The social TV network YouToo — which Mark Burnett invested in earlier this year — has launched a Facebook app to encourage people to submit video, get on TV and then tell their friends about it. “Naturally, you want to be seen by your friends and family on TV,” CEO Chris Wyatt told Lost Remote, explaining how getting on TV and then sharing the experience go hand in hand.

Both YouToo.com and the Facebook app pose questions to users, who can upload their video responses. The videos air on the YouToo TV cable network, and Wyatt says several broadcast partners will be participating soon, as well. If users submit the clips via the new “Be on TV” Facebook app, it shares the video with the user’s friends. Then, if the clip has been selected for TV, the user is notified when and where it will air — so they can tell their family and friends to watch. And when it airs, YouToo sends the user a video aircheck, which can be shared on Facebook, as well.

“It’s a hugely popular feature,” Wyatt says of both the airtime notifications and the airchecks. “Since everyone is not able to tune into the linear television broadcast, the aircheck gives users a chance to share the experience online. We’ve seen a 1600% fold increase in people forwarding and sharing their airchecks of their television appearances.”

We asked Wyatt if people are still as excited to get on TV as the were before the era of YouTube, Facebook and the fragmentation of TV. “Becoming famous has been one of the primary human motivators throughout history,” he says. “Today, we find ourselves with over 300 reality programs, millions of hopefuls lining up to be on television singing competitions and there has never been any shortage of aspiring actors in Hollywood. In face, Youtube grew to prominence with the tag line ‘Broadcast Yourself.’ but that is only online and not on the first screen.”

YouToo says it has broadcast 90,000 user clips on its cable network, which is in 177 of the top 200 markets. For Facebook users who don’t want to be on TV, the Be on TV app allows them to send personalized messages including birthday greetings and congratulations to family and friends.

As the social network floated on the stock market, its employees marked the occasion with discretion … and onion rings

The guests wore jeans and T-shirts. The venue was a sports bar. The menu was buffalo wings, mini-burgers, pizza and beer. The entertainment was a mechanical bull, which bucked in a corner, and screens showing basketball and football. Welcome to a hundred-billion dollar party, Facebook-style.

It looked like college kids out for a typical Friday night, but the scene in the Old Pro, an unremarkable bar tucked off a sidestreet in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley, was the celebration of a cultural and financial milestone which mesmerised the world.

"Yeah, it's been a big day," grinned a lanky software engineer. "So we're here chugging a few." He checked his watch. "Still happy hour."

He and his colleagues clinked beers, manifestly happy. Facebook had just completed its first day as a public company after one of history's most frenzied share sales valued it at $104bn. The trading took place in New York but the company's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, stayed with 2,000 employees at their colony in Palo Alto, the capital of social media.

As the largest shareholder Zuckerberg, 28, ratcheted up a paper fortune of $20.4bn. An estimated 88 employees saw the value of their individual holdings exceed $30m. The extraordinary sums, the website's mercurial rise and its role in connecting more than 900 million people made the initial public offering (IPO) an event watched far beyond Wall Street.

Had they received this windfall, Russian oligarchs might have celebrated by buying Manchester United. Investment bankers might have bought bigger yachts and jets. The lords of tech munched onion rings. "The taste that can't be beat," according to the bar's website.

"This town, it's a very unusual place," said David Batista, manager of the Palo Alto Creamery, a cafe where Zuckerberg used to map strategy over milkshakes. "You could be sitting beside a billionaire and not know it. A day like today and where do they go? A sports bar. It's all very low key."

Internet revolution, Hollywood movie, global impact on human interaction, byword for self-promotion – few outsiders consider Facebook to be discreet. But employees are exactly that.

"You might think as soon as they make a million they buy a house in Palo Alto, but a lot of these guys live in apartments, don't have girlfriends and bicycle to work. And they work all the time," said Alan Dunckel, an estate agent. Those who did buy houses – $1,000 per square foot – did not flaunt wealth, he said. "They wear T-shirts and hoodies." Many sellers, said Dunckel, had withheld properties in hopes of a boom. "Expectations are huge." Facebook has promised $1.1m to Menlo Park's cash-starved authorities to fund capital projects, prompting hopes more will follow.

