Media Audit

Greg Kelly is back on the air at Good Day New York after authorities decided not to prosecute the anchor following an investigation of rape allegations. The district attorney’s office declared, “the facts established during our investigation do not fit the definition of sexual assault crimes.” Meanwhile, the New York Post is taking heat for publishing photos of the accuser.

GigaOm published a post about its decision to purchase paidContent. Click here to read paidContent’s take on it. The acquisition is getting the thumbs up.

Tina Brown sent around a memo this week announcing big changes on the Newsweek/The Daily Beast masthead.

The Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone looks at the impact of Twitter on coverage of the GOP race.

An investor group has purchased Heart & Soul magazine.

CNBC has a new SVP, Jim Ackerman, who has a background in VH1 reality shows.

More of this week’s media moves after the jump.

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Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

At an event yesterday, The Huffington Post and AOL introduced The Huffington Post Streaming Network (HPSN), a live network that will broadcast 12 hours per day starting this summer. HuffPo founding editor Roy Sekoff will run the network which he says will be a mix of CNN, The View, and YouTube.

The New York Times has launched “Business Day Live,” a live video show that will focus on the top business headlines of the day. It will air each weekday and appear on the outlet’s homepage.

The Wall Street Journal has also launched a new program, “Off Duty,” a lifestyle show based on WSJ Weekend that will air each weekday at 6 p.m. ET on the outlet’s YouTube channel. It will be hosted by reporter Wendy Bounds. This adds to the list of shows that the WSJ already has, including “Lunch Break” and “Mean Street.”

A former Harper’s Bazaar intern is suing Hearst for unpaid minimum wages. According to the lawsuit, accessories intern Xuedan Wang worked unpaid between 40 and 55 hours per week between August and December of last year. The plaintiff and her lawyers hope to build a class-action lawsuit. [via Reuters]

Bloomberg head Lex Fenwick has been named CEO of Dow Jones & Co. He replaces Les Hinton, who left the post in July. Fenwick joined Bloomberg in 1987 and was tapped to head up Bloomberg Ventures in 2007. [via WSJ]

TheGrio.com has revealed “TheGrio 100,” its list of “history makers and industry leaders” making waves in the U.S. today. Among those on the list are the mayor of Jacksonville, FL, Alvin Brown, Google’s Torrence Boone, and marine biologist Daniell Washington.

Clickthrough for more of the week’s media changes.

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Just one day after it was announced that News Corp‘s SVP of public affairs and communications, Teri Everett, would be stepping down, the company has announced that another comms director is stepping in.

Natalie Ravitz, the communications director for the New York City Department of Education, is joining News Corp as Rupert Murdoch’s chief of staff. The change takes effect in two weeks. A focus of her job will be to “prioritize my commitments to align with key News Corp. initiatives,” according to an internal email from Murdoch.

Ravitz has a history with another News Corp exec, Joel Klein, the former NYC Department of Education who left in 2010 to serve as EVP at News Corp. According to the L.A. Times, Klein’s influence at the company is growing.

Julie Henderson has been promoted to Everett’s previous position.

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News Corp‘s SVP of corporate affairs and communications, Teri Everett, will be stepping down on February 10. Julie Henderson will be promoted to SVP of corporate affairs and chief comms officer at that time.

Everett joined the company in 2000 as VP of corp comms, in charge of PR in L.A. In the press release announcing the changes, Everett says, “While it may be a tired cliche, I am ready for something new.” She’s been handling the media relations related to the company’s phone-hacking scandal over the past six months.

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Jim Romenesko has spoken with a press pool full of journalists who report on the craziness of dealing with the Fox News PR department. More specifically, dealing with the shadowy figure that is Irena Briganti, the Fox News and Fox Business SVP of media relations.

Much like Nikki Finke, photos of Briganti are hard to come by, Romenesko writes. But her presence is certainly felt if you’re ever trying to do a story about Fox or interview one of its journalists. Reporters tell tales of blacklists and being “iced”; of insults and transgressions that happened when they weren’t looking.

