Good morning. Here are nine media stories.
- How news outlets covered Ferguson decision
The news media’s demand for information was the “most significant challenge encountered in this investigation,” St. Louis County prosecution Robert P. McCulloch said Monday while announcing a grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, Police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown. (Poynter) | Al Tompkins dug into the grand jury report. (Storify) | Some highlights from the testimony. (AP) | I watched CNN last night and saw reporters get hit with smoke and/or tear gas (St. Louis County Police said they used both, smoke first). | CNN’s Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo got hit by tear gas. (Mediaite) | Protesters grabbed and broke a Fox News camera. (Gawker) | CNN’s Stephanie Elam said a man looting a cell-phone store threatened her. (@StephanieElam) | Later CNN showed her dodging airborne stuff from protesters. | Who were the “hipster bearded security guys” guarding her? (@clarajeffrey) | Sara Sidner got hit by a bottle, says she’s OK. | One of many amazing photos by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Robert Cohen: “Protesters seen thru shattered window of county police car.” (@kodacohen) | “Nearly every major news organization has reporters on the ground, some with upward of two dozen staffers.” (Politico) | Kristen Hare‘s Twitter list of journalists covering STL and Ferguson. | Front pages from around the country this morning. (Poynter) |
- News Corp invests in another digital real-estate business
It bought 25 percent of Elara Technologies Pte Ltd., which owns India’s PropTiger.com. (AP) | It bought Move, Inc., which owns realtor.com, in September. (News Corp)
- News sites among slowest to load
Catchpoint Systems measured how quickly some big sites loaded, and found news sites were among the slowest. “The Financial Times took about 29.5 seconds to load, followed by Bloomberg’s pages, which averaged about 27 seconds. CNN (18.8 seconds), The Wall Street Journal’s homepage (18.6 seconds) and Boston.com (17.9 seconds) rounded out the top five.” (Adweek)
- The “Hunger Games” layoffs
Managers at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation have “put reporters into competitive ‘pools’ and asked them to prove their ‘merit’ to the organisation, challenged to hit benchmarks against their colleagues, or face the sack.” (BuzzFeed)
- Two thirds of BuzzFeed’s traffic comes from mobile devices
And people who read on those devices are twice as likely to share content as those who read on desktop. (Gigaom)
- Pro-independence newspaper is popular in Scotland
The National’s print run will be 100,000, up from the 30,000 it planned at launch yesterday. (The Guardian) | Also in British newspapering: Tindle Newsapers launches four weeklies, three of which are revived local papers. (PressGazette)
- Eric Holder’s legacy, media edition
If the outgoing U.S. attorney general wants to recast his press-freedom legacy, “he will have to unpave a long road of specific policies laid down by the DOJ during his tenure, not simply express remorse and draw up broad new guidelines.” (CJR)
- Politico hired a talent recruiter
Katy Theranger will help the organization “hire the most talented editors, reporters and newsroom staff,” a job once left to editors but one that may change as “candidates may come from untraditional places or from technical spaces outside news,” the American Press Institute’s Tom Rosenstiel tells Erik Wemple. (WP)
- Front page of the day, curated by Kristen Hare
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s third edition (Courtesy the Post-Dispatch)
Ben Mullin’s job moves is on vacation this week. Load him up for his return: bmullin@poynter.org. Corrections? Tips? Please email me: abeaujon@poynter.org. Would you like to get this roundup emailed to you every morning? Sign up here.
