Morning Media Newsfeed: Barnes & Noble CEO Gone | More Snowden Video

[emailonly]{{{ sbox300x250 }}}[/emailonly] Click here to receive Mediabistro's Morning Media Newsfeed via email. Barnes & Noble CEO Lynch Out After Nook Woes Deepen (Forbes) Another dreary chapter for Barnes & Noble came to a close Monday with the resignation of chief executive William Lynch, the man brought on board to build the company’s tablet business. Officially, Barnes & Noble offered no explanation for Lynch’s departure. It’s not difficult to read between the lines, though. Lynch, a one-time Palm executive, was unable to push Barnes & Noble into the tablet business, a market heavily dominated by Apple's iPad, and to a far lesser extent, Amazon.com's Kindle. NYT The moves on Monday appeared to be a step toward separating the digital and retail divisions, as the company has indicated it might do. Barnes & Noble has been in talks over a potential sale of its digital assets, as well as its 675 bookstores. Microsoft is one potential buyer of the Nook business; last year it invested hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire 17.6 percent of the division. TechCrunch E-readers never managed to beat back competition from the ever-strong Amazon, and the move into Nook tablets, based on Android, never quite hit the mark, either -- a position that only seemed to get worse over time. Barnes & Noble's last quarter saw the company report a loss of nearly $119 million, more than double the loss in the quarter a year before. The Nook division specifically, the thing on which B&N has pinned its future, made only $108 million in revenue in that period, a 34 percent drop from a year ago. GalleyCat "I appreciate the opportunity to serve as CEO of this terrific company over the last three years," said Lynch in a statement. "There is a great executive team and board in place at Barnes & Noble, and I look forward to the many innovations the company will be bringing to its millions of physical and digital media customers in the future." The Snowden Video Sequel And Brazil Fallout (The Guardian / Comment Is Free) Glenn Greenwald: "For the last two weeks, Edward Snowden has been unable to speak publicly as he attempts to secure asylum. During that time, all sorts of accusations, innuendo, and other demonization campaigns have been directed at him by political officials and various members of the US media. On Monday, The Guardian published another video of new excerpts from the interview which Laura Poitras and I conducted with Snowden, this one seven-minutes long. It was filmed in Hong Kong on June 6." Politico In a new video released by The Guardian, Snowden says he once believed in the “nobility” of the U.S. government’s causes but grew disillusioned. “I believed in the goodness of what we were doing, I believed in the nobility of our intention to free oppressed people overseas. But over time, over the length of my career, as I watched the news and I increasingly was exposed to true information that had not been propagandized in the media, that we were actually involved in misleading the public... in order to create a certain mindset in the global consciousness. And I was actually a victim of that,” Snowden said. The Washington Post / World Snowden’s diminishing possibilities of remaining free to continue releasing information about secret U.S. surveillance programs increasingly appear to hinge on Venezuela. NBCNews / World News The status of Snowden’s bid for asylum in Venezuela remained unclear Tuesday after the country's apparent deadline passed. The Venezuelan Embassy in Moscow said it had no information on whether the fugitive NSA leaker had completed a deal that would allow him to leave the transit area of an airport in the Russian capital. Tom Finkel Named Editor of Village Voice (FishbowlNY) Tom Finkel has been named the next editor of The Village Voice. Finkel is a veteran of Voice Media Group (previously Village Voice Media). He served as managing editor of the Miami New Times from 1989 to 1997, then shifted to editing City Pages for four years. Finkel most recently served as editor of Riverfront Times, where he has been for the past 10 years. NY Observer “The Village Voice is the quintessential reflection of New York culture,” Finkel said. “My parents had deep roots there -- my father grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, my mother on Riverside Drive -- and I’m thrilled at the prospect of my family putting down roots of our own.” Included in the announcement were news of other hires from Voice Media Group papers. Albert Samaha, Tessa Stuart and Anna Merlan all joined the downtown paper as staff writers earlier this month. Capital New York The company hasn't had much luck with appointing outsiders -- even when they were actual New Yorkers -- to edit the Voice. The six-month tenure of David Blum in 2006 and 2007 was by all accounts a disaster. More recently, Will Bourne lasted just five months in the post, having resigned in May after refusing to fire Michael Musto, Michael Feingold and Robert Sietsema, the latest high-profile layoffs in a torturous series that over the past