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A New Kind of Leaker for an Internet Age (NYT)
What does a leaker look like? Sometimes, people who reveal secrets remain in the shadows, and the public is left to guess at their motivations, agendas and states of mind. Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old man behind the recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s pursuit of phone and computer data, upended that history. He is a new kind of leaker of the wired age: an immediately visible one with a voice and the means to go direct with the public. In a era of friction-free Web communication, he disdained the shadows and stepped into view with a lengthy video interview he gave to The Guardian, which broke the story based on information he provided. He stated his motivation plainly, saying, “The public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.” HuffPost / The Backstory The Guardian has labeled Snowden a whistleblower after the NSA contractor revealed himself Sunday as the source for several recent surveillance scoops. But some news organizations have been less quick to describe Snowden as a “whistleblower,” opting instead for terms like “source” or “leaker.” The Washington Post / Erik Wemple News organizations’ hesitancy to use “whistleblower” may well derive from the term’s meaning. According to this definition, a whistleblower is an “informant who exposes wrongdoing within an organization in the hope of stopping it.” Clearly Snowden was looking to stop something here, but whether it was wrongdoing depends on whether you’re director of national intelligence James Clapper or, say, a civil liberties advocate. The Guardian Snowden is a “hero” who has exposed “one of the most serious events of the decade — the creeping formulation of a mass surveillance state,” Julian Assange said on Monday. The WikiLeaks founder said the question of surveillance abuses by states and tech companies was “something that I and many other journalists and civil libertarians have been campaigning about for a long time. It is very pleasing to see such clear and concrete proof presented to the public.” The New Yorker / Daily Comment He is a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison. The American government, and its democracy, are flawed institutions. But our system offers legal options to disgruntled government employees and contractors. They can take advantage of federal whistleblower laws; they can bring their complaints to Congress; they can try to protest within the institutions where they work. But Snowden did none of this. Instead, in an act that speaks more to his ego than his conscience, he threw the secrets he knew up in the air — and trusted, somehow, that good would come of it. We all now have to hope that he’s right. Read more

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Layoff Day at The New York Post (Capital New York)
Brooklyn court reporter Mitch Maddux and staff writer Pedro Oliveira Jr. are among those that sources tell Capital lost their jobs at the New York Post Friday in a round of layoffs that was foreshadowed last month when editor Col Allan announced he was seeking a reduction of 10 percent of the paper’s staff. JimRomenesko.com Allan’s memo about Friday’s layoffs: “The decision to lay off employees is not one that we make lightly, but it is a necessary step as we continue to reduce costs, refocus our priorities, and re-imagine overall how we run as a company. The future of the Post is as vibrant as its brand, both in print and digitally, and we will continue to focus on the core areas we see key to a strong future.” NY Observer The news comes in advance of the expected June 28 News Corp split, when the book and newspaper assets will separate from the more lucrative TV and film properties. The shakeout is expected to be rough. Read more

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Zynga to Lay Off 520 Employees — 18 Percent of Staff — And Shutter New York And LA Offices (AllThingsD)
Zynga is laying off 18 percent of its workforce — which represents 520 employees — in a bid to reduce costs and more drastically restructure its troubled business toward mobile, according to sources close to the situation. Reuters One of the first firms to seize upon Facebook as a game-publishing platform years ago, Zynga has struggled to keep hold of players as people increasingly turn to their mobile devices — and games from Zynga’s rivals — for entertainment. Zynga’s chief executive, Mark Pincus, has shut studios, retired more than a dozen games and laid off hundreds of employees as part of a turnaround effort that focuses resources on developing mobile games. USA Today Two troubling trends have hit Zynga; for starters, fewer people are playing Zynga games, with the number of overall players dropping by more than 10 percent from last year. And those who are playing aren’t spending as much, with the company posting a first-quarter drop of about 30 percent from 2012. SocialTimes “None of us ever expected to face a day like today, especially when so much of our culture has been about growth… The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multiplatform, which is where social games are going to be played,” said Pincus in an internal memo to employees. AppNewser Despite the layoffs, the company is still hiring in some positions across its locations. According to the company’s website, there are jobs available in its San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle and Beijing offices, among other places. Read more