The employees' celebration at the Old Pro, however, was muted. Whereas non-Facebook groups booked tables with their names on them, Zuckerberg's troops clustered in anonymous little knots. They had been drilled by headquarters not to speak to the media. Ostensibly it was to avoid spooking the markets at a delicate time but it followed a company tradition of reticence – opacity, critics say – ironic given concern over Facebook users' privacy guarantees.

"Sorry, buddy. Normally I'm really interesting to talk to but I just can't right now," one employee, drinking an ale, smiled sheepishly. Others recoiled as if questions were radioactive. One confirmed a rumour that Zuckerberg was hosting a party for some staff that night at his home – a relatively modest $7m house – several blocks away.

Blink on the highway and you could miss the company's Menlo Park headquarters, a nondescript complex of two and three-storey buildings which employees of the previous occupier, Sun Microsystems, nicknamed San Quentin, after the jail. An entrance billboard with the familiar thumbs-up icon is Facebook's only concession to marketing.

Instead of trumpeting its historic day the company rebuffed interview requests and corralled television crews in a car park across the street. While the Observer interviewed an employee's mother inside the grounds – "a historic day for the way the world is going", she was saying, beaming – security guards swooped, complaining about trespass, and threatened to summon police.

Friday's bounty was preceded by austerity. On Thursday night employees made a round-the-clock "hackathon" of writing code. They wore newly printed T-shirts which said: "Stay focused & keep hacking."

Some emerged early Friday for a ceremony at the centre of the complex known as Hack Square, where Zuckerberg rang the opening bell to start the Nasdaq stock market's trading. Then they returned to their computers.

Canteens with free gourmet food and outstanding coffee keep staff inside the complex, disappointing nearby restaurants and cafes. Hairdressers like Nina Phana, however, who runs a salon two blocks down, say the techies emerge for the occasional trim and blowdry. "They tip good."

A hundred billion dollars is a gargantuan sum for a company started eight years ago in a college dorm, and the fact that Friday's frenzied trading ended with shares at $38.23, just a fraction over the opening price, stoked claims the company was overvalued.

Ali Ghotbi, an executive at Box, a cloud computing developer, shrugged off concerns of another dotcom bubble. "Back in the 90s it was, oh, you have a website, here's a million dollars. Now it's more controlled, more selective."

A colleague, Tom Cochran, predicted Box would be Silicon Valley's next big thing. "Our chief executive, Aaron Levie, is a genius like Mark Zuckerberg. But with charisma."

The rate of startups in this corner of San Francisco bay – renovated premises filled with newly arrived geeks with Harvard and MIT baseball caps – suggests widespread confidence. Or hubris.

What was bazaar speculation for quite a while is now a matter of record. Aroon Purie, the bossman of the India Today group, has divested over a quarter of his holding in Living Media India Limited, in favour of one of India’s richest men, Kumar Mangalam Birla for an undisclosed sum

(Business Standard reports that the deal may have been worth Rs 35o crore).

The stake sale brings one of India’s biggest corporate houses, the Aditya Birla group, into mainstream magazine and television space (the K.K. Birla group owns the newspaper Hindustan Times); sets up a clash of telecom titans for the 4G space (Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance Industries has bought into the TV18 network); and raises questions over growing corporate ownership of the media.

Below is the internal note shot off by Ashish Bagga, the group CEO of the India Today group, at 9.10 pm on Friday, 18 May 2012:

***

Dear All

I am pleased to inform you of a significant development for the INDIA TODAY group.

Just this afternoon, the $35-billion Indian multi-national, ADITYA BIRLA GROUP (ABG) and your company, which is India’s most respected and diversified media corporation, have come to an agreement for a 27.5% financial investment by a private investment company of the Aditya Birla Group in our holding company, Living Media India Ltd.

Commenting on the investment, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla group said: “The Indian media sector is a sunrise sector from our investment point of view. I believe that the India Today group offers one of the best opportunities of growth and value creation. ITG’s management ethos, values, brands, product portfolio and future plans offer one of the best opportunities for growth and value creation.”

