prove stuff that I don’t think can be proved by numbers alone. I know he is a Politico hater.
I admire what he has been able to do.
Harris:
I admire how he has built a franchise.
I roll my eyes at how he gets up on his high horse quite a lot on different topics.
*While this sentence appears to be dismissive, I think Harris is saying he doesn't give a damn about the disagreement and is not saying he doesn't give a damn about Nate Silver.
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Andrew Beaujon
June 18, 2013
8:28 am
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Andrew Beaujon
June 17, 2013
4:31 pm
Tribune Co. |
The Chicago Tribune
Tribune Co. on Monday filed
financial results for 2012, its last year in bankruptcy. In its publishing division, advertising revenues were down 6.7 percent over 2011, and circulation revenues rose 8.75 percent, "driven by subscription price increases and the implementation of digital subscription programs," Robert Channick writes in The Chicago Tribune.
Circulation revenue declined in 2011 "due to a decline in daily (Monday-Friday) net paid print circulation copies at all newspapers, partially offset by an increase in Sunday net paid print circulation copies at all newspapers except Baltimore,"
a management analysis says. "The largest revenue declines in 2011 were at Chicago, South Florida and Hartford."
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Andrew Beaujon
June 17, 2013
4:13 pm
Buffalo Sabres
Huffington Post Senior Editor Craig Kanalley
will become the Buffalo Sabres' social media manager, the team announced Monday. "They've been my favorite sports team since I was a kid, and I'm excited about the opportunity to get back home to family and friends in Buffalo," Kanalley told Poynter in an email, noting that he was named after Sabres legend
Craig Ramsay.
I asked Kanalley, who has also worked as a social media editor at NBC News, whether it was tough to leave journalism. The "lines are blurring between journalism and marketing," he replied, continuing:
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Andrew Beaujon
June 17, 2013
3:47 pm
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