December 7, 2024

Media Decoder Blog: The Breakfast Meeting: Editor Charged With Hacking and Reform Talks in Britain Break Down

Matthew Keys, a 26-year-old deputy social media editor for Thomson Reuters, has been charged with helping the hacker collective Anonymous attack the Web site of The Los Angeles Times, Amy Chozick reports. Mr. Keys once worked as a Web producer at KTXL Fox 40, which, like The Los Angeles Times, is owned by Tribune Media. A federal indictment of Mr. Keys said that he provided Anonymous with login information for Tribune Company computers, encouraged the hackers to log on to the company’s server and damage it, and helped the group in an attack that allowed them to alter a feature on the newspaper’s Web site. Mr. Keys could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each substantive count.

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain announced on Thursday that talks on a government method for regulating the country’s unruly press had broken down and that he would seek his own proposal for a method of self-regulation, Alan Cowell and John F. Burns write. Mr. Cameron’s abrupt move comes after months of inquiries into a phone-hacking scandal. It underscores the divisiveness of the debate about press regulation, at present supervised by a self-regulatory body generally seen as feeble. A report on the phone-hacking scandal called for press regulation backed by parliamentary statute. Mr. Cameron risks alienating the Liberal Democrats, the junior coalition partners with his Conservative Party, who might end up voting against his proposal.

The first upfront by NBCUniversal News put on a happy face even though the company has been without a president for more than a month and the “Today” show has trailed ABC’s “Good Morning America” in morning show ratings for months, Stuart Elliott writes. Matt Lauer, the co-anchor of “Today” whose tenure has been the subject of speculation and press scrutiny, strode onstage with his co-anchor Savannah Guthrie toward the end of the presentation to make light of the situation. “From the bottom of my heart, I promise to spend all my time and energy the next several weeks and months trying to keep Savannah out of the headlines,” Mr. Lauer said, drawing appreciative laughter. NBCUniversal News Group executives did not directly address the issues facing the company but played up the benefits of advertising on “Today,” “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and “Squawk Box” on CNBC, which collectively reach 43 million people.

The World According to Dick Cheney,” a documentary by R.J. Cutler that will be shown Friday on Showtime, contains insights and revealing moments but may prove dissatisfying for critics who long to confront Mr. Cheney, Alessandra Stanley reports. The documentary, a long interview with Mr. Cheney interspersed with news clips and journalists, is not an indictment or a spooky character study. It allows Mr. Cheney to make assertions without contradiction or follow-up questions and shows his utter complacency about blunders on his watch, like the false information that led to the war in Iraq, Ms. Stanley writes. “I did what I did, it’s all on the public record, and, um, I feel very good about it,” Mr. Cheney says at the end. “If I had to do it over again, I’d do it in a minute.”

Conservative media is undergoing an identity crisis, with leaders in the field calling for a return to reporting basics and a move away from weaponized and sometimes inaccurate reporting, Dylan Byers reports on Politico. Representatives for major conservative media outlets will come together on Friday to discuss how they can gain more recognition and credibility with mainstream media outlets at the Conservative Political Action Conference. CPAC organizers may have different ideas; they invited media figures like Dick Morris and Donald Trump to speak at the conference.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/the-breakfast-meeting-reuters-editor-charged-with-hacking-and-talks-to-reform-british-media-break-down/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Media Decoder Blog: The Breakfast Meeting: Time Warner to Spin Off Time Inc., and Facebook’s New Look

Time Warner announced Wednesday that it would spin off its Time Inc. magazine unit into a separate, publicly traded company, Amy Chozick writes. The announcement came hours after negotiations on a possible merger between Meredith Corporation and many Time Inc. titles fell through. The deal did not work out in part because of Time Inc.’s concern about flagship titles Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money, which Meredith had decided not to pursue. Time Warner found it made more economic sense to spin off all its titles rather than retain a few of them, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said. Time Inc. is the nation’s largest magazine publisher, and the breakdown in talks threw into sharp relief how once-glamorous magazines have become troubled assets.

Facebook plans to announce a redesign to its News Feed, the page of cascading posts every user sees upon logging in, on Thursday, Somini Sengupta reports. The makeover is designed to keep users, many of whom are growing disenchanted with the social networking site, engaged, while also providing advertisers with new ways to appeal to consumers, with bigger photos and video. The adjustments will reflect Facebook’s precarious balance as a public company that has not performed well on Wall Street: draw users to the site without alienating them with the targeted advertisements that are Facebook’s chief source of revenue.

Google executives are working on a version 2.0 of an unusual advertising initiative to show how technology can be compatible with traditional Madison Avenue methods like emotional storytelling, Stuart Elliott writes. The initiative, called Art, Copy and Code, will start with a Volkswagen campaign designed by Deutsch L.A. (Adidas and Burberry will be involved later.) Volkswagen will offer a mobile app and Web service called Volkswagen Smileage that will allow drivers who use the new Google Plus sign-in program to share their smile-inducing driving experiences.

