Morning Media Newsfeed: Vargas, LA Times Form Venture | HBO Secures Oliver

[emailonly]{{{ sbox300x250 }}}[/emailonly] Click here to receive Mediabistro's Morning Media Newsfeed via email. LA Times Forms Venture With Jose Antonio Vargas to Create #EmergingUS Media Platform (LA Times) The Los Angeles Times Tuesday announced a venture with journalist Jose Antonio Vargas to establish #EmergingUS, a multimedia platform which will explore the evolving American identity in the 21st century. FishbowlDC #EmergingUS will explore the nexus of race, ethnicity and immigration. Plans for the section, set to debut in the spring, include the full multimedia array of graphics, video and social media outreach. Politico / Dylan Byers on Media Vargas is a Filipino journalist who has made his status as an undocumented immigrant the central theme of his work. The Times cannot hire Vargas directly because of his citizenship status and will instead make him a partner. Poynter / MediaWire Vargas revealed his undocumented immigrant status in an article in The New York Times Magazine in 2011. Last year, he created the film Documented about his own experiences in the U.S. Vargas, who started Define American, was also detained last year in McAllen, Texas by U.S. border patrol agents. He was later released. CNN Austin Beutner, the publisher and CEO of the Times, said #EmergingUS is the first of several "verticals" of news coverage the newspaper will establish in the months to come. He cited the New York Times’ DealBook section of mergers and acquisitions coverage and Politico’s coverage of Washington as two examples of the approach he'd like to take. The name of the venture announced on Tuesday can be read two ways: as "Emerging Us" or "Emerging U.S." for the United States. HBO Ensures John Oliver Won’t Replace Jon Stewart on The Daily Show (Mediaite) One week after Jon Stewart announced he would be leaving The Daily Show later this year, HBO has locked in Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver through 2017 to ensure the former correspondent and fill-in host won’t be tempted to return to his old Comedy Central home anytime soon. THR / The Live Feed Oliver left his correspondent gig at the Comedy Central series in 2013 for a two-year pact with HBO after a wildly successful stint guest-hosting for Stewart. And though few expected that Oliver would depart his incredibly successful pay cable upstart, which has been a boon to the network's Sunday nights and Web presence, his name was nonetheless floated as soon as Stewart's exit was announced. Variety HBO said a third and fourth season of Last Week Tonight would each consist of 35 episodes, the same number Oliver is producing for the show’s current, second season. Deadline The renewal also follows Last Week’s big win at the WGA Awards on Saturday where it topped heavyweights like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, HBO’s incumbent weekly comedy/talk show Real Time With Bill Maher, and 40-year-old Saturday Night Live to win the comedy/variety category for his first major awards recognition. Columnist Resigns Over Telegraph’s ‘Fraud' (Politico / Dylan Byers on Media) The former chief political commentator for the English newspaper the Daily Telegraph has resigned after claiming to have discovered that advertisers held immense power over the newspaper’s editorial division. Peter Oborne, who had been with the Telegraph for five years, wrote a lengthy and blistering post on OpenDemocracy.net on Tuesday accusing the newspaper of committing “fraud” on its readers for not properly covering newsworthy events that involved their advertisers. The Guardian Oborne, associate editor of the Spectator and a familiar face on Channel 4 Dispatches documentaries, claimed the paper deliberately suppressed stories about HSBC, including last week’s revelations that its Swiss subsidiary helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars in assets, in order to keep its valuable advertising account. Poynter / MediaWire After publishing six articles in an investigation into HSBC, the Telegraph’s investigations team was “ordered to destroy all emails, reports and documents related to the HSBC investigation,” Oborne writes. The Telegraph was willing to go to great lengths to get back in HSBC’s good graces, Oborne writes. He says Murdoch MacLennan, the chief executive of Telegraph Media Group, was “determined not to allow any criticism of the international bank.” Mediaite Oborne said he resigned in December and agreed to leave quietly. But last week’s incident spurred him to publish his complaints. [emailonly]{{{ jodslot01 }}}[/emailonly] David Carr, Late NYT Columnist, Remembered for Devotion to Journalism, Family (HuffPost) Hundreds of mourners gathered together on a snow-covered Tuesday morning to honor and celebrate the beloved and esteemed New York Times media columnist David Carr. The media icon died at the age of 58 on Thursday after collapsing to the floor of the newsroom. An autopsy later showed that Carr's unexpected death was the result of complications from lung cancer, with heart disease as a contributing factor. New York Post Dozens of celebrities -- including Lena Dunham, Anthony Bourdain and Tom Arnold -- crammed into the Upper East Side’s Church of St. Ignatius Loyola to pay tribute to their lost friend Monday night at Carr’s wake. Other Times bigwigs, including axed editor-in-chief Jill Abramson, former executive editor Bill Keller and public editor Margaret Sullivan, also stopped by to remember their colleague. TVNewser 60 Minutes correspondents Morley Safer and Steve Kroft were among those who eulogized Bob Simon at his private funeral at the Metropolitan Opera House Tuesday morning. The service, which got underway around 10:45 a.m., was attended by 150 close friends and colleagues. Simon died last Wednesday as the result of a car accident in Manhattan. Warren Buffett Takes Stake in 21st Century Fox (THR) Berkshire Hathaway, the firm founded by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, disclosed on Tuesday that it has taken a position in 21st Century Fox, the