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A new study commissioned by D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray recommends that the city turn around or close more than three dozen traditional public schools in its poorest neighborhoods and expand the number of high-performing charter schools.

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The Fairfax County School Board voted Thursday night to expand high school honors courses, reversing a policy that was championed by Superintendent Jack D. Dale and that became a central issue during fall’s School Board campaign.

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Mr. Sargent oversaw the expansion of a modest-size family-controlled book publisher into an industry giant with interests extending into broadcasting and baseball.

Mr. Sargent oversaw the expansion of a modest-size family-controlled book publisher into an industry giant with interests extending into broadcasting and baseball.

Mimi Alford tells the story of her affair with President John F. Kennedy in “Once Upon a Secret.”

Katherine Boo, the author of “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” lets a story of poverty tell itself.

Welcome to Dickens World, a peculiar theme park based on the author’s works.

News Corp surpassed analyst expectations in quarterly earnings announced today, but the numbers reflected two wildly divergent trends.

On one hand, the company posted impressive growth in its TV, cable and movie businesses. These segments resulted in a $210 million year-over-year quarterly earnings increase and adjusted earnings per share of $0.39 which is better than the $0.34 analysts had predicted.

At the same time, the company announced a 43 percent decline in its publishing business and a quarterly charge of $87 million related to the UK phone hacking settlement.

On an afternoon earnings call, News Corp executives said that about 85 percent of the charge was for lawyers and advisers and the rest for legal settlements. They added that they could not go into details about future settlements but that the “priority is to make this right.” The company says it spent $104 million in 2011 on costs related to the investigation.

The hacking-related charges were not included in the publishing category where the company’s UK and Australia newspapers are experiencing collapsing revenues. The company also said it expected income from its UK newspapers to drop $150 million in the coming year.

Publishing reported second quarter segment operating income of $218 million, a $162 million or 43% decrease compared to the $380 million reported a year ago, reflecting lower advertising revenues at the Australian newspapers and the integrated marketing services business, as well as the absence of contributions from the closure of The News of the World in the U.K.

Analysts, however, appeared less interested in the scandal than in the company’s surging TV and entertainment businesses. The strong performance in these segments was driven in part by the popularity of Fox (NSDQ: NWS) News, FX cable and hit movies like Rio and an Alvin and the Chipmunks.

News Corp also enjoyed strong results from its affiliate BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) which posted improved quarterly income of $174 million compared to $109 million one year ago.

The company also said it expects a reinvigorated performance from Dow Jones as a result of a new CEO, a strong brand and new digital platforms.

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Yes, it’s true: We are joining GigaOM. And the combined group will be a powerhouse, with more than 20 writers and editors, a strong presence on the East and West coasts and in Europe, and coverage of everything from media and big data, to the cloud and mobile, to book publishing and online video—not to mention the startup scene in various markets.

It’s a very exciting development for us, as ContentNext and GigaOM share so many of the same goals and have such similar cultures. We both believe fundamentally in the power of breaking news and smart, useful content across different platforms, and we both have a core conviction about practicing truth and fairness in our journalism. We also both happen to believe that you can build very profitable businesses if you can execute on those principles.

We have other things in common, too: Both companies’ founders—in our case, Rafat Ali, in GigaOM’s case, Om Malik—turned influential one-man blogs into vibrant media companies by being way ahead of the curve. (A side note: The two founders have also long been close friends.) The chance to work with Om is one that anyone would leap at. He is a true visionary with a unique understanding of technology and a gift for communicating that knowledge. He’s also stacked GigaOM with talented writers and editors who, like him, have a deep curiosity about the intersection of technology and business, particularly innovation. (You can read Om’s post on the sale.)

At a time when so many content companies are groping for sustainable business models, GigaOM has a dynamic approach to making money. Its multiple revenue streams extend from site advertising to conferences to subscription products and beyond; from its online audience of more than 4.5 million monthly unique visitors, to its leading events like GigaOM Structure and GigaOM Roadmap, to GigaOM Pro, which provides research on emerging technology markets from over 110 independent analysts. GigaOM has built a suite of products that can serve a variety audiences, all of which congregate under the GigaOM brand. And now that will expand to include our sites, newsletters and conferences.

For readers of ContentNext’s sites—paidContent, MocoNews, paidContent:UK and ContentSutra—there’s nothing not to like about this deal. You’ll still be able to attend our stellar conferences and enjoy our trenchant posts about the industries we cover. You’ll still be getting all the content you know from the writers that you’re used to getting it from. But now you’ll be getting something else, too: more smart voices on different and vital topics, and even more news and analysis.

