Happy Halloween! Here are 10 scaaaaary media stories.
- NYT ends partnership with Texas Tribune
The Times told the news nonprofit that at the end of this year it will no longer produce a two-page section for the paper’s Texas edition. “We hate to see the whole thing come to an end, but it’s like that line from The Godfather: It’s business, not personal,” Trib EIC Evan Smith writes. (Texas Tribune) | Interesting inversion: The Dallas Morning News’ Sunday edition will include an insert produced by the New York Times. (NYTCo) | Related: CEO Mark Thompson wants the Times to be “unashamedly experimental.” (Nieman Lab) | 9 takeways from the New York Times Co. 3rd quarter earnings call (Poynter) | Only slightly related to that last related item: Rick Edmonds notes that Denise Warren is the third woman Times exec to leave in the past three years; Erik Wemple reported yesterday that the last woman on The Washington Post’s masthead is leaving. (WP)
- So it should be an interesting day at First Look Media
Four reporters at First Look’s The Intercept — Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill and John Cook — published an unsparing examination of why Matt Taibbi left the company. “Those conflicts were rooted in a larger and more fundamental culture clash that has plagued the project from the start: A collision between the First Look executives, who by and large come from a highly structured Silicon Valley corporate environment, and the fiercely independent journalists who view corporate cultures and management-speak with disdain,” they write. (The Intercept) | “With the publishing of their post, Greenwald et al confirm some of the worst fears about the company and contradict others. They claim that Omidyar has not interfered with the editorial work of journalists, but was clearly unprepared for the cultural differences between executives and rabble-rousing journalists.” (Mashable) | “if Hunter S. Thompson was still alive, FL would have hired him to turn him into a middle manager” (@jbenton) | “From all the details of Taibbi’s allegedly terrible management practices and the details of First Look’s struggles against the IRON FIST of First Look Media emerges a picture of utter ungovernability and an unwillingness to concede that the person bankrolling a venture might just have a say in how things get done.” (WP)
- The odds of new news orgs surviving
BuzzFeed: “High.” Vice: “Medium-hiiiiigh.” Vox “is also doing better traffic and growing more quickly than Gawker, and is extremely popular with ‘Millennials.’ Euthanize Vox immediately.” (Gawker)
- Arkansans don’t think much of journalists
“Of those polled, only 14 percent believe that journalists have high or very high standards. Another 39 percent would rate the honesty and ethical standards of journalists as average, and 36 percent responded with low or very low. The remainder, about 12 percent, did not know or refused to answer.” (University of Arkansas)
- Another Jian Ghomeshi story
“I feel that while it is exceedingly difficult to publicly put your name forward and open yourself up to all of the accompanying criticism, if you are in the position that you can do so without fearing the ramifications in terms of your family, marriage, personal or professional trauma, then you should do it,” Reva Seth writes. (HuffPost)
- The Newspaper Guild is not especially cool with the FBI right now
In an emailed statement, it says it’s “disgusted and outraged by the revelation this week that the FBI posed as The Associated Press in planting an online story to catch a teenage bomb threat suspect in 2007. … Any hint that a journalist or news organization is aiding law enforcement damages their reputation as an objective, trustworthy source of news.” | U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy sent a letter to the attorney general expressing concern about the sting. (The Seattle Times) | Sort-of related: Akron Beacon Journal asks campaign to stop using doctored front page in ads. (Jim Romenesko)
- Spain passses aggregation tax
New laws will “allow news publishers to charge aggregators each time they display news content in search results.” (AP) | Google statement: “We are disappointed with the new law because we believe that services like Google News help publishers bring traffic to their sites.” (THR)
- Depressing British media news roundup
The Telegraph lays off 55 staffers. (The Business of Fashion) | The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News will combine operations, leading to a loss of 45 jobs. (The Guardian) | The Hull Daily Mail apologizes for wrongly identifying a man as a sex offender. (Hold the Front Page)
- Front page of the day, curated by Kristen Hare
A spoooooooky front from the Asbury Park Press! (Courtesy the Newseum)
- Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin
Shane Harris will be an intelligence and national security reporter at The Daily Beast. He’s a senior writer at Foreign Policy. (The Huffington Post) | Azmat Khan will be an investigative reporter at BuzzFeed. She’s a senior digital producer at Al Jazeera America. (Azmat Khan) | Usha Chaudhary will be chief financial officer at Pew Charitable Trusts. She’s the chief financial officer at The Washington Post. (The Washingoton Post) | Eli Lake will be a columnist at Bloomberg View. He’s a national security correspondent at The Daily Beast. Josh Rogin will be a columnist at Bloomberg View. He’s a senior correspondent at The Daily Beast. (Politico) | Krista Larson is West Africa bureau chief for The Associated Press. Previously, she was a correspondent there. (AP) | Nona Willis Aronowitz is an editor at TPM. Previously, she was an education and poverty reporter at NBC News Digital. (TPM) | Om Malik is looking for a designer. Get your résumés in! (Om Malik) | Send Ben your job moves: 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.