Not all of the criticism is negative. And, on a certain level, reporters seem to realize that working with the Fox PR team is like working with any other — publicists are advocating for their clients and you shouldn’t expect otherwise. But the tales these reporters tell fly in the face of the common PR goal of building strong relationships with journalists.

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Just over a year after joining the company, Gawker‘s PR manager, Kevin Prince is heading back to broadcast TV. He announced today that he’ll be the social media producer for CBS This Morning starting on Monday.

“I missed the editorial side of broadcast and the excitement of breaking news and being part of a live show,” he told us via email.

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Today commemorates 60 years on the air. TVNewser went to the party last night.

The New York Times‘ public editor Arthur Brisbane was feeling the heat yesterday over his take on whether reporters should be “truth vigilantes.” A lot of people thought that was a dumb question so Brisbane has come back to reiterate that it is not. Jill Abramson has also responded.

A Ron Paul super PAC has written a press release calling for CNN‘s Dana Bash to be taken off the campaign beat. CNN replied: “The notion that Dana is anything but objective is preposterous.”

Spin magazine has launched @SpinReviews. [via Fishbowl NY]

Newsweek plans to recreate the magazine’s 1960s design in the March 19 issue to commemorate the season premiere of Mad Men. [via Ad Age]

Pinterest says Martha Stewart, Real Simple, and Better Homes & Gardens are top pinners. [via minOnline]

The Huffington Post has launched a Good News channel for inspiration stories. Jessica Prois, who also heads the Impact section, will edit the new channel.

Click through for more media changes.

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AOL is partnering with Bonnier’s Parenting Group to bring Parenting.com content to AOL Family, HuffPo Parents, and AOL.com. [via Fishbowl NY]

Speaking of Huffington Post, they’ve launched a new channel, HuffPost Science.

Colin Mylar, former editor of News of the World has been chosen as the new editor of the New York Daily News. Mylar has been unemployed since NOTW shut down amid the phone hacking scandal that erupted this summer. Capital New York has the internal memo.

There are reports that the Kardashian family has spoken with American Media about the possibility of launching a new magazine. However, Kim’s publicist at PMK-BNC has no comment.

Eric Carven has been named the AP’s social media editor. He was previously a news producer at the AP Nerve Center.

Keith Olbermann has already stirred up the pot at Current TV. Where it will lead seems up in the air. But people do agree on one thing: production value needs to improve a bit.

Click through for more changes in the media world.

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The New York Times did a little digging and they’ve solved the mysterious case of today’s “spam” emails: They sent them by accident.

On a slow news day, just about anything will get people’s attention. Today, 8.6 million people got an email saying that their subscription to the Times had been cancelled. Something to tweet about! Which people did in abundance. We got a tip that the Times was the victim of a “massive scam.” Somewhere else we saw that the Times was hacked. Actually, someone just pressed the wrong button.

Times reporter Amy Chozick was on the case, sending tweets as she gathered info. Ultimately, it was just an error and the newspaper assures us that “no one’s security has been compromised.” Moreover, you should have received your apology email expressing sincere regrets.

The BBC has released its list of female “Faces of the Year 2011.” For January, we have Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. March has Eman al-Obeidi, who was captured on film in Tripoli making frantic accusations of rape and assault against members of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s militia. But what’s that fuzzy black and white muzzle there for December? Why, that’s Sweetie, a damn panda.

Sweetie is half of a pair of panda bears (the other, a male that did not appear on the Faces of the Year 2011 for men list, is named Sunshine) that will be on loan to a zoo in Scotland for the next decade.

Foreign Policy‘s blog notes the outrage that the selection has caused, fueling a Twitter hashtag #pandagate, prompting members of the media to point out the gender issues this selection raises, and prompted a parody Twitter feed. The controversy also comes shortly after the news organization failed to nominate a woman for Sports Personality of the Year.

“For a number of people, the BBC’s decision to include Sweetie smacks of sexism,” the blog says. To be sure, the BBC isn’t helping its case with tweets like the one after the jump.

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