September 4, 2014

mediawiremorningGood morning after a day of never-ending media news. Here are at least 10 media stories.

  1. Hizzoner is back: Mike Bloomberg will return to run Bloomberg L.P., Andrew Ross Sorkin reports. Current Bloomberg honcho Daniel L. Doctoroff will depart by the end of the year. “If it was up to me, he would have stayed,” Bloomberg tells Sorkin. (NYT) | “Wait I thought when you leave Bloomberg you can’t ever come back?” (@kleinmatic) | Some context for that jape. (Inc.) | “With great pride and gratitude I’ll be turning the @Bloomberg reins back over to @MikeBloomberg at year’s end.” (@dandoctoroff) | Doctoroff explains why he’s leaving: “I have always viewed myself as Mike’s steward at the company. It is and has always been his company, and given his renewed interest, it is natural for him to reassume leadership of the company.” (Bloomberg) | The company “is facing competition from the financial firms that are its clients in areas like messaging.” (WSJ)
  2. USA Today lays off staff: Between 60 and 70 people lost their jobs yesterday. About half those cuts hit the newsroom. People I spoke with described seeing reporters pack up boxes and leave. One person told me she’d been dismissed in a five-minute phone call that stressed her layoff was a business decision. (Poynter) | Film critic Scott Bowles‘ mother canceled her subscription after her son got laid off. (@abeaujon)
  3. Donte Stallworth will cover national security for HuffPost: “There’s been a national security wonk lurking underneath Donte’s helmet for quite some time, as anyone who follows him on Twitter knows,” HuffPost’s Amanda Terkel says in a press release. | Gail Sullivan: “It’s true: Stallworth’s resume doesn’t look much like the average journalist’s. But his Twitter feed sure does.” (WP) | “[I]t turns out Stallworth has a 9/11 truther past.” (The Daily Caller)
  4. 20 Canadian newspapers will close: Transcontinental was not able to find buyers for most of the Quebec weeklies. The Canadian government ordered the company to sell 33 newspapers after it bought 74 newspapers from Sun Media Corp. About 80 people will lose their jobs. (Canadian Press/HuffPost Canada)
  5. New York Daily News will no longer use the term “Redskins” when writing about the D.C. football team: “Here’s a simple test of whether Redskin passes muster: Would you use the term in referring to Native Americans in anything other than a derogatory way?” The paper has also designed a new burgundy-and-gold logo to run in place of the Skins’ actual logo. (NYDN) | The Washington Post’s editorial board made a similar decision recently, but the newsroom will continue to use the name. (WP) | “Yeah, because the Washington Post editorial page is always writing about Redskins….” (@jackshafer) | My list of journalists and outlets that spurn the term. (Poynter) | Related: Web traffic from outside New York City is way, way up at the Daily News since it relaunched its website. (Digiday)
  6. Vice attracts more investment: A&E and Technology Crossover Ventures have each put $250 million into the company, which is now valued at $2.5 billion. (The Guardian) | Vice CEO Shane Smith in February: “Woodward and Bernstein are now the old men, but once they were the punks.” (Poynter)
  7. Social media companies kept video of Steven Sotloff’s execution from spreading: “‘It’s been very interesting, with this second beheading, how very little of those images have been passed around,’ said Family Online Safety Institute CEO Stephen Balkam, who serves on Facebook’s safety advisory board. ‘It’s very difficult to find them unless you know of some darker places on the web.'” (AP) | Margaret Sullivan on NYT’s use of image from video: “not using anything at all from this despicable video would have been even better.” (NYT)
  8. New York City has 309 newsstands left: Sales of lottery tickets and sundries keep most of those going. “Newsstands that used to sell 1,000 papers a day now sell 100,” NYC Newsstand Operators Association President Robert Bookman tells Gary M. Stern. (NYO)
  9. Ferguson is not over: The Justice Department “will launch a broad civil rights investigation into the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department.” (WP) | AN ABSOLUTE MUST-READ: Radley Balko on how tiny St. Louis-area towns use their justice systems to soak poor people. If you want to understand some of the context of the unrest that followed Mike Brown’s death, you won’t want to miss this story. (WP)
  10. Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin: Michael Bloomberg will replace Daniel Doctoroff as chief executive officer of Bloomberg LP. Previously, Bloomberg was mayor of New York City. (New York Times) | Gina Sanders is now president of Condé Nast Global Development. She was president and CEO of Fairchild Fashion Media. (Condé Nast) | Brian Olsavsky will be chief financial officer for Amazon.com, Inc. He is the company’s vice president of finance. (Amazon) | Donte Stallworth is a politics fellow at The Huffington Post. Previously, he was a coaching intern with the Baltimore Ravens (HuffPost Politics) | Chris Meighan is now design director of The Washington Post’s mobile initiative. Previously, he was The Post’s deputy design director. (The Washington Post) | Doris Truong will be weekend editor for The Washington Post’s universal desk. She is the homepage editor for The Post. (The Washington Post) | Joe Vardon will cover LeBron James for the Northeast Ohio Media Group. He was a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. (Romenesko) | Tom Gara will be deputy editor for BuzzFeed Business. He is the corporate news editor for The Wall Street Journal. (Recode) | David Gehring will be vice president of partnerships for Guardian News & Media. He was the head of global alliances and strategic partnerships for Google. (Release) | Job of the day: The Dallas Morning News is looking for a photographer. Get your résumés in! (Journalism Jobs) | Send Ben your job moves: bmullin@poynter.org

Suggestions? Criticisms? Would like me to send you this roundup each morning? Please email me: abeaujon@poynter.org.

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Andrew Beaujon reported on the media for Poynter from 2012 to 2015. He was previously arts editor at TBD.com and managing editor of Washington City…
Andrew Beaujon

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