It seems that Reuters has a new product out – Reuters Social Pulse. As well as highlighting “the stories being talked about by the newsmakers we follow”, there is an area highlighting “the Reuters & Klout 50 where we rank America’s most social CEOs.” Of note here is that this list is ordered by Klout score. Reuters don’t own Klout (yet?!) do they?!

The offering also includes a view of the world through the tweets of Reuters own staff. Apparently, “Reuters has over 3,000 journalists around the world, many of whom are doing amazing work on Twitter. That is too many to keep up with on a Twitter list, so we created a directory Reuters Twitter Directory] that shows you our best tweeters by topic. It let’s you find our reporters, bloggers and editors by category and location so you can drill down to business journalists in India, if you so choose, or tech writers in the UK.”

If you view the source of Reuters Twitter directory page, you can find a Javascript object that lists all(?) the folk in the Reuters Twitter directory and the tags they are associated with… Hmm, I thought… Hmmm…

If we grab that object, and pop it into Python, it’s easy enough to create a bipartite network that links journalists to the categories they are associated with:

import simplejson
import networkx as nx
#http://mlg.ucd.ie/files/summer/tutorial.pdf
from networkx.algorithms import bipartite

g = nx.Graph()

#need to bring in reutersJournalistList
users=simplejson.loads(reutersJournalistList)

#I had some 'issues' with the parsing for some reason? Required this hack in the end...
for user in users:
	for x in user:
		if x=='users':
			u=user[x][0]['twitter_screen_name']
			print 'user:',user[x][0]['twitter_screen_name']
			for topic in user[x][0]['topics']:
				print '- topic:',topic
				#Add edges from journalist name to each tag they are associated with
				g.add_edge(u,topic)
#print bipartite.is_bipartite(g)
#print bipartite.sets(g)

#Save a graph file we can visualise in Gephi corresponding to bipartite graph
nx.write_graphml(g, "usertags.graphml")

#We can find the sets of names/tags associated with the disjoint sets in the graph
users,tags=bipartite.sets(g)

#Collapse the bipartite graph to a graph of journalists connected via a common tag
ugraph= bipartite.projected_graph(g, users)
nx.write_graphml(ugraph, "users.graphml")

#Collapse the bipartite graph to a set of tags connected via a common journalist
tgraph= bipartite.projected_graph(g, tags)
nx.write_graphml(tgraph, "tags.graphml")

#Dump a list of the journalists Twitter IDs
f=open("users.txt","w+")
for uo in users: f.write(uo+'\n')
f.close()

Having generated graph files, we can then look to see how the tags cluster as a result of how they were applied to journalists associated with several tags:

Alternatively, we can look to see which journalists are connected by virtue of being associated with similar tags (hmm, I wonder if edge weight carries information about how many tags each connected pair may be associated through?). In this case, I size the nodes by betweenness centrality to try to highlight journalists that bridge topic areas:

Association through shared tags (as applied by Reuters) is one thing, but there is also structure arising from friendship networks…So to what extent do the Reuters Twitter List journalists follow each other (again, sizing by betweenness centrality):

Finally, here’s a quick look at folk followed by 15 or more of the folk in the Reuters Twitter journalists list: this is the common source area on Twitter for the journalists on the list. This time, I size nodes by eigenvector centrality.

So why bother with this? Because journalists provide a filter onto the way the world is reported to us through the media, and as a result the perspective we have of the world as portrayed through the media. If we see journalists as providing independent fairwitness services, then having some sort of idea about the extent to which they are sourcing their information severally, or from a common pool, can be handy. In the above diagram, for example, I try to highlight common sources (folk followed by at least 15 of the journalists on the Twitter list). But I could equally have got a feeling for the range of sources by producing a much larger and sparser graph, such as all the folk followed by journalists on the list, or folk followed by only 1 person on the list (40,000 people or so in all – see below), or by 2 to 5 people on the list…

Friends lists are one sort of filter every Twitter user has onto the content been shared on Twitter, and something that’s easy to map. There are other views of course – the list of people mentioning a user is readily available to every Twitter user, and it’s easy enough to set up views around particular hashtags or search terms. Grabbing the journalists associated with one or more particular tags, and then mapping their friends (or, indeed, followers) is also possible, as is grabbing the follower lists for one or more journalists and then looking to see who the friends of the followers are, thus positioning the the journalist in the social media environment as perceived by their followers.