Aroon Purie, our chairman said, “I am delighted to partner with the Aditya Birla Group to aggressively address the current and future potential of the Indian media business which is at a tipping point. The Aditya Birla group with its strong leadership, global footprint, diversified business interests and its shared values of integrity, commitment and social responsibility make it a perfect fit with the India Today group.”

By virtue of this development, your company will embark on a high growth and expansion strategy across all its existing and new businesses.

I look forward to a successful and trail-blazing future.

Ashish Bagga, group CEO

Image: courtesy Mail Today

The New York Post is pulling no punches this morning. 

Here's an excerpt from today's cover story:

They were Mark Zuckerberg’s cash cows.

Hordes of everyday New Yorkers played the fool yesterday to Wall Street fat cats and Facebook insiders, who used a bloated stock price to milk them of billions of dollars during an overhyped IPO.

With a $38-a-share price tag and forecasts for a 10 percent jump, mom-and-pop investors blindly bought in with dreams of instant riches that never came true.

Meanwhile, the social network’s hoodie-wearing CEO finished the day with a net worth of $19.25 billion. The average Facebook employee saw their on-paper wealth shoot up to $2.9 million.

Reporters Georgett Roberts, Josh Saul, and Jeane Macintosh interview experts and new investors, who respond to yesterday's lackluster IPO.

Read the whole story at NYPost.com.

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

As Facebook's public offering fizzled, so did the media's 'finance porn' hype. And perhaps a sense of just proportion was restored

On Friday morning, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, CEO, and majority shareholder, rang the Nasdaq opening bell and made history with one of the largest IPOs in years. It was exactly the kind of mania that made the dotcom era a profoundly silly time – irrational exuberance all the way to the bank in an era that became known more for the greed, ridiculousness, and excess than it did from the occasionally groundbreaking work that was changing how people did business at the dawn of the modern internet era.

Except, on Friday, the mania didn't show up on schedule.

After weeks of breathless anticipation, the Facebook IPO fizzled, with institutions having to step in and buy shares to keep the stock from slipping below the strike price of $38. This shocking and heartbreaking development will now be accompanied by the sound of a thousand fingers clattering over keys, as pundits and analysts everywhere tweet and blog and chatter over what went wrong.

But this supposes something has actually gone wrong. 

Let us remember, first, that Facebook the company had this IPO in order to go public with its stock, and raised more than $16bn for its troubles. So, they aren't unhappy: that's what they were expecting, and that's what they got. Before IPOs became carnivals of capitalism, that was actually the point.

Zuckerberg and the other Facebook pre-IPO shareholders aren't unhappy this weekend – they're rich. Yes, some of them could be wishing that they were almost incalculably rich instead of merely being the more prosaic filthy rich, but if you catch one of them at a fake German beerhall in Palo Alto bitching about this, you should punch them immediately – the way they trained us in our self-defense classes years ago, when we were all taught these techniques in case an insufferable internet millionaire douchebag might one day desperately need an attitude adjustment. 

Is it us? Are we the ones who are disappointed? I don't know – given how restricted and voodoo-y IPO stock launches are, I doubt the average reader skimming this article was in on the first day of trading. I know I don't have any Facebook stock, and I doubt you do, too.

So, who is upset? Who didn't get what they were looking for? One hint: you're looking at it, and in another age, it was used to wrap fish.

Media loves the big IPO stories. They love every part of them: they love the narrative arc; they love the idea of workers slaving away every day and then, one magical morning, getting millions and millions of dollars. They love the skullduggery of how they get set up, and the way it all seems to rest on the fate of a single day – what happens in those first moments, as the stock hits the market and demand asserts itself. 

Stories like this make financial analysts' eyes dilate, the blood quicken, the pulse sound in the ears. We all recognize it, because it's pornography. There are different types of porn: war porn, patriotism porn … and this, of course, is finance porn. You can tell it is porn because it demands nothing of the viewer, and comforts those who get off on it. But no matter how nice porn can be, it's not a dialogue. It's not news. It is spectacle, and by participating in it, we devolve the dialogue. 

