Morning Media Newsfeed: <i>Daily News</i> Layoffs | News Corp. Soars

[emailonly]{{{ sbox300x250 }}}[/emailonly] Click here to receive Mediabistro's Morning Media Newsfeed via email. Pink Slips For A Dozen-Plus Daily News Staffers (Capital New York) The New York Daily News is now undergoing what employees of the tabloid have been fearing for weeks: Multiple insiders tell Capital that layoffs hit the newsroom Wednesday. FishbowlNY Two veterans of the paper -- Albor Ruiz and Joanna Molloy -- were among those let go. Ruiz had been with the Daily News for 19 years; Molloy for 15. Other names in the bunch include Christina Boyle and Robert Gearty, both reporters. NY Observer Rumors have been circulating for some time that a round of pink slips was imminent at the Daily News. Although this is the most significant number of layoffs since editor-in-chief Colin Myler took over in November 2011, there has been a slow trickle of departures over the past months. Features editor John Oswald left in March and features reporter Jacob Osterhout vented his rage in a goodbye email after he was let go earlier this spring. News Corp. Beats Profit Estimates on Higher Licensing Revenue (Bloomberg Businessweek) Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation beat fiscal third-quarter profit estimates on higher licensing fees for television shows such as American Idol and New Girl. Excluding some items, per-share profit was 36 cents, the New York-based company said in a statement. Analysts predicted 35 cents on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Capital New York On a call with Wall Street analysts Wednesday, News Corp. chief operating officer Chase Carey said the international media conglomerate's planned split is "our top priority." And Dave Devoe, News Corp.'s chief financial officer, said, "We are on plan for the separation to be completed around the end of the current fiscal year," which is in late June. That's one year after News Corp. announced that it would break itself up into two distinct publicly traded companies -- one encompassing television and film assets like Fox News and 20th Century Fox; the other a collection of publishing titles like The Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins. The Guardian Dissident shareholders are pressing once more for media mogul Murdoch to step down as chairman of News Corp. Shareholders from the US, UK and Canada filed a resolution on Tuesday calling for News Corp. to appoint an independent chairman. A similar resolution attracted strong support at the media company's annual shareholder meeting last year. AOL Revenue Is Up, Still Gets Millions From Dial-Up Subscribers (FishbowlNY) AOL had some positives in its first-quarter earnings report. Total revenue for the company was up 2 percent compared to last year, hitting $538 million. Ad sales were also up 9 percent, from $330 million to $359 million. Those are good signs, but as always, the hilarious highlight of any AOL earnings report is noting that it’s still raking in lots of cash from people using its dial-up service. Though subscription revenue declined 9 percent for Q1, those customers who continue to live in 1999 brought the company $165 million. Adweek For the past several years, AOL has worked to reinvent itself as a media company, with acquisitions like The Huffington Post, Engadget, Patch and TechCrunch. Expanding the audience for news sites and generating content has proven expensive; the company reported an operating loss of almost $5 million from its media properties. This is an improvement from the $16.8 million loss reported a year ago, showing that the company is turning around, if slowly. Splat F At the end of March, almost 2.7 million people still subscribed to AOL service, the company reported Wednesday morning. That’s about where Netflix stood at the end of 2004. Since then, Netflix's subscriber base has grown -- 29 million at the end of March -- and AOL's has declined at a remarkably parallel rate. But that makes perfect sense: Nothing says "dial-up" more than AOL, and few services have benefited more from the growth of broadband than Netflix. [emailonly]{{{ jodslot01 }}}[/emailonly] Megyn Kelly Tells Viewers She's Going to 'Rectify' Fox News' 'Lopsided' Benghazi Coverage (HuffPost) Fox News host Megyn Kelly announced to her viewers on Wednesday that her network's coverage of the Benghazi hearings on Capitol Hill had been "lopsided." Fox News covered the hearings more aggressively than any other cable news channel. As she cut to a commercial, Kelly said that Fox News had been uneven in which politicians it had been talking over. "We're trying to get in our commercial breaks here," she said. "Now we're getting a little lopsided in terms of the Democrats versus the Republicans, so we're going to try to rectify that for you." She then cut away from Republican John Mica. LinkedIn Continues Its Evolution as A Media Entity With The Launch of Magazine-Style News Channels (paidContent) LinkedIn has been making some significant moves