Morning Media Newsfeed: Diller Regrets <em>Newsweek</em> | <em>SI</em>'s Gay Player Scoop

[emailonly]{{{ sbox300x250 }}}[/emailonly] Click here to receive Mediabistro's Morning Media Newsfeed via email. Barry Diller Admits Buying Newsweek Was A Mistake (FishbowlNY) The "Most Honest And Unintentionally Depressing Answer Of The Day" award goes to Barry Diller, IAC's chairman. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Diller admits that buying Newsweek was a mistake, and even adds that the all-digital NewsBeast isn't likely to succeed: "For a news magazine, which is a bit of an odd phrase today, it was not possible to print it any longer. We said we will offer digital products. We have a very solid newsroom. We will see. I do not have great expectations. I wish I had not bought Newsweek. It was a mistake." Bloomberg Businessweek IAC doesn’t officially disclose financial figures for the Newsweek/Daily Beast unit. A person with direct knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News in July the business would probably lose as much as $22 million in 2012. The publisher cut editorial jobs in December in an effort to hold down expenses. How Sports Illustrated Broke The Jason Collins Story (NYT) The anticipation that a male in a major team sport would announce he was gay had been building for weeks, along with the frenzy among sportswriters trying to break the story.Sports Illustrated knew it had the story; it just did not know the identity of the athlete. Three weeks ago, Arn Tellem, agent to Jason Collins, called a Sports Illustrated writer, Franz Lidz, and offered him an exclusive story about how a major athlete was about to publicly announce that he was gay. Tellem did not give Lidz the name of the athlete. He just told him that the athlete would be meeting Lidz and an editor at an address in Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 24. LA Times / Show Tracker Chris Broussard usually offers expertise on fast breaks and zone defense, but on Monday he drove right into America's culture wars by calling homosexuality "an open rebellion to God" and implying that gay people can't be Christians. "I'm a Christian. I don't agree with homosexuality," Broussard said. "I think it's a sin, as I think all sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman is. If you're openly living in unrepentant sin... that's walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ," he added. Politico / Dylan Byers on Media Collins announced on Monday that he is gay, making him, by his own description, the "first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport." This is a historic moment in the history of American sport, at least according to Sports Illustrated, which put the exclusive on the cover of this week's issue; to users of social media, where traffic to the story has eclipsed that of the New York Jets' decision to waive quarterback Tim Tebow; and to ABC News, which has just booked Collins for an interview that will air Tuesday on Good Morning America. It seems to be of less significance to ESPN, which buried the story on its website with a small link on the sidebar. Deadspin How did ESPN cover it? An active NBA player coming out of the closet? And doing so in the pages of a rival outlet? That could wait. FishbowlNY If you haven’t read the Collins/Lidz piece yet, you should. Just don’t bother with the comments. Trust us. Meredith Vieira: NBC 'Blew It' on Matt Lauer (NY Post / Page Six) Former Today show anchor Meredith Vieira won't be reading Brian Stelter's dishy new book on her old morning show, Top of the Morning, any time soon. "I'm not interested," Vieira, who’s included in the tome, recently told Page Six. "I'm over it... I've kind of been-there-done-that, and I don't know what the interest is." TVNewser Though the critics have skewered his first book, Stelter chooses to see the coffee cup as half full. "Honestly, I appreciate the feedback," he says. Business Insider We had Stelter in for an interview and asked him who deserves the blame for Today's loss in ratings. He said NBC executives, who let the show "get stale" amidst its winning streak. He also said fired co-host Ann Curry didn't help. "She wasn't good at the job." [emailonly]{{{ jodslot01 }}}[/emailonly] How New York Review of Books Got The 'Misha' scoop (The Washington Post / Erik Wemple) A famous sign at the Los Angeles Times urged: "GOYA/KOD." That means "Get off your ass/knock on doors," a reportorial approach that Christian Caryl rode to glory. Caryl is a senior fellow for the Legatum Institute, which -- get this -- pays him to write for Foreign Policy magazine, where he is a contributing editor. At