We are perhaps hungry for it because we have no dialogue with the corporations. Now that labor is a relic of the past that is largely ignored, there's no battlefield to make the corporation look human, to make it fit into the narrative of a great story. There are no strikes, no unrest: workers aren't capable of raising more than a mild sense of indigestion at whatever they face, and they choke that down lest they endanger their positions. 

We have been trained to believe that a business story only exists from the top down – and through that lens, there are few things as dynamic and newsworthy as an IPO. In an environment without financial stories that the media wants to tell, the IPO becomes a bar mitzvah, a coming of age where, instead of bringing gifts, the public company showers its faithful with riches instead.

No one suffered when there wasn't an outbreak of abject mania at the Facebook IPO. In fact, maybe many of us gained: if the markets behave in a rational manner, if we do not submit to hype and hysteria, perhaps we can live a rational life within them? Work for the sake of what is done, not what is gained? Perhaps, we can dream of leaving the dotcom era behind?

Perhaps. But the lure of narrative is strong, and we are always seeking the next trend. In Fight Club, Ed Norton taught us that you are not the things you own. It's a decade later, but we may need to learn that we are not our share prices, either.

The news that the sitcom's creator, Dan Harmon, was being replaced as "show runner" will no doubt be a blow to the show's rabid (if relatively small) fan base.

An auto-tuned hip-hop extravaganza starring Alastair Campbell, Charlotte Church, Hugh Grant, Rupert Murdoch, Kelvin MacKenzie and many more

Mogul says News Corporation is 'firmly committed' to its papers including the Sun, Times and Sunday Times

Rupert Murdoch has denied reports that News Corp is considering spinning off its British newspapers to protect the rest of his media empire from criminal scandals.

The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times newspapers said executives at the company were looking into ways to split off the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times, published by its News International unit.

However, Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp, said in a statement: "News Corporation remains firmly committed to our publishing businesses, including News International, and any suggestion to the contrary is wholly inaccurate. Publishing is a core component of our future."

British police are examining claims that journalists at the News of the World – a paper shut by Murdoch last July – routinely hacked into the phones of hundreds of celebrities, politicians and victims of crime to generate front-page stories.

They are also investigating whether staff hacked into computers and made illegal payments to public officials, including the police, to get ahead in their reporting. Rebekah Brooks, a former senior executive of News International and editor of the News of the World, has been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The Daily Telegraph and the FT said News Corp was discussing putting the News International titles into a trust.

A News International spokeswoman denied the report, saying in a statement: "There are absolutely no plans to put News International into a separate trust."

Selling the newspapers to one or more wealthy individuals was another option under consideration, the FT said, quoting two people familiar with the company.

They noted no decisions had been made and a spin-off or a sale might not happen, the FT added.

The Daily Telegraph said a proposal to go into a joint venture with a media partner was also on the table, without citing its sources.

By Emily Bell News International, the UK outpost of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, might be preparing to sell off or isolate its scandal-struck newspaper titles, according to a report from rival newspaper The Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph broke the story for its Saturday morning edition, drawing a line between the speculative story and the ongoing woes the Murdoch company is suffering...

In his first official ad of the presidential election campaign, the presumptive Republican candidate seeks to remould his image

Who

Mitt Romney has not had the easiest time of it. A brutal and bruising GOP primary campaign has finally left him in pole position as the presumptive nominee. But it has also left him "severely conservative" (to use his own words) and battling a common public image as an uncaring capitalist robber baron who likes to fire people for kicks. So how does one launch one's national campaign? With a massive rebranding effort, of course.

What

Day One is the first ad from the Romney camp since former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum dropped out and thus represents Romney's first real attempt to sell himself to the whole nation, not just potential Republican caucus/primary voters. As a result, the 30-second TV spot is a rare beast: a positive ad designed to inspire and make you feel good about His Mittness' vision of America.

When

The ad is going up in the next few days. Its positive nature is aimed at reflecting the fact that it is an official campaign ad, unlike some of the nastiness that so often emerges from Super Pac ads. In a week where Romney-supporting groups apparently toyed with playing the race card by emphasising President Barack Obama's former pastor Rev Jeremiah Wright, this Romney ad is all about being Mr Nice Guy.