I’m not sure that value Reuters sees in the stream of tweets from the folk on its Twitter journalists lists, or the Twitter networks they have built up, but the friend lenses at least we can try to map out. And via the bipartite user/tag graph, it also becomes trivial for us to find journalists with interests in Facebook and advertising, for example…

Coming soon to a newsstand next week … Women's Health, which is a bit like Men's Health, but for women. The cover star of Hearst Rodale's 140-page launch is actor Kate Beckinsale in an issue that promises readers "a flat sexy stomach in 15 minutes" how to "eat cake, lose weight!" and – our favourite – "get a pay rise with perfume". It also advises readers how to get "better sex in 60 seconds". Which might be a contradiction in terms. Women's Health editor Farrah Storr said: "A lot of people have asked why there wasn't a female equivalent to Men's Health in the UK so we're delighted to be launching Women's Health. We have invested a lot of time in producing a great magazine with hundreds of actionable tips and tricks, each one backed by world class experts and scientific research."

John Plunkett's back for this week's Media Talk - very much a podcast of three halves.

First up, we have an exclusive interview with Lord Hunt, the new chairman of the Press Complaints Commission.

Next, we speak just as exclusively as to Ben Cooper, the new(ish) controller of Radio 1 about Chris Moyles and his plans to take the nation's favourite station younger.

Finally, Paul Robinson joins us to analyse a record-breaking quarter for BBC 6 Music and crunch the other numbers from the latest set of Rajars.

As ever, have your say on the blog below, or head on over to Facebook.

ConnecTV, a social TV partnership of more than 200 local TV stations, today launched online and for the iPad, providing synchronized content and conversations around what is on TV.

A check of Bay area nonprofit news site The Bay Citizen on Friday morning found the site disabled with this message from Web hosting company GoDaddy.com, "This domain name expired on 02/02/2012 and is pending renewal or deletion."

In its most high-profile move since announcing the expansion of its political coverage, Yahoo News has hired former New York Times columnist Virginia Heffernan as its national correspondent.

Jed Williams: "Facebook has never shown the propensity to build a sales force of the mass and scope necessary to exhaustively address local markets and SMBs. Even its deals play was an aggregated approach through partners. However, it does collect much of its advertising revenues from small and mid-market businesses that self-serve on the platform."

Topheadlin.es, an experimental new app from The Wall Street Journal, scans a list of 10 news sources every three minutes and delivers the one top headline from each.

San Francisco-based nonprofit news site The Bay Citizen is in the early stages of merger talks with another nonprofit news organization, the Center for Investigative Reporting, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Welcome to the 36th episode of "The Mediatwits," the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift's Mark Glaser and Dorian Benkoil, who is filling in for Rafat Ali. It's been a crazy week in media + tech, with Google privacy concerns, Amazon falling short in earnings, and much more. But the dominant news was Facebook filing for an IPO, with demand to read its S-1 crashing the SEC's servers. The startup had $3.7 billion in revenues, with $1 billion in profits last year, and showed tremendous growth in users and advertising. Can anything slow down the juggernaut on the way to raising $5 billion in a public offering? We talked to special guest Nick O'Neill, founder of AllFacebook.com, who was impressed with the user engagement on the social networking site.

This week was also the "Dive into Media" conference put on by AllThingsD in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Special guest Peter Kafka programmed the show and interviewed many of the top execs on stage. He told us about the challenge of interviewing Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, a former improv comedian, as well as the mix of old and new media at the show. Finally, Columbia University's Journalism School and Stanford University's Engineering School received a $30 million gift from Helen Gurley Brown to create a new Institute for Media Innovation, marking the largest gift in the history of Columbia's J-School. Has digital media now arrived? Has the revolution been institutionalized?

Check it out!

mediatwits36.mp3

Subscribe to the podcast here

Subscribe to Mediatwits via iTunes

Follow @TheMediatwits on Twitter here

Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio's Music Alley.