the same time, Caryl is a freelancer for the New York Review of Books. In that latter capacity, Caryl singlehandedly fleshed out a precious and unanswered dimension of the Tsarnaev story, even as multi-reporter teams for The New York Times and The Washington Post completed enormous and excellent biographical takeouts on that same topic. That Horrible Tumblr Memo Was Actually A Fired Editor's Secret Revenge (ValleyWag) Tumblr founder David Karp's abrupt farewell to his Storyboard team earlier this month was so disingenuous, so thick with noxious doublespeak, that it hardly seemed real. That's because it wasn't. Meredith Expands Program Guaranteeing Sales Lift for Big Advertisers (Ad Age / Media News) Some major magazine companies are expanding efforts to guarantee that advertising with their brands directly increases sales. [emailonly]{{{ sbox02 }}}[/emailonly] Twitter Co-Founder Dorsey 'Not Even Thinking' About IPO (Bloomberg / TechDeals) Twitter's initial public offering could be the biggest for a consumer Web company since Facebook. But executives have so far declined to say when it might happen, and co-founder Jack Dorsey said the company is "not even thinking about it" right now. Morgan Spurlock’s CNN Show Pushed Back (TVNewser) Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's upcoming CNN series has been delayed until later this year, TVNewser hears. The show, Inside Man, has Spurlock sharing "an insider’s view into rarely-seen sectors of American life that include gun lovers, marijuana growers, migrant farm workers, and end-of-life caregivers." We also hear that the format may have been tweaked slightly, resulting in the delay. Yahoo! Rolls Out Six Original Shows And New TV Partnerships (CNET) Aiming to bring users more content, the company is launching Web shows, starring Ed Helms, John Stamos, and Cheryl Hines, and debuting programming from WWE, ABC News, CNBC, and Condé Nast. [emailonly]{{{ sbox03 }}}[/emailonly] ESPN: The Magazine Puts A Print Spin on Sponsored Content (Adweek) Branded content has gotten plenty of attention as it's taken off online where the division between editorial and advertising real estate can be fuzzier (see: Forbes, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Gawker), but publishers have shied away from using similar strategies in print. Now, ESPN: The Magazine is taking a page from electronic media by letting an advertiser incorporate its logo into editorial content. FishbowlNY “Sometimes as a magazine, you feel like you’re playing with one hand tied behind your back because we’re committed to legacy rules that, from a personal perspective, I just don’t think are relevant anymore,” editor-in-chief Chad Millman told Adweek. Knight, Gates Donate $3.25 Million to Project Aimed at Media Metrics (Poynter / MediaWire) The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are aiming some serious scratch at a problem Meena Thiruvengadam wrote about on Poynter.org recently. The Economist Looks to Colleges for New Readers (NYT) The new campaign is primarily digitally based and builds on the fact that many new readers first learn about the magazine from a professor or parent. [emailonly]{{{ sbox04 }}}[/emailonly] CBS' Miller Rises Above The Fray in Boston Case (The Associated Press) If John Miller had scheduled an earlier flight, the CBS News coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath would have been much weaker. His dual role as a low-key explainer and reporter helped keep CBS ahead on key details of the investigation as the suspects' identities began to emerge, and away from missteps made by other news organizations. TVNewser “Sources are people you meet on other stories and you develop them into sources of information,” he said. “I’m calling friends, and I’m asking them, ‘What’s happening here?" Facebook Loses Millions of Users As Biggest Markets Peak (The Guardian) Facebook has lost millions of users per month in its biggest markets, independent data suggests, as alternative social networks attract the attention of those looking for fresh online playgrounds. In the last month, the world's largest social network has lost 6 million US visitors, a 4 percent fall, according to analysis firm SocialBakers. Google, Twitter, Facebook And The New Global Battle Over The Future of Free Speech (The New Republic) A year ago this month, Stanford Law School hosted a little-noticed meeting that may help decide the future of free speech online.

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Morning Media Newsfeed: Diller Regrets Newsweek | SI's Gay Player Scoop | Vieira Snubs Stelter

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