“Billionaire trouble” heads PBS MediaShift’s top 10 media stories of 2014

MediaShift, PBS’s site covering the nexus of media and technology, has named its Top 10 Media Stories of 2014 as part of its 2014 Year in Review series, which looks like it’ll be a good one to keep an eye over the next couple of weeks.  

Writer Sonia Paul pegs “Billionaire Trouble” at No. 1, citing the troubles at Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media and the recent mess at The New Republic, which is owned by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. These “troubles” are the result of what Paul calls “the tension between Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and journalists,” which figures to be a dynamic that isn’t going anywhere.

Facebook comes in at No. 2 with its “gobbling up” of Whatsapp and Oculus Rift. Paul writes:

The entire [Facebook] operation is a behemoth to be reckoned with for news organizations and other publishers. A recent Pew study found that more than 30 percent of American adults now get their news on Facebook. These algorithms that dictate what pops up on a person’s news feed, whether the user is tweaking them or not, influence how users are getting their news. The result is that publishers are ever more dependent on these social media traffic referrals, especially as users continue to increase their use of mobile devices and access Facebook from their phones or tablets. Facebook in effect is becoming a life raft to publishers, and is encouraging them to use more of its tools to promote content on the social network. The question is, even if they’re not sinking, will the life raft help publishers actually swim?

The rest of the top 10, of which you should click over to read Paul’s sharp analysis:

3. HBO’s new streaming service

4. The Amazon-Hachette battle

5. Vice, Vox, BuzzFeed raising big money

6. Hashtag activism

7. Podcast revival

8. Global journalism, the danger of “bearing witness”

9. Data journalism

10. Gamergate, online harassment