Here are some highlighted topics from the show:

Intro and roundup

1:30: Questions about Google combining privacy policies

4:00: Google, Amazon fall short in earnings

5:50: Rundown of topics on the podcast

Facebook IPO fever

7:00: Special guest Nick O'Neill of AllFacebook.com

10:00: Dorian: Each Facebook employee bringing in $1 million in revenues

11:35: O'Neill: Probably more than 60% of ad revenues from self-serving ad system

14:00: 12% of Facebook's revenues coming from Zynga

16:00: Special guest Peter Kafka

18:20: Advertisers still not sure about ROI on Facebook

D: Dive into Media

21:00: D conference tries out a niche conference for media + tech

22:45: Kafka: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo can zing you if you're not careful

23:45: Great insights from Hulu, YouTube execs

$30 million gift to Columbia/Stanford

28:10: Attempt to bring data and journalism worlds together

31:00: Bill Campbell, "The Coach," is an adviser on the project

32:45: Dorian: Era of digital media is here

More Reading

Microsoft Attacks Google Privacy Policy With Ads, Gmail Man at TPMIdeaLab

Facebook's IPO Filing is Here at Business Insider

Sean Parker, Chris Hughes And Eduardo Saverin Dumped Their Facebook Shares at AllFacebook

Well, Now We Know What Facebook's Worth--And It's Not $100 Billion at Business Insider

Facebook's Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery at AllThingsD

Reminder: The $5 Billion Facebook IPO Won't Make You Rich at Gizmodo

Facebook's $5 Billion IPO, By The Numbers [CHARTS] at MarketingLand

The Facebook IPO: billion-user ambition at a $1bn price at Comment Is Free

Facebook and Don Graham Have Been Very Good to Each Other at Forbes

Dive into Media coverage at AllThingsD

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo: We're Not a Media Company. We're in the Media Business. at AllThingsD

Hulu Boss Jason Kilar: Who You Callin' Clown Co.? at AllThingsD

Columbia J-School and Stanford Eng Nab $30M Joint Gift for Media Innovation From Helen Gurley Brown at AllThingsD

Weekly Poll

Don't forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time prognosticating what you think Facebook will be worth:

What do you think Facebook's value will be in 5 years?

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. and Circle him on Google+

This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

The singer, who will perform at Sunday's game, will have maximum exposure for the first single from her new album, including a multiplatform campaign by Clear Channel Communications.

Watch a man in pursuit of traffic offenders, the best Game Day ads and family a play an 80s classic in our online clip rundown

Some drivers might feel speed cameras follow them wherever they go. French prankster Remi Gaillard has taken this to its ultimate conclusion and made a film featuring a man dressed as a speed camera. But the man doesn't stop at cars – he zaps planes, trains, and even a tractor. The only thing that can stop him is… well, watch and see.

Sunday's Super Bowl is not only the highlight of the US NFL season – it's a massive event for advertisers too. Brands pay up to $4m for a 30-second slot, so they bring out heavyweight new ads that will get people talking. Perhaps the best this year is Honda's update of Ferris Bueller's Day Off faeturing Matthew Broderick, but a few others crop up in our chart this week.

To me, Volkswagen's "The Dog Strikes Back" feels like a bit of a disappointment after the "Bark Side" teaser featuring dogs barking the Imperial March from Star Wars. The only upside is after 0:45 where the ad spoofs the Star Wars cantina scene – but even then, there doesn't seem much imagination. Elsewhere, advertisers pulled out their big guns – such as getting David Beckham to take his top off – or aped a hit genre such as vampires – see the Twilight-inspired Audi ad.

Muppet mania continues this week, as the furry funsters continue the tour to promote their latest movie. At the London press conference following the UK premiere, Kermit and Miss Piggy hit back at Fox TV over claims the puppets 'brainwash' kids with an anti-corporate message. You can also watch them speaking out about phone hacking. Hi-ya!

Finally, there's been a rush of videos featuring cute kids playing music – particularly rock – on YouTube in the past couple of weeks. They often fail to add much to the original, but the Schrader family's take on Depeche Mode is in another (human) league. Colombian video artist Dicken Schrader raids the kitchen cupboard for unexpected bjects for his young children to play on the tune, and the results are magical. What a cool dad.

Guardian Viral Video Chart. Compiled by Unruly Media and chopped around by Dugald.

1 Radar (Rémi Gaillard)
No friend of Chris Huhne.

2 Kristen Bell's Sloth Meltdown
Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Heroes star goes bananas over sloths.