media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Variety Berkshire has bought up about 4.75 million shares of Fox during the fourth quarter of 2014, according to an SEC filing Tuesday. The Class A shares were valued at about $181 million as of Dec. 31. Berkshire’s largest media investment at present appears to be in DirecTV, with more than 31 million shares valued at more than $2.5 billion. That means Berkshire is poised to profit handsomely from the satcaster’s pending $50 billion merger with AT&T, assuming it is cleared by regulators. Fortune 21st Century Fox was formed as the result of the 2013 split of News Corp.’s publishing and mass media businesses and, last year, Murdoch used it to make an unsuccessful run at buying rival Time Warner. Berkshire’s addition of the Fox stake follows last year’s investment in cable television provider Charter Communications. Viacom Executive Van Toffler Steps Down (WSJ / CMO Today) Change is afoot at the Viacom division that includes MTV, VH1 and CMT. Van Toffler, the president of the group that houses these Viacom channels, will be stepping down in April, he announced to staff on Tuesday, although he will stick around to executive produce awards shows like MTV’s Video Music Awards. Deadline Toffler will be launching a content creation and acquisition company tentatively named Below The Radar. In a staff email, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman indicated that there would be announcements about the company’s future executive structure later this week. [emailonly]{{{ sbox01 }}}[/emailonly] ABC News Hero Kevin Delany Dead at 87 (TVNewser) Kevin Delany, who helped rescue more than 100 Vietnamese ABC employees and their family members as Saigon fell in 1975, has passed away at age 87. The former ABC News journalist had been battling Alzheimer’s disease. FishbowlDC Delany got his start started in journalism as a copy boy for the New York Daily News while attending the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. After a sting in the Navy, he became a reporter and later a television columnist. He joined CBS News in the mid-1950s as a reporter and assignment editor and, later, as CBS News correspondent in Hong Kong. WSJ Updates Print Edition, Renames Marketplace (Capital New York) When devout Wall Street Journal readers opened their papers Tuesday, they noticed an array of changes to the 126-year-old broadsheet's U.S. print edition. The most notable is that Marketplace -- the heart of the Journal’s business report -- has been rebranded "Business & Tech," marking the section's first name change since 1988. FishbowlNY Other changes to the paper include more promotion of reporting and business analysis on A1, smaller headlines and slight improvements to colors. AMC Entertainment Says Earnings Are Strong Despite 'Sluggish Box Office' (THR) AMC Entertainment on Tuesday reported record fourth-quarter financial results, by some metrics, in spite of what CEO Gerry Lopez called "a lackluster film slate" and "sluggish box office." Variety The theater chain’s success was fueled by stronger concessions revenue, which increased 8.8 percent to $215.3 million, up from $197.9 million in the year-ago period. The company hit a record of $4.46 in food and beverage sales per patron. That offset declining admissions, which fell 4.5 percent to $460.3 million. [emailonly]{{{ sbox02 }}}[/emailonly] Why A Former Gawker Editor Is Pushing Local News to National Audiences (Street Fight) Can offbeat local news stories attract national audiences (and advertisers)? Former Gawker and Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio thinks so. He recently launched Ratter, an online tabloid centered around news from cities like San Francisco and backed by $1 million from Gawker Media chief Nick Denton and others. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: 25 Million Facebook Interactions for India’s Defeat of Pakistan (SocialTimes) Some 9 million Facebook users were responsible for 25 million interactions related to Sunday’s ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 match between rivals India and Pakistan, in which India prevailed 300-224. New NYT Mag Is Gigantic (FishbowlNY) As we’ve mentioned, the first redesigned New York Times Magazine under the direction of editor Jake Silverstein debuts this Sunday. Along with many changes on the inside and outside, it appears that -- at least for the first issue -- it’s going to be huge. [emailonly]{{{ sbox03 }}}[/emailonly] Sky Starts Process to Take 100 Percent Control of Sky Deutschland (THR) Pan-European pay TV giant Sky said Tuesday that it has notified the management board of Germany's Sky Deutschland that it has started a process to buy out the remaining 4 percent stake in the company held by small shareholders. Univision Communications CFO Resigns (THR) Spanish-language media giant Univision Communications said Tuesday that CFO and senior executive VP Andy Hobson has resigned. Snapchat Said to Seek Up to $19 Billion Value in Financing (Bloomberg) Snapchat Inc. is seeking a new round of funding that would value the company as high as $19 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter said, making it the third-most valuable venture-backed company in the world. Adweek Blog Network FishbowlDC Correspondent Who Rescued Vietnam Refugees Has Died TVNewser Rhonda Glenn, First Female Sportscaster at ESPN, Dies TVSpy Man Famous for Walking to Work, Now Needs to Walk Away Lost Remote Is Amazon’s Content Too Safe? SocialTimes ‘Saturday Night Live’ Special Breaks Twitter TV Records FishbowlNY New NY Times Mag is Gigantic GalleyCat Philip Levine Has Died PRNewser Grading 3 Awful Athletes’ Apologies (or Lack Thereof) AgencySpy Haberman Signs Target’s Group Creative Director Advertise on Our Blog Network

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Morning Media Newsfeed: Vargas, LA Times Form Venture | HBO Secures Oliver

LA Times, Jose Antonio Vargas partner up for new venture. HBO ensures John Oliver won't replace Jon Stewart. These stories and more in today's Morning Media Newsfeed

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