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Sources: ESPN Laying Off Hundreds (Deadspin)
ESPN laid off a portion of its staff Tuesday, a network spokesman confirmed to us. How many? ESPN won’t say. A tipster told us earlier that it would be more than 400 staffers. A source at ESPN said that number is a little high, but it appears to be in the hundreds. FishbowlNY An ESPN spokesperson emailed to tell us that they hadn’t cut 400 staffers. When we asked how many were let go, “We’re not getting into particulars but it is fewer than 400″ was all we got back. USA Today / Big Lead Sports According to an ESPN source, the layoffs will come mostly, but “not exclusively,” from tech and sales departments (think regional offices: Denver, Las Vegas, Seattle). ESPN is reviewing its entire studio production department over the next three-to-four weeks, which is about 2,800 employees. It is possible some shows will be cut. These layoffs are part of a Disney-wide process. THR News of layoffs comes less than two weeks after Disney’s media networks segment rose 6 percent to $4.96 billion, with operating income up 8 percent to $1.86 billion. One of the company’s most consistently lucrative properties, ESPN has enjoyed increased affiliate revenue in 2013. Read more

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Criticized on Seizure of Records, White House Pushes News Media Shield Law (NYT)
Under fire over the Justice Department’s use of a broad subpoena to obtain calling records of Associated Press reporters in connection with a leak investigation, the Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters in keeping their sources and communications confidential. Capital New York The administration opposed an initial draft of the Free Flow of Information Act, but eventually supported a compromise version that would allow federal judges to protect reporters from subpoenas for information, if the judge determined that the news value of the reports exceeded the government’s interest in uncovering the sources of a leak. HuffPost / The Backstory New York Times reporter Charlie Savage asked Attorney General Eric Holder, who had just announced he’d recused himself from the AP leak investigation, “Are you also recused from the Stuxnet investigation out of Maryland?” The New York Times has reason to be concerned about whether investigators are using similar tactics on them. The Maryland case is believed to be focused on Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger’s reporting on how the U.S. and Israel helped derail Iran’s nuclear program through cyberattacks. Sanger’s June scoop, along with the Times’ front-page article on Obama’s terrorist “kill list,” spurred Congressional calls to investigate the leaks of classified information. The Washington Post / Erik Wemple Media Matters for America, a group that monitors the country’s conservative media for distortions and inaccuracies, fell in for criticism Wednesday over the Justice Department’s secret subpoena of the Associated Press’s phone records. Evidence of this Media Matters-Obama administration mindmeld? This piece here, which says: “If the press compromised active counter-terror operations for a story that only tipped off the terrorists, that sounds like it should be investigated.” The Daily Beast / Politics Beast David Brock explained all in a statement. “Media Matters for America monitors, analyzes, and corrects conservative misinformation in the media and was not involved with the production of the document focusing on the DOJs investigation,” he said. “That document was issued by ‘Message Matters,’ a project of the Media Matters Action Network, which posts, through a different editorial process and to a different website, a wide range of potential messaging products for progressive talkers to win public debates with conservatives.” Read more