3 Flying People in New York City
Unidentified flying humans – or Superman?

4 The Dog Strikes Back: 2012 Volkswagen Game Day Commercial
Big dog slims down to race VW Beetle.

5 Incredible Ball Boy Catch - Aussie Open
Listen out for the Ricky Ponting reference.

6 A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors
Beware the rise of the machines.

7 The Muppets Attack Fox News
Miss Piggy karate chops Murdoch.

8 Dicken feat. Milah & Korben: "Everything Counts"
Look forward to their take on Personal Jesus.

9 HBO Films: Game Change Trailer
Watch out for Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin.

10 Horse Trainer Gets Excited on LIVE TV!
More swearing than Father Jack.

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 1100 on 3 February 2012. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

Reuters journalists in U.K. approve 2-day strike over pay offer

news:rewired
New York Times Social Media Editor Liz Heron said during a talk in London on Friday that the Times will have a presence on Pinterest soon. “Pinterest is one up-and-coming platform, but we’re still figuring out what the community… Read more

Virtual world for children makes first foray into print as it takes on British rivals Bin Weevils and Moshi Monsters

Disney's Club Penguin – until now a virtual world for children – is launching a print magazine in the UK that it hopes will increase the appeal of its snow-covered Penguin land against increasingly fierce competition from British rivals Bin Weevils and Moshi Monsters.

The Club Penguin magazine will launch on 9 February priced at £2.99. Disney says it will be a test for launching print titles in other countries, as the media group tries to develop its brand across different media.

Lane Merrifield, one of the three co-founders of Club Penguin who sold the site to Disney in 2007 for a $350mn, said that a dedicated magazine was particularly attractive to the UK market: "This type of printed magazine for kids is certainly more popular in the UK than elsewhere in the world."

He added that he expected children to contribute to its content. "We get literally tens of thousands of pieces of artwork sent to us every month which we share on the site and give kids points in-world," said Merrifield. "It's imperative that we also have kid-created content in the magazine as well."

Printed under a license deal with Panini Magazines, the Club Penguin monthly title will be judged not just by how many are sold but by how many of the game codes and "extras" included in the magazine are redeemed online by Club Penguin's target market of seven- to 11-year-olds.

Moshi Monsters launched its own print titles in several countries a year ago and now sells up to 100,000 issues a month in the UK, currently the biggest-selling UK kids' magazine. Not to be outdone, Bin Weevils will unveil its own eponymous print title a few days after Club Penguin on 15 February.

Club Penguin is the biggest global virtual world for kids reaching 150 million users internationally, but in the UK the Disney property is in fierce competition with locally owned competitors. Moshi Monsters and Bin Weevils ranked number one and two respectively, based on unique visitors to the site in November 2011, beating Club Penguin, according to Comscore data.

Egmont has the licence to publish the new Bin Weevils magazine and Watney says more off-line products are in the works under an aggressive licensing plan, including books and the first toys based on Bin Weevil characters including Tink and Clott to appear this autumn. Bin Weevils, which is privately held and counts Nickelodeon as a minority owner, has seen 300% revenue growth in the past 12 months, according to its CEO and co-investor Richard Watney.

Merrifield believes the new Club Penguin monthly magazine will bolster his concept of creating "entertainment in the cloud" where content is dispersed across many media and works to create multiplatform "fun and magical" entertainment experiences for kids.

Last September Club Penguin rolled out its first mobile app around Club Penguin fluffy pets called Puffles. In December the first-ever Club Penguin TV short cartoon, called Never Wake a Sleeping Sensei, started airing on Disney-owned television channels and on the internet. Merrifield said more TV-like content is planned for roll-out later this year.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.

General Manager of Fox WJBK station in Detroit dies suddenly at the age of 50

Employees of TV service detained, threatened and interrogated by officials as relations between UK and Iran deteriorate

Iran is stepping up a campaign of intimidation and smears against the BBC's Persian TV service, watched by millions of people in the Islamic Republic but loathed by the government in Tehran.

In recent incidents, relatives of BBC staff in London have been detained and threatened by Iranian intelligence agents, top presenters targeted by malicious rumours and one employee subjected to an online interrogation in London after a family member in Iran was jailed. Iran is also thought to be preparing a documentary attacking the channel in the the runup to parliamentary elections next month.

Sadegh Saba, head of BBC Persian, was accused live on air by an unknown caller of raping Pooneh Ghoddoosi, the presenter of the popular Persian-language talk show Your Turn. Both insist the charge is without foundation but it has since been repeated as fact by Iranian government media outlets.