towards becoming a media entity focused on business news, and the launch of new magazine-style channels of content is just the latest example of this. Pulitzer Winners Leave Times-Picayune For The Advocate (The Advocate) Four leading reporters and editors from The Times-Picayune, including Pulitzer Prize winners who covered Hurricane Katrina, signed up to work for The Advocate Wednesday, a week after businessman John Georges bought the daily newspaper and promised to beef up its operations in New Orleans. [emailonly]{{{ sbox01 }}}[/emailonly] CNN Going to Chicagoland (TVNewser) CNN has ordered an eight-episode docu-series about the city of Chicago, Chicagoland. The series is being produced by Robert Redford and Laura Michalchyshyn of Sundance Productions, along with Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin of the Sundance Channel series Brick City, which was set in the city of Newark and helped give Cory Booker a national profile. CNBC Anchor to Host MSNBC's Way Too Early (THR / The Live Feed) Brian Shactman, formerly a fill-in anchor on CNBC, will take over as host for the network's early morning talk show. Willie Geist, who was named a Today show host last October, was the former host of the Morning Joe lead-in. TVNewser “I’m just extremely excited and grateful for the opportunity and I’ll be there between 3 and 4 a.m. if anyone wants to say hello,” Shactman said on Morning Joe Wednesday. David Zinczenko on His New ‘High-Profile Life’ And The Real Story Behind His Leaving Rodale (FishbowlNY) I had been looking forward to Wednesday’s Michael’s lunch for quite a while. David Zinczenko, who I met in this very dining room many years ago, was joining me with his business partner Stephen Perrine and Patrick Connors, the new publisher of Men's Fitness. As most faithful readers of this column know, Dave, arguably one of the highest profile editors in history during his tenure as editor-in-chief of Men's Health, and Stephen, head of Rodale Books, were unceremoniously fired from their positions at Rodale last November. [emailonly]{{{ sbox02 }}}[/emailonly] Hearst Hires Digital Chief to Oversee Web Brands (NYT) Hearst Magazines, the publisher of such venerable titles as Esquire and Cosmopolitan, said on Wednesday that it was creating a new position, president of digital media. NowThisNews Raises A New Round to Help Bring Pregnant Panda Videos to Your Phone (AllThingsD) NowThisNews, the startup that’s trying to create a video news service for the iPhone generation, has raised another $4.8 million. NowThisNews has now raised nearly $10 million in the last year; Eric Hippeau, Lerer Ventures’ managing director, says NowThisNews is still talking to some strategic investors about kicking in a bit more. Fusion Unveils Logo, Adds Former Current TV 'Vanguard' Correspondent (TVNewser) The ABC News/Univision cable news channel Fusion continues to hire staff and now has a logo for its fall launch. Fusion also announced that investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller will be joining the channel as a correspondent. [emailonly]{{{ sbox03 }}}[/emailonly] Protesters Want to Prevent Sale of Tribune to Koch Brothers (Chicago Sun-Times) A group that says it is adamantly against the potential sale of the Tribune Co. newspapers to the Koch Brothers held a protest outside the Tribune Tower on Wednesday, temporarily blocking pedestrian traffic on busy Michigan Avenue. Microsoft Mulling Nook Media LLC Purchase For $1 Billion (TechCrunch) Microsoft is offering to pay $1 billion to buy the digital assets of Nook Media LLC, the digital book and college book joint venture with Barnes & Noble and other investors, according to internal documents we've obtained. Government Acts on Health Care Costs, in Part Because of Time Story (Poynter / MediaWire) The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will release a data file showing prices for inpatient services in 2011 at U.S. hospitals, Steven Brill reports. Brian Cook at the department's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells Brill the move "comes in part" because of Brill's article from March about health care costs. 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MediaJobsDaily Survey Reveals Correlation Between Short Names & High Salaries UnBeige In Creative Cloud Push, Adobe Discontinues Boxed Software Advertise on Our Blog Network Mediabistro Chats Who do you think is the most trusted newsperson on TV? mbist.ro/12UUywG (via @tvnewser) marysrockman @tombrokaw by far! Sailfish157 Bill Moyers. Hands down. Those who miss Moyers & Co. miss a heck of a great, great program. brainypintsizer @bwilliams @tombrokaw +PBS team also. If they weren't satirists @TheDailyShow or @StephenAtHome...yes, I'm serious. whitney hughes Robin Roberts Follow Mediabistro on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

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Morning Media Newsfeed: Daily News Layoffs | News Corp. Soars | AOL Revenue Up

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