Where

As usual, this ad is targeted at some key 2012 battlegrounds. The campaign has bought air time in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Iowa. All these states are in the centre or the centre-right of the battleground. That means this ad seems to be aimed at shoring up Romney support or going after soft right independents.

How

Welcome to the world that exists inside Romney's head when he lies down to go to sleep at night. "What would a Romney presidency be like?" the ad ponders as it opens with footage of a beaming, craggy-jawed Romney looking distinctly presidential. The voiceover man is not one of those gravelly-sounding gentleman from attack ads who sound like they also do trailers for slasher films. He sounds pleasant and reassuring, almost in a kindly father figure sort of way.

Then, to a jaunty soundtrack, the ad proceeds to answer its own question. "Day one: President Romney immediately approves the Keystone pipeline creating thousands of jobs that Obama blocked," it announces. It goes on: "President Romney introduces tax cuts and reforms that reward job creators." That really is meaningless boilerplate but it plays over images of hardworking business folk, a combine harvester in a vast field of grain and then – slightly incongruously – an attractive young black woman who gives the camera a sly smile.

Finally it tackles healthcare reform in yet another sign that the Romney camp is confident that Obama's biggest single domestic achievement is in fact a winner for the Republicans. "President Romney issues orders to begin replacing Obamacare with common sense healthcare reform. That's what a Romney presidency will be like." No mention there that Obamacare was inspired by Romney's own efforts at healthcare reform in Massachusetts.

But it always bears repeating: no one looks to political ads for truth or fairness. That's not their point. Instead one should be noting the repeated use of the words "President Romney" and "Romney presidency" and the use of the words "will be like" not "would/could be like". At a time when there is a growing "nasty Mitt" meme in American public opinion this ad is a dose of pure sugar aimed at reassuring people Romney is a decent all-American type of politician. It aims to slay the image of Ogre Mitt and replace it with Saccharine Mitt.

• Three Types of People to Fire Immediately - Businessweek
  The best innovators are learners, not knowers. The same can be said about innovative cultures; they are learning cultures. The leaders who have built these cultures, either through intuition or experience, know that in order to discover, they must eagerly seek out things they don’t understand and jump right into the deep end of the pool. They must fail fearlessly and quickly and then learn and share their lessons with the team. When they behave this way, they empower others around them to follow suit—and presto, a culture of discovery is born and nurtured.
• Data Points: Video Ads' Greatest Hits | Adweek

What was bazaar speculation for quite a while is now a matter of record. Aroon Purie, the bossman of the India Today group, has divested over a quarter of his holding in Living Media India Limited, in favour of one of India’s richest men, Kumar Mangalam Birla for an undisclosed sum

(Business Standard reports that the deal may have been worth Rs 35o crore).

The stake sale brings one of biggest corporate houses, the Aditya Birla group, into mainstream magazine and television space (the K.K. Birla group owns the newspaper Hindustan Times); sets up a clash of telecom titans for the 4G space (Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance Industries has bought into the TV18 network); and raises questions over growing corporate ownership of the media.

Below is the internal note shot off by Ashish Bagga, the group CEO of the India Today group, at 9.10 pm on Friday, 18 May 2012:

***

Dear All

I am pleased to inform you of a significant development for the INDIA TODAY group.

Just this afternoon, the $35-billion Indian multi-national, ADITYA BIRLA GROUP (ABG) and your company, which is India’s most respected and diversified media corporation, have come to an agreement for a 27.5% financial investment by a private investment company of the Aditya Birla Group in our holding company, Living Media India Ltd.

Commenting on the investment, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla group said: “The Indian media sector is a sunrise sector from our investment point of view.  I believe that the India Today group offers one of the best opportunities of growth and value creation. ITG’s management ethos, values, brands, product portfolio and future plans offer one of the best opportunities for growth and value creation.”

Aroon Purie, our chairman said, “I am delighted to partner with the Aditya Birla Group to aggressively address the current and future potential of the Indian media business which is at a tipping point.  The Aditya Birla group with its strong leadership, global footprint, diversified business interests and its shared values of integrity, commitment and social responsibility make it a perfect fit with the India Today group.”