Under the terms of the purchase, Guardian News & Media (GNM), which bought ContentNext Media in 2008, will take a minority stake in GigaOM. GNM joins existing GigaOM investors including Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK) Ventures, Alloy Ventures and True Ventures. The sale is the culmination of a process that began back in the fall, with multiple bidders for ContentNext. The New York investment bank Coady Deimar Partners advised GNM on the deal.

“With our shared commitment to journalistic ethics, GigaOM and paidContent are a natural fit,” said Paul Walborsky, CEO of GigaOM. “paidContent is the leading voice covering the evolution of media, an area that is very important to us. Integrating our teams will enrich our editorial coverage and expand our footprint immediately in two markets that are critical to our growth – New York City and the UK.” GigaOM, which was founded in 2006, is based in San Francisco. ContentNext, whose roots go back to 2002, is based in New York.

The sale ends ContentNext’s three-and-a-half-year run as part of Guardian News and Media. When GNM had bought ContentNext, part of the idea was that it could help the UK publisher gain mindshare in the U.S. as the Guardian expanded there. In recent months, GNM has been focusing its investment activity in the U.S. around the buildout of a new site. “paidContent has a fantastic presence in the tech/media space, and the match with GigaOM, itself a really smart and pioneering company, is a good one. We are delighted to become shareholders in GigaOM as part of the deal,” said Andrew Miller, CEO of Guardian Media Group, the parent company of GNM. “The Guardian’s focus in the U.S. is on building guardiannews.com, but we look forward to seeing paidContent thrive and grow in its new home and wish its staff all the very best for the future.”

We thank the Guardian for their stewardship, and can’t wait to start working with our new colleagues at GigaOM. 

See GigaOM’sannouncement of the deal for additional details.

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It’s not the record average of 111 million viewers who watched the game on television, but NBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) says it notched a digital milestone Sunday. The network says that more than 2.1 million people streamed Super Bowl XLVI on computers, tablets and smart phones, which it declared the highest single-game sporting-event video traffic of all time.

Citing third-party data from Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) and mDialog, NBC says 2,105,441 unique users in the U.S. streamed the game on either NBCSports.com, NFL.com or through the NFL Mobile channel that’s available to Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) subscribers.

NBC also said that 78.6 million total minutes of game coverage were streamed and that 1.83 million game clips and Super Bowl ads were viewed digitally. CBS’ coverage of the NCAA’s “March Madness” men’s basketball tournament actually recorded more than 3 million digital viewers for individual-day of coverage last spring. But no single game came close to the 2.1 million mark.

Although it was the first time the Super Bowl has been streamed, NBC routinely streams its Sunday Night regular-season NFL coverage, which averages around 300,000 unique viewers, the network said.

Prior to the game, sports buyers for several large media agencies told us they were reluctant to spend a mid-six-figure sums for Super Bowl digital advertising time, noting that they were concerned that the game wouldn’t attract a big viewership number. This is appointment viewing, they noted, the kind of game for which fans go to viewing parties and watch the game on a big-screen TV.

Sunday’s numbers might cause them to reconsider future digital buys for big sports events.

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Mail Online may have overtaken The New York Times’ website for global audience, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) - but, in reality, the two are still an ocean apart.

The macho, competitive ethos of London’s old Fleet Street, on which newspaper executives celebrate beating each other’s circulation, has spilled over on to the web and is being fought across the Atlantic. Mail Online’s meteoric rise, which the company on Wednesday said gives it almost 100 million monthly uniques. is rightly admired.

But that dead-tree machismo is not necessarily the right lens through which to look and comparisons are not helpful. A&N Media’s fast-growing news and pictures vehicle is no more competing with The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) than Coca-Cola is with cod liver oil…

• Different content: One is laden with celebrity gossip, bikini photos and outrageous news and features written so expertly succinctly that readers just have to click. The other is a sobre, reflective and, some might say, banal examination of the machinations of American public life and culture. (While NYTimes.com’s U.S. page led with Court Strikes Down Ban on Gay Marriage in California this week, Mail Online’s was splashing with ‘My adoptive father poured hot sauce in my ears, glued my eyes shut and starved us’).
• Different businesses: If the two titles aren’t chasing the same audiences, they also aren’t fighting for the same advertisers. While NYTimes.com runs campaigns for $500 handbags, Manhattan apartments and Indian bridalwear, Mail Online advertises WeightWatchers, home telecom services and discount wine.

So, the Mail may now be operating in the same U.S. geography as the Times, but the pair aren’t necessarily competing head-on.

Although they each occupy the “online news” space together, observers of that sector who draw linear conclusions from Mail Online “overtaking” NYTimes.com’s traffic have got it wrong.

For one, the handover must be seen in two quite distinct but important contexts…

• NYTimes’ introduction of metered charging early in 2011 has, naturally, negatively impacted upon its web visits.
• Mail Online likely has not gained NYTimes.com readers but has acquired its new audience under its own steam from what was a flat start.

