NYT has more readers, more ad revenue and — soon — fewer journalists

Good morning. Happy Sting’s Birthday, everybody. Here are 10 media stories.

1. Some perspective on the planned NYT staff cuts: “When the buyouts/layoffs are done, the New York Times will have nearly twice the number of staffers as the Washington Post’s 650-strong operation, instead of more than twice as many.” (WP) | For vets, the buyout deal is much sweeter than what any layoffs will offer. (Newspaper Guild of N.Y.) | Killer Ken Doctor quote: “Doctor describes the current state of newspapers as ‘continuing grimness, but manageable grimness.'” (Text bolded in case you need a name for a Smiths cover band, or maybe a tattoo idea.) (USA Today) | More Ken Doctor: “The big bright spot is obscured by that big layoff number: a 16 percent increase in Q3 digital revenue, compared to 3.4 percent up in Q2 and 2.2 percent up in Q1.” Also: “The Times has more paying readers today than in 1999. That’s a signal accomplishment.” (Newsonomics) | WHAT’S THIS MEAN FOR THE APPS? NYT Opinion is going away. NYT Now users will no longer get a less robust tier of access to the Times website. NYT Cooking will remain free, at least for now. (Nieman) | John Herrman: “NYT Opinion was an interesting piece of software run by talented people but built around an opinion franchise that finished accumulating new fans a decade ago.” (The Awl) | Mathew Ingram: The Times should work on monetizing relationships with readers, not slicing “its existing content into smaller and smaller pieces.” (Gigaom) || Catch up: Ravi Somaiya‘s story about the cuts. (NYT) | Memos to staff from Dean Baquet, Mark Thompson and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (Poynter)
2. “Bag Men” cover didn’t really work out for NY Post: It settled a lawsuit with Salaheddin Barhoum and Yassine Zaimi, who it identified as “BAG MEN” during the Boston Marathon bombings manhunt. They were simply watching the race. “Neither side would disclose terms of the settlement.” (AP) | “We did not identify them as suspects,” Post Editor Col Allan said last April. (WP)
3. Star-Advertiser owner buys more Hawaiian papers: Oahu Publications Inc. is buying the Hawaii Tribune-Herald and West Hawaii Today on the Big Island from Stephens Media. (Honolulu Civil Beat) | “The @StarAdvertiser now runs ALL the daily newspapers on Oahu, Kauai, Big Island.” (@GenePark)
4. Vice publishes Ferguson Police Department documents: “It would appear that Ferguson police do not always follow those procedures and instructions.” (Vice)
5. Egypt steals newspapers: Authorities seized all copies of the newspaper Al Masry Al Youm, which published an interview with a spy. (NYT) | You can read the issue on PressDisplay.com. | Late last month, the parents of Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste described visiting him in an Egyptian prison. (The Courier-Mail)
6. Covering Ebola: Nsikan Akpan wants to raise $1,000 to “interview journalists and bloggers living near the epicenter of an outbreak and compare their views with those covering the situation from abroad.” (Indiegogo) | Lenny Bernstein: “You don’t touch anyone in Liberia.” (WP) | In case you were wondering: Why “Ebola” is capitalized. (Poynter)
7. Journalists emigrate from Russia: Galina Timchenko, Oleg Kashin and Leonid Bershidsky left because of the current press climate, Stephen Ennis reports. 186,000 people left Russia in 2013, “five times as many as two years earlier.” (BBC)
8. Scaling the ivory tower: Wired will offer an “online master’s degree in Integrated Design, Business and Technology” at the University of Southern California. (Wired) | Twitter has invested $10 million to create a research group at MIT to “better understand how information spreads on Twitter and other social media platforms.” (WSJ)
9. Front page of the day, curated by Kristen Hare: The Epoch Times, with a nice design take on the Dallas Ebola story. (Courtesy the Newseum)

    

10. Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin: Marjorie Powell is now vice president of human resources at NPR. Previously, she was chief human resources officer at the University of Maryland at Baltimore. (NPR) | Tim O’Shaughnessy is now president of Graham Holdings Company. Previously, he was CEO of LivingSocial. (GraHoCo) | Victor Caivano is now news director for The Associated Press’ “Southern Cone” countries — Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Previously, he was a photojournalist there. (AP) | Ali Watkins will be a reporter at HuffPost Politics. Previously, she worked for McClatchy DC. (Email) | Zach Goldfarb will be policy editor at The Washington Post. Previously, he was a White House and economics correspondent there. (Washington Post) | Job of the day The Washington Post is hiring a video producer. Get your résumés in! (Wash Post PR) | 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.