Content Partners, a financial boutique that buys cash flow owed to stars and musicians, said on Wednesday that it would buy the half of the long-running crime drama “C.S.I.” owned by an affiliate of Goldman Sachs, Michael Cieply and Bill Carter write. Terms were not disclosed, but it was reported that Goldman sought more than $400 million for their half of the franchise (CBS owns the other half). Content Partners will now own half of the production company revenue from old episodes, as they are sold abroad or through on-demand media, and from future episodes. The “C.S.I.” shows have been among the most profitable television properties for more than a decade; the firm Media Metrics reported that the original show was the most-watched program in the world for five of the last seven years.

Advertisements in a public education campaign by New York City that seeks to reduce teenage pregnancy have drawn mounting criticism, Kate Taylor reports. The ads, which have been placed in bus stands in neighborhoods with high teen pregnancy rates and will soon appear in subway stations, feature sad-looking children alongside slogans like “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.” Planned Parenthood denounced the ads, saying they stigmatized teen parents while ignoring the various factors that contribute to the issue. The mayor’s office responded that it had to send a strong message that teenage pregnancies often have powerfully negative consequences for the child and parent.

American cardinals who will vote in the conclave to elect the next Roman Catholic pope have run into a problem with addressing the media, Rachel Donadio and Laurie Goodstein write. Their American forthrightness conflicts with the Vatican, a secretive Italian institution more known for leaked information than news conferences. The tension is certain to be on the minds of the cardinals who, though they have been told to discredit reports in the media, may well be swayed by what they hear in the news. The College of Cardinals has agreed not to give interviews, even as news continues to leak to Italian outlets.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/the-breakfast-meeting-time-warner-to-spin-off-time-inc-and-facebooks-new-look/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Media Decoder Blog: The Breakfast Meeting: A Video Campaign Pushes Paper, and Denmark’s Unexpected Advocates of Free Speech

A giant paper maker, Domtar Corporation, has added four video clips with commercials to a campaign called “Paper because” that emphasize paper’s importance in a digital world, Stuart Elliott writes. The first batch of videos was released in 2010 and featured over-the-top vignettes in an office where a crusade to go paperless becomes extreme. The latest releases expand the theme to other situations, like dealing with tech support at home or an overconfident waiter. The videos are only one part of the “Paper because” campaign, which includes, of course, print advertisements.

Suspicion fell on Denmark’s Muslim community shortly after an unsuccessful assassination attempt of Lars Hedegaard, an anti-Islam polemicist, earlier this month, Andrew Higgins reports. But Muslim groups in Denmark took an unexpected stance after a man posing as a mail carrier shot at, and missed, Mr. Hedegaard: they condemned the attack and supported Mr. Hedegaard’s right to express himself, even though his views are a combination of conspiracies and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Defending a man they detest suggests a change in attitude, or at least strategy, for Muslim groups at the center of a debate on whether they can adapt to the values of their adopted home.

There is a critical filmmaking profession that remains snubbed in the Oscars ceremony: music supervisors, the people who choose existing music to augment films, are not eligible for an Academy Award, Steve Chagollan writes. Supervisors bemoaned this state of affairs at their third-annual awards ceremony a few weeks ago in West Hollywood, especially because outside music played an important role in films like “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Django Unchained.” The Academy might be given pause by the fact that directors often work with music supervisors to find the perfect fit, and that music supervisors do not exactly create anything. Charles Fox, the chairman of the Academy’s music branch, said originality was the Oscar’s foremost concern. “In all of our categories — best song, best score — music has to be created specifically for that motion picture,” he said.

It’s been a parlor game among Hollywood types to figure out why “Lincoln,” despite having all the hallmarks of an Oscar-dominating film, lost best picture to “Argo,” Melena Ryzik reports. Insiders said part of the reason may have been that the team behind “Lincoln” overcampaigned, and made voters feel as if they had been force-fed a history lesson. The same overreach could be seen in Sunday’s broadcast itself, Ms. Ryzik writes, which lost coherence in an attempt to push boundaries and appeal to a critical age demographic. The Oscar does not always go to the best movie and the funniest comedian is not always the best host. The also-rans must content themselves with other Hollywood prizes: record-breaking ticket sales and higher ratings.

A senior White House official yelled at journalist Bob Woodward for nearly half an hour last week after Mr. Woodward told him that he planned to question, in a Washington Post article, President Obama’s account of how the budget cuts known as sequestration came to be, Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei write in Politico. The official later sent an e-mail that offered apologies but also said Mr. Woodward would “regret staking out that claim.” Mr. Woodward saw the phrase as a veiled threat, though the White House later said none was intended. “They become defensive,” Mr. Woodward said. “This could be a huge issue if the economy takes a hit.”

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/the-breakfast-meeting-a-video-campaign-pushes-paper-and-denmarks-unexpected-advocates-of-free-speech/?partner=rss&emc=rss