• 'NY Times' To Host Online Indie Film Fest
    The New York Times Indie Online Film Festival -- a first -- will stream four pictures, curated by nonprofit organization Film Independent, on the paper's website for free from Sept. 2 to Oct. 3. Three companies will sponsor the fest -- Acura, Stella Artois Cidre and new Broadway musical "Big Fish -- but "the Times is not compensating the filmmakers participating in the digital fest, with organizers touting benefits of exposure," writes Todd Spangler.
  • Disney/ABC Television Group Gets Set For Layoffs Of 175
    Disney/ABC Television Group will lay off  approximately 175 staffers, mostly in the ABC Owned Stations division, in the next week. Total number of employees right now is about 7,600. "The layoffs may be followed by some new job opportunities for people with different skills sets, writes Tim Molloy.
  • I, Robot: 'WaPo' Considers Automatic Sports Writing
    Last year the Washington Post considered using an automatic writing service to cover the high school sports beat, which according to an editor's estimate would need about 300 reporters to attend all the games in the area -- but the powers-that-be decided against it, though they didn't rule out taking the step in the future, according to Andrew Beaujon.  Huh? In case you're not up to speed on this trend, the original video of this story from the Washington Post goes into more depth on automated journalism, in which algorithms take data and use it to write …
  • Sirius XM Ensures MLB Baseball For All Subscribers
    In an eagerly anticipated deal, Sirius XM signed a six-year contract with Major League Baseball, ensuring that its total of 25 million subscribers will be able to listen to live games. Previously some subscribers could hear games, but not all; among those shut out were those who bought cars before Sirius and XM merged in 2008 and thus had only Sirius, not XM radios. The company did not disclose financial terms of the contract.
  • 'Today' Premieres Monthly Book Club
    Today the NBC show "Today" debuted its monthly book club, which "will include both fiction and nonfiction, newly released titles and classics," writes Julie Bosman. It's "a happy development for a publishing industry frustrated by years of shrinking television time devoted to authors," she writes. "Yet a 'Today' book club would lack the passionate endorsement of a single person as beloved as Ms. Winfrey, one of the factors that publishers have cited as a key component to the success of Oprah’s Book Club."
  • Why Conde Nast Editors Need To Watch Their Backs
    Seems as if Vogue editor Anna Wintour has been living up to her fearsome reputation since she took on the added title of Condé Nast artistic director. First there was the firing of Lucky editor Brandon Holley, and now Condé Nast Traveler editor Kara Glowczewska has been axed. According to Chris O'Shea, "Glowczewska was fired because Traveler hadn’t recovered from the recession like other brands had, and that meant 'Something needed to change,'" said Condé's editorial director, Thomas Wallace. "Wintour was a pivotal part of that decision," adds O'Shea.
  • TiVo Debuts Roamio, DVR That Records Net Video
    TiVo launched Roamio, which  incorporates Net video services such as Netflix, music services like Pandora, and, depending on the version (there are three), allows viewers to record from four to six shows simultaneously. "Each new Roamio also streams TV and DVR recordings to Apple iOS and Android tablets and smartphones at home, with out of home viewing due later this year," writes Mike Snider.
  • How Is A Magazine Like A Department Store?
    "I also felt in some fundamental sense that the problems magazines faced didn’t and don’t have editorial solutions," says former Conde Nast editorial director and "crown prince" James Truman in this rundown of why he left the glossy publisher in 2002, and what he's been doing since. He also says "magazines are going to be somewhat like department stores. They’ll stay in business, but you’ll wonder why, since you get everything in them from other places, usually with a better customer experience.”
  • With Fox Buy-In, Vice Now Worth $1.4B
    21st Century Fox's 5% investment in Vice Media "effectively values the company at $1.4 billion," according to The Atlantic Wire. "For a sense of scale: John Henry paid $70 million for the Boston Globe two weeks ago, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for The Washington Post several days later. To buy Vice, which was founded as a Canadian music magazine in 1994, you'd have to pony up more than triple the cost of both newspapers combined."
  • Pitching Has A Double Meaning On Baseball Radio Broadcasts
    Guess where advertising is booming? "The baseball radio broadcast, for so long the soundtrack of summer with an almost sacrosanct rhythm of familiar voices, is now laden with paid advertisements for everything from the umpire lineup to the postgame wrap-up," writes Richard Sandomir. He dissects the trend, "most pronounced in Yankees broadcasts. The first Yankees walk prompts, 'Just walk into any of CityMD’s six convenient locations.'”
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