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Listen to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Fire Patch’s Creative Director During A Conference Call (JimRomenesko.com)
AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong fired Patch creative director Abel Lenz two minutes into Friday’s call with Patch employees. Lenz’s sin: Taking a picture of the CEO during his talk. Business Insider The call was supposed to be Armstrong’s attempt to rally the troops. During the first minute or so of the recording, Armstrong says things like: “If you don’t believe what I’m about to say, I’m going to ask you to leave Patch… We have to get Patch into a place where it’s going to be successful.” But then things go suddenly awry. At exactly two minutes into the recording, Armstrong addresses someone in the room with him. He says, “Abel, put that camera down, now.” Then, without taking a breath, Armstrong says, “Abel, you’re fired. Out.” Business Insider A few minutes later, Armstrong complained about leaks to the media. He said the leaks were making Patch seem like “loser-ville” in the press. He said, “That’s why Abel was fired… We can’t have people that are in the locker room giving the game plan away.” When media reporter Jim Romenesko tweeted at Lenz, he replied: “I appreciate the interest Jim, but I have nothing to share. Go Patch!” TechCrunch The stakes at Patch are high because AOL has promised it will see positive revenue by the end of the year, which is a tall order given its most recent earnings results. These cuts and shifts in strategy are drastic measures, but that’s exactly what’s required if Armstrong wants to make good on a promise of Patch profitability by year’s end. NY Post By some estimates, AOL has spent more than $300 million on Patch since 2009, and it has yet to turn a profit.

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Alec Baldwin Set to Host New MSNBC Primetime Show (Mediaite)
Mediaite has learned from a senior source in the cable news industry with knowledge of MSNBC’s programming that actor Alec Baldwin is getting his own weekly show in MSNBC’s primetime lineup. According to our source, the so far untitled show will air Fridays at 10 p.m. ET and will feature a large dose of Baldwin’s outspoken liberal politics. The Atlantic Wire Currently, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell runs at 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday on the network, meaning Baldwin wouldn’t cut into any other personality on the channel’s time. Instead, the actor’s rumored show would replace a series of documentaries on prisons. THR / The Live Feed Reporting has also emerged as a recent passion of Baldwin’s. He hosts a weekly WNYC podcast of interviews called Here’s the Thing. And HBO will premiere his documentary, Seduced and Abandoned, later this year. He and James Toback filmed the project, which features interviews with actors and directors about the risks and rewards of big budget filmmaking, at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

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AOL to Shut Down About 300 Patch.com Websites (Newsday)
AOL plans to close, sell or find partners for nearly a third of its Patch.com local news sites, the company’s chief executive said Wednesday. Of the roughly 900 hyperlocal editions nationwide, nearly 300 are not successful and not likely to attract enough traffic or revenue, Tim Armstrong said in AOL’s second-quarter earnings call with analysts. Forbes / Mixed Media Armstrong suggested that AOL may be able to find willing partners for many of the sites in the numerous struggling metropolitan daily newspapers that have been unable to invest as much as they’d like in their own digital and local operations. Poynter / MediaWire Several Patch employees tell Poynter that on a phone call with site editors Wednesday afternoon, Armstrong said that there was zero probability that Patch would shut down, that the initiative enjoyed support on AOL’s board and that Patch is worth fighting for. FishbowlNY Just how much would a Patch site cost? Armstrong wouldn’t provide a specific number, but said it was “much, much lower” than $150,000, which is what they were estimated at in 2011. BuzzMachine / Jeff Jarvis I have a fourth option, Tim: Invest. Set up independent entrepreneurs — your employees, my entrepreneurial graduates, unemployed newspaper folks — to take over the sites. Offer them the benefit of continued network ad sales — that’s enlightened self-interest for Patch and AOL. Offer them training. Offer them technology. And even offer them some startup capital. Forbes AOL also announced it will buy video platform Adap.tv for $405 million, a reflection of the Internet company’s push to develop its online-advertising business. The cash-and-stock deal will make Adap.tv, a video-ad platform that provides AOL access to the ad technology that the world’s largest companies use, an independent part of AOL’s video unit.

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Gwen Ifill, Judy Woodruff Named Co-Anchors of PBS NewsHour (TVNewser)
At the Television Critics Association Summer Press tour in Beverly Hills Tuesday afternoon, PBS named Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff as the co-anchors and managing editors of the PBS NewsHour, making them the first all-female co-anchor team in broadcast news. NYT The appointments are another milestone for women on television and in journalism, seven years after Katie Couric became the first female solo anchor of a network nightly newscast. The co-anchor arrangement harks back to the 1970s, when Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil founded the nightly newscast that was later named The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. TheWrap / Report From The TCA PBS president Paula Kerger said at a Television Critics Association panel Tuesday that she was surprised it’s taken so long for two women to co-anchor a broadcast. “I was thinking about this announcement — I almost paused in drawing attention to the fact that it’s two women,” she said. “We chose two people we thought would be the strongest anchors… and they just happened to be two women.” HuffPost Ifill and Woodruff have co-anchored together before. During the 2012 election, they were the first all-female team to host coverage of the conventions, and also co-hosted on election night. “The true accomplishment will be when we stop making ‘firsts,’” Ifill said last August.