BBC Persian TV has been subjected to repeated jamming by Iran since it was founded in 2009. The latest bout of harrassment comes against a background of sharply deteriorating relations between the two governments. Last November Britain shut its Tehran embassy after it was stormed by demonstrators in apparent retaliation for sanctions imposed over Iran's nuclear programme. Iran's London embassy was then ordered to be closed.

Tensions worsened in recent weeks after the closure of Press TV, the controversial English-language arm of the Iranian state broadcaster IRIB, in London. The regulator, Ofcom, revoked its licence for breaching the Communications Act.

"In recent months, direct actions against the BBC by Iran have intensified," Saba said. "We have witnessed increasing levels of intimidation, as well as attempts to interfere with our independence. The Iranian government has detained and summoned a number of people allegedly working for the BBC Persian service. There have also been cases of intimidation, questioning, and detention involving relatives of BBC staff."

Saba and Ghoddoosi are popular in Iran, despite official hostility to the channel.

BBC Persian reporting has countered the government's versions of both the domestic political scene and Iran's troubled relationship with the west. Iranian officials often cite BBC Persian's reporting as evidence of a foreign plot to undermine the regime.

Tehran was furious with the BBC's extensive coverage of the disputed 2009 presidential election, which gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term. During the post-election crisis, BBC Persian conducted hundreds of telephone interviews with protesters who described deaths, injuries and arbitrary arrests carried out by security forces.

Last month security forces raided the home of a BBC Persian employee's relative in Tehran, searched and confiscated their belongings, and transferred the person to Evin prison. Hours later, a man claiming to be the relative's interrogator at Evin contacted the BBC employee in London, seeking information about the BBC in return for the family member's freedom.

Fifty-two BBC Persian staff have complained about the corporation's handling of the issue, calling it "scandalous" that Iranian intelligence was able to interrogate a BBC employee in London.

Street Fight co-founder David Hirschman will be moderating a hyperlocal-themed panel at the DD Summit Europe, which will take place on March 19th in London. The summit, which is the first of its kind in Europe, comes on the heels of several successful deals conferences in the U.S. last year.

There are over 1500 daily dealers currently operating in Europe, and Stavros Prodromou, the conference’s organizer, says that the event is meant to spur collaborations and partnerships between the various companies working in the space. He notes in a release that media throughout Europe have begun to jump on the daily deals bandwagon, as traditional newspapers and magazines have partnered with white label platforms to offer deal products to their readers.

Hirschman’s panel on “hyperlocal best approaches” will look at how location-based services are changing the way that deals are structured, sold, and redeemed — and how deal companies can leverage location to make deals more timely, more relevant, and more compelling for consumers.

Confirmed speakers at the conference include Peter Briffet, the U.K. managing director for LivingSocial; Gerard Doyle, the CEO of Discount Vouchers; Omid Ashtari, European director of business development for Foursquare; Kevin Wray, VP of marketing and business development at Nimble Commerce; Cheryl Yeoh, the founder and CEO of CityPockets; and many more.

For more information or to buy tickets, click here.

***

Related Street Fight content:

– Lesson From Gilt: Consolidation Means Growing Up for Daily Deals

– The Daily Deal — Dead Man Walking?

– How Groupon Will Expand in 2012

– 6 Self-Service Platforms to Help Merchants Maintain Control Over Daily Deals

– 8 Scheduling Tools For Managing Deal Customers

Welcome to This Week in Location Based Marketing, a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association. In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at the latest SIRI competitor, Evi, the location tool LocalBeat in India, Groupon’s kiosk play, a great example of relevant and smart location-based mobile marketing by the First TransPennine Express, and Matt O’Leary from Shopcastr.

Episode 62

Recorded: January 29, 2012
Hosts: Rob Woodbridge & Asif Khan

Show highlights:
1. TrueKnowledge launches Evi (to compete with Siri) (5:00)
2. Taazza launches Localbeat in India (9:24)
3. Groupon partners with SmartDigital bringing deals to kiosks (11:47)
4. AdsOnMap.com (location-based classifieds) (15:52)
5. First TransPennine Express brings location to rail travel (18:10)

Product of the Week
Shopcastr: With special guest Matt O’Leary (27:06)

Funding News
1. Descartes acquires GeoMicro (36:30)
2. TimeHop closes $1.1M (38:35)

Resource of the Week
MobileMarketer – VC money going to mobile marketing (42:50)

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