None of this is to denigrate Mail Online’s journey. Whilst some criticise the website’s sensationalist bent as much as the newspaper’s political tactics, it has shown how to build a big online news audience in a new country.

But Mail Online isn’t benefitting because it’s eating NYTimes.com’s dinner, and it doesn’t necessarily matter that one’s traffic has surpassed the other - in a still-growing market like the internet, all boats rise.

It is truer to say mass-market U.S. newspaper websites (National Enquirer? New York Post?) face a greater threat from Mail Online than NYTimes.com does. But it may be even truer to wonder if the U.S. as a whole has ever quite seen anything like Mail Online.

Whatever, one must at least compare apples with apples.

Path, a company hoping to build a kinder, gentler social network based on sharing within a limited number of people, has apologized for a contact-finder feature in its software that uploaded users’ entire iPhone address books to its servers and said it has deleted that personal information.

In yet another case of the tricky line between sharing, mobile data, and transparency, Arun Thampi, a developer for Anideo, discovered Tuesday that Path was uploading the contact information of his iPhone address book when he created an account. Path’s intention was to make it easier for users to find friends using that information, but Thampi and several others found it “a little creepy” that the company felt entitled to the data in one’s personal address book without explicitly warning them first.

On Wednesday, Dave Morin, CEO and founder of Path, apologized (sort of) in saying “we are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.” A new version of Path has been released that no longer uploads that data unless you explicitly choose to do so, and the data collected from current Path users has been deleted, he said in a blog post.

Once again, we see the dance that mobile apps tied to location and social networks have to do around show they handle of private information. Path’s misstep is just another signal that people are willing to share information with mobile service providers up to a certain point but they are not pleased when that sharing happens without their knowledge.

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• Updated: Path Picks Up $8.65 Million; Reaches Two Million "Moments"

In Hollywood, $100 million will buy you about half of a Jerry Bruckheimer action movie. But YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) is spreading that sum out to launch more than 100 new video content channels this year, with the hope that one of these inexpensive video plays will become the kind of mass-audience hit that moves ad dollars away from TV and onto the Internet. Now nearly a third of the way through, by its own estimation, with the rollout of its full array of video channels, the company on Wednesday announced a new offering themed around the popular car-enthusiast brand Motor Trend.

Co-produced with Motor Trend Magazine publisher Source Interlink Media (SIM), the channel will launch Feb. 17 with eight original weekly shows unfurling on a Monday-Friday schedule.

The series will be themed around SIM brands including not just Motor Trend, but also Hot Rod, Motorcyclist, Lowrider, FourWheeler, Dirt Rider and Car Craft.

Motor Trend is just the latest publishing brand to use YouTube’s seed money to launch a video channel on the platform.

Previous channel announcements have included online video platforms for The Wall Street Journal and Reuters (NYSE: TRI), for example.

For Google-owned YouTube, which is trying to transition its model from user-generated video to a more “premium” experience, leveraging the talent and production wherewithal of individual publishing companies which are not traditionally vested in video production could ultimately produce uneven results.

But in the case of SIM, YouTube isn’t exactly working with rank amateurs. While it’s re-launching Motor Trend as an official channel with dedicated weekly programs, the company has quietly operated a less formal channel for the brand for the last six years. “This was the next logial step for SIM as it continues its transformation from legacy magazine publishing business to a media-neutral content creation company,” said Motor Trend channel executive producer Angus MacKenzie

.

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Mr. Christopher was author of the “Tripods” trilogy among many other books under many other names.

Katherine Boo, the author of “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” lets a story of poverty tell itself.

In new picture books, one crocodile stands out in workaday Oslo; another watches as other species disappear from the wild.

The best writer in a baseball uniform, Dirk Hayhurst pitched briefly for the 2008 San Diego Padres and the 2009 Toronto Blue Jays, and is now leaving the country to play and write in Italy.

D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown has called on Mayor Vincent C. Gray to maintain a “floor”of $3,000 per student for charter school facilities. Public charter schools, which must secure their own buildings, use the allotment to cover rent, mortgage, debt service and renovations. In fiscal year 2010, then mayor Adrian M. Fenty cut the allowance from $3,109 to $2,800. It’s been supplemented with federal funds to keep it at $3,000.

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In “Bringing Up Bébé,” Pamela Druckerman shares the wisdom of French child rearing that she gleaned from her own experiences as an American mother in Paris.

My topic today is something people in the Washington area rarely acknowledge. The lawyers, educators, government officials, consultants, journalists and other analytical types so numerous here prefer to fix what’s wrong---how about those Redskins?---rather than celebrate what’s right.

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