By virtue of this development, your company will embark on a high growth and expansion strategy across all its existing and new businesses.

I look forward to a successful and trail-blazing future.

Ashish Bagga, group CEO

Image: courtesy Mail Today

The capitulation of the Congress-led government at the Centre in the Ambedkar cartoon controversy was welcomed with the thumping of desks by parliamentarians who seemed to have little appreciation of the legendary Shankar‘s work and even less of what its inclusion in a school textbook meant.

From Congress president Sonia Gandhi (whose mother-in-law Indira Gandhi ushered in press censorship in 1975 and whose husband Rajiv Gandhi tried to pass the defamation bill in 1987) to the BJP which opposed both; from the supposedly “liberal” Left to the young MPs who represent the “future”, no one (bar one) raised a voice.

But back in 1975, when the legendary cartoonist P. Shankar Pillai decided to close down Shankar’s Weekly, there was a flurry of letters from politicians in the final issue. At least five Congress chief ministers mourned its imminent closure, including the Bihar CM Jagannath Mishra, who would later become synonymous with the Bihar press bill.

Here’s a mirror of India circa 2012 vis-a-a-vis 1975:

***

It is indeed sad and unfortunate that the only letter you chose to address to me personally should convey to me your intention to bow out. It is going to be a painful ordeal for thousands of your readers including myself, to go without the Weekly. I must believe you when you say that advancing age and ill-health have compelled you to close down Weekly, but I see neither of them reflected in your magazine. Indeed a tribute to your spirit – so young despite age! I am sure the Souvenir you propose to bring out will be an adorning piece on your lovers’ and admirers’ book-shelves! It will also serve as a lesson and guide to the new generation of cartoonists and journalists, convincingly telling them what an individual can achieve single-handedly.

S.B. Chavan
Chief Minster, Maharashtra

***

I was rather distressed to hear that the great journal is closing down after twenty-seven years of yeomen service to the nation and significant contribution to journalism in India. I really wish I could compel you not to close down Shankar’s Weekly, but I quite understand the reasons that have forced you to take this painful decision.

Harideo Joshi
Chief Minister, Rajasthan

***

I have received your letter with mixed feelings. That a journalist of your eminence has excellently finished his innings in this harsh world in a tribute to your sobre manners, accommodating  spirits, and the immense sense of humour which you have been exhibiting for the last quarter of a century. You have shone on the horizon of Indian journalism in a manner which is difficult to imbibe. You are an institution in yourself and the younger generation in the journalistic field will feel proud to emulate your example in all spheres of life.

H N Bahuguna
Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh

***

Sorry too learn that you are not keeping well, but I am impressed to find that your sentiments remain the same. Your effort to publish a souvenir of Shankar’s Weekly are praiseworthy.

Jagannath Mishra
Chief Minister, Bihar

***

I am really sorry that you are closing down Shankar’s Weekly.

D. Devaraj Urs
Chief Minister, Karnataka

***

I read the contents of your letter with deep concern. I know how the Shankar’s Weekly was started with your efforts and made a name of itself and continuous devotion and dedication. I am sure you have taken the decision after deep thinking and for the good of your health and for other reasons. You always had my admiration and regards, and it will grow whether you are with the Shankar’s Weekly or not.

Radha Raman
Chief Executive Councillor, Delhi

***

Shankar’s Weekly has served a very good purpose for over 25 years and could rank as one of the best cartoon journals in the world.

Jagannath Rao
Member of Parliament, New Delhi

(Published in the 31 August 1975 issue of Shankar’s Weekly)

Photograph: courtesy National Book Trust

Research: courtesy D.D. Gupta

Also read: Shankar‘s Weekly: the final editorial

Marco Antonio Avila Garcia's body dumped in plastic bag in latest killing of a journalist amid deadly drug wars

The tortured body of a Mexican police reporter has been found on the side of a road in the northern state of Sonora on Friday. A day earlier he had been kidnapped by gunmen while waiting at a car wash.

