As news broke on Tuesday afternoon that the authorities had begun closing in on suspected gunman Christopher Dorner, who has for days been the subject of an intense manhunt, the Los Angeles Times found itself hosting a collision of art and reality on the front page of its website.

For a time, the newspaper's coverage was wrapped inside a dominant ad for the TNT police drama "Southland," with images (above) of actor-officers with their guns drawn. Several minutes after the news began unfolding, The Times took the ad down (below). 

The Times explained to brandchannel through a spokesman: "Given the heightened interest and anxiety around this breaking news, The Times and TNT determined that it would be in the best interest of our readers and Southland viewers to temporarily take the ad off the latimes.com homepage."Continue reading...

As traditional media brands continue to be disrupted by digital aspirants, BuzzFeed and Tumblr have emerged as robust contenders for dominance in the arenas of social content-sharing and socially-driven advertising.

Buzzfeed just raised $19.3 million in a fourth round of funding led by existing investor New Enterprise Associates, resulting in a war chest of $34-million to hire new writers, expand the network globally and begin an acquisition shopping spree.

Tumblr, meanwhile, counts more than 200 million monthly visitors and 18 billion pageviews and is also looking for revenue-generation to justify its valuation, and visual ads are a seamless and organic fit. Which is better positioned to win the Interwebz?Continue reading...

It’s the kind of headline you can’t make up, but the New York Times got the scoop on Current TV's sale: “Al Jazeera Seeks a U.S. Voice Where Gore Failed.”

Since 2006, Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news giant, has been struggling to convince Americans its English-language 24/7 news channel is legitimate, not a mouthpiece for Middle Eastern propaganda (or worse), and their acquisition of Al Gore’s ill-fated, left-leaning and user-generated Current TV, just bought them 40 million homes. Never mind that it has picked up a raft of awards including a Columbia Journalism Award, a DuPont award, and a George Polk award.

Financed by the government of Qatar, Al Jazeera, once despised for broadcasting videotapes from Al Qaeda members and sympathizers, Current will be rebranded Al Jazeera America at a cost of about $500 million (including a $100 million payout for Gore, who owned a 20% stake in the media property). The burning question, with Americans focused on domestic issues and the economy, will U.S. viewers watch Al Jazeera's take on global news and current affairs?Continue reading...

After a tumultuous year for News Corporation which has seen the company rocked by an ethics scandal, Rupert Murdoch has named longtime lieutenant Robert Thomson head of global publishing as his company prepares to separate its entertainment and news/book publishing assets into Fox Group and News Corporation, respectively.

As part of the move, News Corp. is folding its digital magazine app that was its Greg Clayman-headed iPadazine, The Daily, which will cease publishing on Dec. 15. While it will no longer exist as an iPad app, The Daily brand will survive as a news channel on properties such as NYPost.com. Now Clayman will oversee digital for News Corp. as part of the executive shuffle involved with separating the company.

First announced on June 28th, the pending company split will group News International's UK titles, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, the Australian and other News Ltd papers and its HarperCollins book publishing entity under the News Corporation umbrella, while the entertainment properties will fall under the Fox Group. Thomson will run News Corporation while Chase Carey will serve as President and COO of Fox Group with James Murdoch as Deputy COO.

“This is an incredibly exciting time, for me personally, and for our companies’ ambitious futures,” stated Murdoch. “The challenges we face in the publishing and media industries are great, but the opportunities are greater.”Continue reading...

The British Broadcasting Corporation went live on the airwaves with its first radio news bulletins on Nov. 14, 1922. The top news that day: a train robbery and the notorious London fog. The BBC is still an institution, even as the venerable broadcaster is gripped by an ethics scandal, as it marks the 90th anniversary of that first transmission by making another bit of history.

To mark the occasion, BBC Radio broadcast a three-minute collage from Blur frontman Damon Albarn, 2LO Calling, named for the first transmitter used in 1922. It played on every BBC radio channel at 5.33pm GMT simultaneously, reaching more than 80 million listeners on 55 radio stations, the broadcaster's first simulcast since that first transmission.

"The first broadcast by the 2LO 90 years ago marked the moment when radio moved from the realm of the 'amateur enthusiast' to the first proper public broadcasting service in Britain,” said Tim Boon, head of research and public history at London's Science Museum, which is hosting an exhibition about the anniversary that features the device.Continue reading...

NowThis News is hoping to put the likes of CNN, ABC News, the Washington Post and Huffington Post on notice with a new model of how to report and distribute the news — one, not coincidentally, staffed by a team of newshounds who came from those old school media outlets and who are eager to reinvent their business.

Formerly known as Planet Daily, NowThis News (don't call it NTN) describes its mission as a post-TV, post-newspaper and post-website newsgathering operation, "A brand new video network built from scratch for people who get their news on mobile devices and through social streams."

The startup has emerged from stealth mode with a Tumblr, a Facebook page and Twitter feed — not to mention details on its executive team helmed by former CNN executive Eason Jordan as GM, Ed O'Keefe from ABC News as editor-in-chief and Washington Post vet Katharine Zaleski as managing editor.

“We’re creating NowThis News to meet straight on the inevitable and rapid changes happening in news consumption: digital, mobile, social and video," Kenneth Lerer, Partner of Lerer Ventures, co-founder of NowThis News along with business artner Eric Hippeau, said in a statement.

“It makes no sense for me, at all, to produce what’s already on TV,” said Lerer to AllThingsD. “We’re going to produce short video pieces that will hopefully be very viral and very social, one at a time.” Jordan added, “There’s an abundance of talk. We intend to report the news.”Continue reading...

Jim Walton graduated from the University of Maryland in 1981 and took an entry-level job at CNN, the network Ted Turner had founded only a year before. Now, after many titles and many changes, Walton will be going out on top, even as the CNN brand struggles to maintain audience and relevance day to day.

The Time Warner-owned media giant announced Friday that Walton will be stepping down as president of CNN Worldwide at year’s end.

“I am proud of what we have accomplished together over these last 10 years – innovative programming, the development of great talent in front of and behind the cameras, expansion in digital and mobile, significant investment and expansion in international coverage, financial success and, most importantly, great and trusted journalism,” Walton wrote in a note to the staff.

Of course there are also plenty of things he probably won’t miss about the job.Continue reading...

It's tough being CNN. The brand that invented the 24-hour news cycle and which made its name covering the Iraq war and other crises has always had to find a way to drive tune-in when there isn't an OJ Simpson-on-the-lam or other breaking news story.

So if you're a CNN executive these or most other days, you're hoping — to yourself, at least — for another "drop everything and watch this" story to unfold somewhere in the world. Nothing really nasty, mind you; just something that will rivet viewers' attention on CNN the way they always do when something goes bad somewhere around the globe.

"The world still knows to turn to CNN whenever a crisis erupts," David Bohrman, the Current TV president who served as CNN's Washington bureau chief, commented to the Wall Street Journal. "That is the brand." And therein likes the rub.Continue reading...