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Washington Post to Be Sold to Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon (The Washington Post)
The Washington Post Co. agreed Monday to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations. Bezos, whose entrepreneurship has made him one of the world’s richest men, will pay $250 million in cash for the Post and affiliated publications to The Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses. The deal represents a sudden and stunning turn of events for the Post, Washington’s leading newspaper for decades and a powerful force in shaping the nation’s politics and policy. The Washington Post / Jeff Bezos The values of the Post do not need changing. The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely. HuffPost / The Backstory On Monday at 4:15 p.m., Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth informed staff that there would be “an announcement” just 15 minutes later in the paper’s first floor auditorium. Some speculated that the Post had sold its historic downtown Washington headquarters, which had been on the market for six months. Following the Bezos announcement, a Post staffer described colleagues as “shocked and stunned.” NYT Perhaps the biggest surprise in the sale is that it happened under the watch of Donald Graham. All scions of industry do their time on the shop-room floor, but Graham had shown that he didn’t want to just inherit his enterprise, he wanted to earn it. The idea that Graham would sell the paper, whatever merits the sale might entail, seemed as unlikely as Henry V giving up the crown. But on Monday, Graham seemed at peace with what he had done. Politico / Dylan Byers on Media Carl Bernstein: “I have high hopes that [Monday's] announcement will represent a great moment in the history of a great institution: recognition that a new kind of entrepreneurship and leadership, fashioned in the age of the new technology, is needed to lead not just the Post, but perhaps the news business itself, in combining the best of enduring journalistic values with all the potential of the digital era — including a profit model that will finance a renaissance of the kind of reporting that is essential for Washington, for American journalism, and for the world.” CJR / The Audit We have now officially entered the oft-predicted Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper industry’s collapse. New Republic Craigslist’s Craig Newmark has not bought the Post, thank goodness — that would be too much to bear. But Bezos as the white knight provokes only slightly less shock and dolor. We knew the other guys had won a long time ago, but it’s another thing when they can waltz in and, in the charmless guise of “Explore Holdings LLC,” drop $250 million in cash for a legendary paper (that’s a mere one percent of Bezos’ net worth), as flip and easy as plucking an Apollo rocket engine from the ocean or building a $42 million, 10,000-year clock in West Texas. NYT / DealBook If it wasn’t clear that newspapers have become trophies for the wealthy with an interest in journalism or power — or a combination of both — it should be now. TVSpy The acquisition does not include the Post-Newsweek station group; Cable ONE, Slate, TheRoot.com, Foreign Policy and Kaplan are also not included in the deal. The Washington Post Company will be changing its name. TheWrap / MediaAlley Washington Post Co. shares immediately spiked on word that the company had sold its money sucking newspapers to Bezos. In immediate after-hours trading, shares climbed nearly 5.5 percent to $599.85.

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No Sign of Progress in CBS/Time Warner Cable Dispute (WSJ)
A blackout of CBS Corp.’s flagship network on Time Warner Cable Inc. systems in New York, Los Angeles and a few other markets dragged on through the weekend with no sign of any resolution. By Sunday afternoon the two companies couldn’t even agree on whether any talks were under way. A Time Warner Cable spokeswoman said negotiations were “ongoing,” while CBS said that “there are no negotiations taking place at this time.” TVNewser At 5 p.m. ET Friday CBS O&Os in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Denver and Pittsburgh were pulled from Time Warner Cable systems in those markets. Additionally, cable channels Showtime, The Movie Channel, Flix and Smithsonian Channel are blacked out on Time Warner Cable. NYT “There are several ways that you can still see your favorite shows, including using an antenna to get CBS free over the air.” An antenna? Where does that go, on top of the cathode-ray tube? That’s one of the tips Time Warner Cable put up on screen after it stopped showing CBS around the country on Friday. NYT The continuing impasse resulted in two popular shows on the pay cable channel Showtime, Dexter and Ray Donovan, being unavailable to fans in those areas on Sunday night. And it means that the most popular drama of the summer, CBS’ Under the Dome, is likely to be blocked to millions of viewers on Monday night. Several media analysts suggested the standoff might be protracted, with predictions ranging from about 10 days to as long as six weeks. The later date is associated with the start of the NFL season, a package of programming that everyone involved agrees cannot be denied to subscribers. Indeed, timing seems to be the dominant factor driving the dispute. Time In a tit-for-tat action, CBS responded by blocking videos of full episodes of its programming on CBS.com for Time Warner Cable broadband customers in the affected markets.

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Report: More Than 200 Layoffs at Gannett’s Community Papers (Gannett Blog)
Gannett’s U.S. Community Publishing newspaper division has now cut an estimated 218 jobs across at least 37 worksites, according to Gannett Blog readers. These figures are very preliminary and are almost certain to rise in the days ahead as more employees are notified. Most of the job losses were through layoffs over the past 24 hours, with a much smaller number comprising open positions that have been permanently eliminated, according to these readers. Other cost-cutting measures across the 81-title division include eliminating travel spending — all, in response to weaker-than-expected advertising revenue in the second quarter that may be spilling over into the current one. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Nine positions are being eliminated at The Post-Crescent in Appleton and seven at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Among those cut was longtime Press-Gazette editorial cartoonist Joe Heller, sources said. The layoffs include both journalists and non-newsroom employees. Cincinnati City Beat Because of Gannett’s secrecy with staffing issues, it’s difficult to confirm any specific report. No names have been provided yet. JimRomenesko.com Here are the layoff reports I’m getting from Gannett papers.