seven years has also claimed the jobs of Voice legends like Robert Christgau, Wayne Barrett, Nat Hentoff and Jim Hoberman, among many others. [emailonly]{{{ jodslot01 }}}[/emailonly] Pando Daily Denies It Burned Through All $4 Million of Its Funding (The Atlantic Wire) After "sources" told "recovering journalist" Dan Lyons, formerly of ReadWrite and Forbes, that the tech industry blog Pando Daily "burned thru 4m" on its way to "lights out," Pando Daily founder Sarah Lacy has categorically denied her site has financial woes. "We never even raised $4 million so that's obviously bullsh*t," she told the Atlantic Wire. Pando launched with $2.5 million in funding back in January of 2012 and they had a smaller round of funding in May of this year to bring it up to $3 million. So, yes, that part of Lyons's story is technically impossible. Further, however, Lacy denies any financial problems at all. Egypt's Media War Is Almost As Nasty As The One in The Streets (Foreign Policy) As the Cairo press corps gathered for a press conference with a spokesman for the Egyptian military, some journalists reserved their harshest criticism for one of their own. Before the beginning of the event, which was intended to shed light on this morning's violence, members of the press chanted for the removal of an Al Jazeera reporter. As the reporter left amid cheers from the crowd, the military spokesman assured the audience that he supported freedom of the press and that "Egypt is a country of freedom and democracy." Spitzer Hits Back at New York Post (Politico / Dylan Byers on Media) Ex-governor Eliot Spitzer seems prepped to go head-to-head with the New York Post as he stages his bid for political resurrection. The Post responded to Spitzer's announcement that he would be running for New York City comptroller with a front-page headline that read, "Here We Ho Again," a direct knock on the prostitution scandal that forced Spitzer to resign in 2008. Asked about the headline during an interview with the Bill Press Show on Monday, Spitzer replied, “I have not seen it. New York Post is a newspaper?” TVNewser Spitzer resigned as New York governor five years ago amid a prostitution scandal. In 2010 he began appearing, and in some cases filling in as a host, on MSNBC. In the Fall of 2010, Spitzer joined CNN hosting a show called Parker/Spitzer. When Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker departed, it was renamed In the Arena, with Spitzer as solo host. That show was canceled two years ago this month. When Keith Olbermann abruptly left Current TV in March of 2012, Spitzer slid into that timeslot. But that lasted less than a year, as Spitzer ended the show when the network was sold to Al Jazeera in January. [emailonly]{{{ sbox01 }}}[/emailonly] Newseum Draws Visitors But Loses Money; Officials Reorganize Education Programs (The Washington Post / AP) In five years since moving to its new home overlooking the U.S. Capitol, the Newseum has become a major attraction, with 4 million people visiting its exhibits about journalism and the First Amendment. Yet it’s been struggling mightily to cover its costs. Public financial documents reviewed by The Associated Press show revenue fell short of expenses by millions of dollars in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Its parent organization, the Freedom Forum, has used its endowment to provide the bulk of the Newseum’s operating revenue since its creation, and the endowment’s principal value has steadily declined from $600 million to about $373 million at the end of 2011. Is This The Worst Thing BuzzFeed’s Ever Done? (Slate / BrowBeat) BuzzFeed is not known for its restraint, decorum, or adherence to traditional journalistic standards. But it’s nonetheless usually pretty easy to tell the difference between a BuzzFeed headline (“The 15 Most Epic Puppy Stampedes”) and an Onion parody of a BuzzFeed headline (“40 Numbers Under 40”). Monday, sadly, BuzzFeed crossed that line, publishing “The Story of Egypt’s Revolution in Jurassic Park GIFs.” Let that sink in a minute. “The Story of Egypt’s Revolution in Jurassic Park GIFs.” The democratic yearnings of an oppressed people reduced to 20-year-old catchphrases. Solomon Returns to Lead Content, Business Strategies at The Washington Times (The Washington Times) The Washington Times announced Monday that award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon is returning after a hiatus of more than three-and-a-half years to oversee the newspaper’s content, digital and business strategies. FishbowlDC What this all means is anyone’s guess, as was Solomon’s previous position at TWT. As hilariously explained by president and CEO Larry Beasley in a statement, this means Solomon is in charge of editorial and business and advertising, because those parts of a newspaper are always supposed to be smushed together as one. FishbowlDC From a TWT insider: "This raises the question, ‘What is The Washington Times?’ TWT’s brand has always been as a conservative alternative to the Post, but Solomon is not and never has been a conservative, having worked at the liberal Post, a liberal wire service and the George Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity." [emailonly]{{{ sbox02 }}}[/emailonly] Fox News' Hit The Five Marks Two-Year Milestone (Boston Globe / AP) This week, the panelists on Fox News Channel’s unexpected ensemble hit The Five mark two years on the air -- or 22 months longer than planned. The program’s deceptively simple premise is five folks sitting around a table at 5 p.m., kicking around the day’s news and hot topics. The Five has emerged as Fox’s second most popular show this year, behind only Bill O'Reilly, despite not having the larger pool of potential viewers that prime time usually provides. TVNewser Initially billed as a summer replacement program, The Five quickly became a permanent part of FNC's afternoon lineup. The panelists shared with mediabistroTV their favorite moments from the show. TV Is Americans' Main Source of News (Gallup) Television is the main place Americans say they turn to for news about current events (55 percent), leading the Internet, at 21 percent. Nine percent say newspapers or other print publications are their main news source, followed by radio, at 6 percent. These results are based on a Gallup poll of 2,048 national adults conducted June 20-24, in which Americans were asked to say, unaided, what they consider to be their main source of news about U.S. and global events. Politico / Dylan Byers on Media The survey is somewhat flawed, however. It does not include mobile activity, which is on the rise, and does not analyze general trends, including the decline in television viewership among younger audiences. More trouble still, via Gallup News's deputy managing editor: "Gallup question [was] open ended, so Americans can name any source. When they say "Internet" they could mean desktop or mobile." TVSpy A couple of trends to note: The percentage of Americans polled who say TV news is their main source of current events drops as education level rises and rises as employment level drops. According to Gallup, Americans with a high school education or less watch more TV news (61 percent) than those with post-graduate degrees (43 percent). And those who are employed full- or part-time watch less TV news (49 percent) than those who are not currently working (63 percent). Netflix Is Making Both Cable And Internet Television Better (The Atlantic Wire) Not only is Netflix creating compelling original content worth watching on its streaming service, but the HBO-of-the-future is facilitating a similar revolution on the cable networks as well. Hoping to get more exclusive rights to shows that its subscribers value, Netflix has started investing in the type of stuff that appears on the traditional boob-tube first. [emailonly]{{{ sbox03 }}}[/emailonly] Criticizing CNN: Goodbye to That (Pressthink / Jay Rosen) As of Monday, I have retired from criticism of CNN for falling short of some sort of journalistic standard that news providers should maintain. That activity no longer makes sense. Let someone else receive the “ratings, you idiot” replies on Twitter. I’m done. With A Coming Void in Oregon’s News Ecosystem, Public Broadcasting’s Trying to Build A New Kind of State Wire (Nieman Journalism Lab) Can Oregon Public Broadcasting, working with local newspapers, TV and radio stations, and bloggers, make a substantial state news report in the face of cutbacks elsewhere? If You Don’t Like The Chaos of Breaking News, You Should Probably Stay Off Twitter (paidContent) As with so many other news events, there was plenty of speculation and misinformation flowing on Twitter about the crash of an airplane at San Francisco airport -- but for better or worse, that is just the way the news works now. Mediabistro Blogs AllFacebook Facebook Begins Graph Search Rollout SocialTimes Favoriting Tweets is BAD Twitter Strategy AllTwitter 10 Tips For Finding A Job Using Social Media GalleyCat Avoid the Passive Voice with Zombies TVNewser Here’s How The Five Came To Be TVSpy NYT: Political Ad Revenue Makes Swing State Stations More Valuable Lost Remote Will ABC’s Once Upon A Time Franchise be a Success? FishbowlDC Daily Caller Has Found Its Next Sex Scandal FishbowlNY Poll: Majority of Americans Get News From TV AppNewser StubHub Releases Spotify App PRNewser Back-to-School Ads Before Fireworks? How Early is Too Early? AgencySpy john st. Raises Up for Lake Huron with ‘Stop the Drop’ MediaJobsDaily CEO Talks Candidly About Layoffs: ‘It Sucks Emotionally’ UnBeige Seven Questions for Ambra Medda Advertise on Our Blog Network Mediabistro Chats What medium is your main source of news? mbist.ro/14DaYO1 (via @tvnewser) sailfish157 TV and newspapers. For me, 55 yo, print still looks more legitimate than internet. gfox10 social media for up-to-the-second breaking news, news websites, blogs & TV for in-depth coverage & analysis GayleSabrina Television, CNN. . . June Newbery Facebook Tijjani Tamas BBC Follow Mediabistro on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

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Morning Media Newsfeed: Barnes & Noble CEO Gone | More Snowden Video | New Editor at Voice

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