Marco Antonio Avila Garcia's body was found inside a black plastic bag near the city of Empalme, about 68 miles south of Ciudad Obregon where he was abducted, said Sonora state prosecutors' spokesman Jose Larrinaga.

Larrinaga said police found a message signed by a cartel but would not reveal its content.

The 39-year-old reporter often wrote about organised crime for the sister newspapers Diario Sonora de la Tarde and El Regional of Ciudad Obregon, said Larrinaga.

Two weeks ago police found the mutilated bodies of three photojournalists inside plastic bags dumped in a canal in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. Last week gunmen opened fire on the offices of the El Manana newspaper in the border city of Nuevo Laredo.

Avila had been snatched and forced into a pick-up truck on Thursday by three masked gunmen as he waited for a company car to be washed in Ciudad Obregon. The reporter was married and had three small children.

Mexico has become one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists amid a government offensive against drug cartels and rivalry among crime gangs.

Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights has said 81 journalists were killed between 2000 and 2012, while another 14 have disappeared.

The commission said on Friday it had opened an investigation into the death of Rene Orta Salgado, a journalist who had quit working for El Sol de Cuernavaca newspaper in the resort city of Cuernavaca in January. Police found Orta's body inside his car's trunk last Sunday; he had apparently been strangled.

Separately, the Mexican army said it had detained eight suspected members of the Gulf cartel and seized drugs, guns and hand grenades during investigations into the 13 May discovery of 49 mutilated bodies on a highway in northern Mexico.

Mexico's defense department said the suspects were caught on Thursday.

But the department has not said whether the eight suspects were directly involved in those killings.
The department said ib Friday that a total of 44 people had been detained and 140 guns and about four tons of marijuana seized during the investigations.

Authorities had previously suggested the rival Zetas cartel was responsible for the killings.

Can't find the right spot for your comment? Post it here, in this open forum. Real Time Comments: parked here, 24/7. (Earlier editions.)

Here are today’s must-read digital news stories from around the web:

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The Corner blog of The National Review mixed up the original publication date of Ms. Warren's book.

A feud among the members of the heavy-metal band Black Sabbath has left the original drummer, Bill Ward, out of its reunion concerts and cut out of its photographs.

Facebook took the media on a wild roller coaster of emotion today as it dealt with an excruciating 30-minute delay caused by some technical issues at the NASDAQ. Then, after peaking at $43, Facebook stock collapsed and ended the trading day back near its IPO price of $38.23.

Watch the media freak out over today's Facebook IPO drama below:

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Join the conversation about this story »

History was made today as the Facebook IPO hit the market. Eyeballs around the world were glued to cable news today reporting on every move of the stock and the company that began in a Harvard dorm room. How are TV companies reacting to the news? Should they be concerned that Facebook will find a way to tap into their advertising stronghold? Should they be spending dollars on Facebook advertising to drive viewers? We spoke with FOX Business Network anchor Cheryl Casone who was reporting on the IPO today for the network.

Lost Remote: How do you think TV companies specifically are reacting to the IPO? How will this affect their business models?

Cheryl Casone: The biggest question for TV companies is how much they want to spend on Facebook advertising buys. There seems to be some real question as to how effective ads are now that more Facebook users are using mobile devices that don’t display ads like desktops do.

LR: Will Facebook be able to tap into TV ad dollars? Should TV networks be scared?

Casone: I think Facebook should be nervous, not television networks. Content is still king and television production companies still hold the cards when it comes to Facebook. The social media site has many uses, but they are far from ready to compete on the TV level.  They need TV not the other way around.

LR: Do you think it’s important for TV brands to use Facebook for marketing, content development ads and more?

Casone: Yes, yes, and yes. Facebook is an excellent way to target viewers who are more than happy to post their likes and dislikes. It is a treasure trove of potential viewers but television companies can use Facebook virtually for free. Good for TV…..bad for Facebook!

LR: Have you spoken to anyone specifically in the TV industry to gain their perspective on the IPO?

Casone: I have had some off the record conversations and the jury still seems to be out as to what Facebook’s IPO means for our industry.  At this point Facebook doesn’t seem to be a threat to TV. Hulu and YouTube are what they worry about.