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Cleveland Plain Dealer Cuts Third of Newsroom Staff (AP / The Big Story)
The Plain Dealer in Cleveland cut about a third of its newsroom staff Wednesday, months after announcing it was reducing home delivery of the newspaper. About 50 reporters, photographers, page designers and other Newspaper Guild-covered employees received layoff notices, according to the guild. Crain’s Cleveland Business Employees were notified Tuesday night to wait by the phone until 10 a.m. Wednesday. If they didn’t get a call from the office telling them they were being laid off, they were to report to work at 11 a.m. Among those who got the unfortunate call was business editor Randy Roguski. Others laid off are eligible to apply for jobs at the Northeast Ohio Media Group, a new company that will produce digital content for Cleveland.com. CJR / The United States Project There is still some uncertainty, however, even for those who got the “good call.” One Plain Dealer reporter told me that now that the layoffs have occurred, Advance plans to hire some of the keepers away to the website, Cleveland.com, which is now operated by a separate digital company. The guild “had thought offers for [the] site would come first… coming after layoffs will cut the number of guild members even lower,” said the reporter, who is staying on at the paper. Philadelphia Daily News / Attytood While 50 experienced journalists are getting their telephonic pink slips, the paper is advertising for nine new journalists who will certainly be lower paid and most likely younger, with less experience and knowledge of the tangled history of an iconic, if faded, American city.

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Manning Is Acquitted of Aiding the Enemy (NYT)
A military judge on Tuesday found Pfc. Bradley Manning not guilty of “aiding the enemy” for his release of hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks for publication on the Internet, rejecting the government’s unprecedented effort to bring such a charge in a leak case. HuffPost The verdict in the Manning trial did not receive the kind of rolling network coverage afforded to other recent court cases. Whereas trials like George Zimmerman’s or even Jodi Arias’ were treated to hours of analysis, dissection and attention, the news that the man responsible for the biggest leak of classified material in American history had been hit with charges that could keep him in prison for more than 100 years was deemed worthy of one, or at most two, segments during the hour following the verdict. Mediaite Jeremy Scahill, reporter for The Nation and author of the book Dirty Wars, joined Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman on Tuesday where he reacted to the verdict of a military court which found Manning guilty of a number of charges relating to the release of classified national security documents. Scahill lambasted the news media for largely ignoring what he called one of the most important cases in national history. National Journal Depending on your point of view, Manning is either a tragic hero or a traitor, or maybe something in between. The now 25-year-old’s personal problems were numerous, coming from an unstable, abusive home, dealing with being a gay member of the military under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, also questioning his gender identity. The military assessed him as having an anxiety disorder. Three years ago, he was arrested after sending what is regarded as the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history to WikiLeaks, including a video showing U.S. military personnel shooting down two Reuters employees and 250,000 diplomatic cables. The Guardian / Comment Is Free Had the judge found Manning guilty of aiding the enemy, she would have set a terrible precedent. For the first time, an American court — albeit a military court — would have said it was a potentially capital crime simply to give information to a news organization, because in the Internet era an enemy would ultimately have been able to read what was leaked. However, if journalism dodged one figurative bullet, it faces many more in this era. TVNewser The three general cable news channels previewed the impending verdict at the top of the hour, with Fox News reporting the verdict at 1:05, followed by MSNBC at 1:08 and CNN at 1:09. No cameras were allowed in the courtroom, and journalists were unable to report the verdict until they were released from the room.

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Time Warner Temporarily Removes CBS in Major Cities (NYT)
CBS stations were temporarily removed from cable systems in millions of homes in major cities — including New York and Los Angeles — about midnight on Monday, after protracted negotiations between CBS and Time Warner Cable over fees collapsed. In statements, each side blamed the other. The Consumerist In a bizarre coda to a story full of misinformation and bad math from both sides, the TWC blackout only lasted about 30 minutes, with the cable company explaining, “At the request of CBS, we have halted going dark on their channels.” Good to know that these titans of industry care enough to be this fickle with deadlines and consumers’ viewing options. TVNewser “We are now at war with Time Warner Cable,” CBS CEO Les Moonves said to the LA Times’ Joe Flint. “The outrageous demands for fees by CBS Corporation have forced Time Warner Cable to remove several of its networks,” TWC said in a statement. LA Times / Company Town Although squabbles between programmers and distributors are fairly common, seldom does it reach a point that a signal gets taken off the air, especially in big markets such as Los Angeles and New York. Deadline New York Time Warner Cable now says it has agreed to yet another extension with CBS “while we continue negotiations.” This moves the deadline to Friday, Aug. 2 at 5 p.m. ET.

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