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Top Editors Abruptly Leave Village Voice Over Staff Cuts (NYT)
The tumult that has characterized The Village Voice in recent years resurfaced on Thursday when the top two editors said they were leaving the weekly newspaper. Will Bourne, who became editor last November, and Jessica Lustig, the deputy editor since January, met with the staff at 11 a.m. on Thursday to announce their departure. In a phone interview, Bourne said that Christine Brennan, executive editor of Voice Media Group, had told them to lay off, or drastically reduce the roles of, five employees on the 20-person staff. Rather than carry out the cuts, he and Lustig resigned and left immediately, in the middle of closing next week’s paper. Gawker We hear that Michael Musto, the Village Voice‘s longtime society columnist and the last remaining vestige of the “classic” Voice, is one of the five Voice staffers targeted for layoffs — the proposed layoffs that caused the Voice‘s editors to quit today. Musto’s column, La Dolce Musto — a quirky mix of nightlife gossip, party talk, gay issues, and whatever the hell else has been happening in his life in the past week — has been running in the Voice for almost 30 years. NY Observer The downtown alt-weekly has been floundering of late. Last August, they had a significant round of layoffs and switched some full-time positions to part-time. Former editor-in-chief Tony Ortega left in September to focus full-time on debunking Scientology, prompting rumors the he was pushed out. Shortly after that, the newspaper chain underwent a corporate restructuring that separated the company’s papers from Backpage.com, the controversial and highly profitable adult online classifieds site that was a key source of revenue. FishbowlNY Bourne succeeded Ortega as editor of the Voice in late November. Read more

We knew this would be coming. After promising to trim its staff by one-third late last year, today AOL Inc. started its layoffs.

1,100 people took the buyouts AOL offered last month, but since that wasn’t enough to meet the company’s goals, about 1,200 will be let go this week. AOL is also planning to close offices in Spain, Sweden and Germany.

In a statement, AOL said some U.S. staffers would be notified of layoffs today, but a bulk of the pink slips would be going out on Wednesday.

Know anything? Send us an email or leave a tip in the box at right.

AOL Layoffs Start Today, Pick Up Steam As Week Goes On –Silicon Alley Insider

Previously: AOL Looks To Trim One Third Of Staff

After layoffs last week completed the 100 newsroom cuts executive editor Bill Keller promised earlier this year, it looks like New York Times staffers can finally rest easy and welcome the New Year with a celebratory toast.

On Friday, Keller sent a memo to his employees, promising “there is no further newsroom staff cut planned or foreseen, no ‘next round’ on the agenda.” What’s more, furloughs and the pay cuts taken by staffers this past year will become a thing of the past, so those remaining at the Times will be in the newsroom and working, and being paid as much as they were at the beginning of the year. It may have taken all year, but there is finally some good news to be had in the newspaper industry.

Keller also promised some reorganization of the newsroom, particularly the copy desk, in order to fill holes left from buyouts and layoffs. First on the agenda: the national and foreign desks’ copy editors will be combined next month, while the temporary combination of the travel and styles departments will become permanent, Keith Kelly reported.

Although Keller did add that there are “no guarantees” about the future at the Gray Lady, it looks like surviving Times-ers have a lot to celebrate this holiday season.

Read the whole memo here.

Times says editing of staff done for now

Previously: Layoffs Hit New York Times

After weeks of anticipation, yesterday was the day for layoffs at The New York Times. New York magazine’s Daily Intel blog and Gawker have both compiled lists of some of the layoff victims, but Times spokesperson Diane McNulty has reached out to both to tell them their lists are “in error.” So we don’t know who to believe.

We do know that, after an arbitrator’s ruling on Monday, at least 26 people were due to be laid off this week. But although the bad news is coming right before the holidays, the Times has agreed to keep its laid off staffers on the pay roll until December 23.

If you have any info about who got the axe yesterday, drop us a line or leave a comment in the box at right.

The New York Times Layoff Victims — Gawker

Times Layoffs: Salkin, Konigsberg, Rimer, and More –Daily Intel

Previously: After Arbitrator’s Ruling, Layoffs To Come To Times Later This Week

Martin Scheinman, an arbitrator hearing the dispute between the New York Times‘ management and the guild, ruled yesterday, as promised.

In a press release, and a memo to members, the guild explained that Scheinman had upheld its seniority definition for staffers — meaning seniority will be measured based on how long someone has been in the newsroom overall, and not how long they have been at a particular desk.

But there was one sentence that went out in a memo to guild members, obtained by FishbowlNY, but was not in the press release issued by the guild:

“The Guild is expected to be notified Tuesday of the layoffs, which
would be implemented later this week.”

Sounds like layoffs at the Times are just a few days away.

After the jump, more information from the arbitrator’s ruling

Read more