RG3 hurt, Seattle tops Redskins 24-14 in playoffs

LANDOVER, Md. (AP) — Russell Wilson raced ahead to throw the final block on Marshawn Lynch's go-ahead touchdown run, and the Seattle Seahawks finally had a victorious road show.

Robert Griffin III's knee buckled as he tried to field a bad shotgun snap, leaving the Washington Redskins an offseason to worry about their franchise player's health.

The last rookie quarterback standing in the NFL playoffs is Wilson — the third-round pick who teamed with Lynch on Sunday to lead the Seahawks to a 24-14 victory over the Griffin and the Redskins.

Lynch ran for 131 yards, and Wilson completed 15 of 26 passes for 187 yards and ran eight times for 67 yards for the Seahawks, who overcame a 14-0 first-quarter hole — their biggest deficit of the season — and will visit the top-seeded Atlanta Falcons next Sunday.

"It was only two touchdowns, but it's still a big comeback and in this setting and the crowd, it's a marvelous statement about the guys resolve and what is going on," Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. "It's not about how you start but how you finish."

Seattle will be riding a six-game winning streak, having left behind any doubts that the team can hold its own outside the Pacific Northwest. The Seahawks were 3-5 on the road in the regular season and had lost eight straight road playoff games, the last win coming in December 1983 against the Miami Dolphins.

The day began with three rookie quarterbacks in the playoffs, but No. 1 overall pick Andrew Luck was eliminated when the Indianapolis Colts lost 24-9 to the Baltimore Ravens earlier in the day.

Lynch's change-of-direction, 27-yard touchdown run — with Wilson leading the way with a block on safety Madieu Williams near the goal line — and a 2-point conversion gave the Seahawks a 21-14 lead with 7:08 remaining.

"Marhsawn always tells me, 'Russ, I got your back, no matter what,'" Wilson said. "So I just try to help him out every cone in a while when he gets downfield."

Then came the play that essentially put the outcome to rest.

On the second play of the Redskins' next possession, Griffin's heavily braced right knee buckled badly as he tried to field a bad shotgun snap on a second-and-22 at Washington's 12-yard line. He lay on the ground, unable to recover the ball as the Seahawks pounced on it.

Griffin walked off the field under his own power, but the Redskins announced he would not return. After a few minutes, Griffin walked back to the sideline and watched the end of the game. The extent of the injury was not immediately known.

Griffin was playing in his third game since spraining his right knee about a month ago against the Baltimore Ravens, and he had been looking gimpy since tumbling backward following an ill-advised sidearm throw in the first quarter.

Nevertheless, he stayed in the game. Redskins coach Mike Shanahan said he didn't pull Griffin because the quarterback wanted to continue.

"I think I did put myself at more risk," Griffin said. "But every time you get on the field, you're putting yourself on the line."

Griffin was scheduled for an MRI to determine the extent of the injury.

Having recovered the fumble, the Seahawks kicked a short field goal to give them the insurance they needed. Fellow rookie Kirk Cousins, subbing for Griffin, was unable to rally the Redskins in the final minutes.

Griffin, the No. 2 overall pick and last year's Heisman Trophy winner who set several rookie quarterback record this year, finished 10 for 19 for 84 yards with two touchdowns and one interception. He also had five carries for 21 yards, including a laboring 9-yard run that made him look 32 years old instead of 22.

The loss ended a seven-game winning streak for the Redskins, who recovered from a 3-6 start to win the NFC East.

The Redskins opened the game threatening to make a mockery of the NFL's top scoring defense. Simple toss-to-the-right stretch plays netted 8, 9 and 18 yards for Alfred Morris in an 80-yard drive, and tight end Logan Paulsen barreled into linebacker Malcolm Smith after a catch to highlight a 54-yard drive.

Both possessions ended with 4-yard touchdown passes: one to Evan Royster for his first NFL TD catch and the other to Paulsen. The Redskins led 14-0 in the first quarter against a team that allowed a season-low 15.3 per game in the regular season, but Griffin had tweaked the knee on that second drive.

The Seahawks responded by getting Lynch involved more and scoring on three consecutive drives to pulled within a point at halftime. Steven Hauschka, who injured his left ankle during the first half and had to relinquish kickoff duties, nevertheless sandwiched field goals of 32 and 29 yards around a 4-yard touchdown pass from Wilson to Michael Robinson.

The Seahawks were poised to take the lead on the opening drive of the second half, moving the ball to 1-yard line with a pair of nice runs by Lynch and a leaping catch by Golden Tate.

But Lynch fumbled on second-and-goal from the 1, the ball popped loose and was recovered by defensive lineman Jarvis Jenkins. Then, on their next drive, the Seahawks drove to Washington's 28 before a sack forced a punt — rather than a long field goal attempt by an injured kicker.

With the Redskins' offense struggling, however, the Seahawks had more chances to take the lead — and finally did on the 79-yard drive capped by Lynch's touchdown run.

The playoff meeting between the two teams was the third, but first outside Seattle. The Seahawks won 20-10 in January 2006, and 35-14 in January 2008. Those were the last two postseason games played by the Redskins.

Seattle had outscored opponents 193-60 in its final five games of the regular season. But they were 3-5 on the road and had lost eight straight road playoff games. Their only road playoff win came in their first postseason road game, Dec. 31, 1983, at Miami.

And now they have another.

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Drug-Testing Company Tied to N.C.A.A. Draws Criticism

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A wall in one of the conference rooms at the National Center for Drug Free Sport displays magazine covers, each capturing a moment in the inglorious history of doping scandals in sports.

Steve Hebert for The New York Times

The National Center for Drug Free Sport, in Kansas City, Mo., tries to deter doping with programs for high school, college and professional leagues.

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Don Catlin, formerly of U.C.L.A.’s Olympic Analytical Lab, has raised questions about drug testing at colleges.

The images show Ben Johnson, the sprinter who lost his 1988 Olympic gold medal after testing positive; and Barry Bonds, the tarnished home run king; and Lyle Alzado, one of the first pro football players to admit to steroid use.

“People always assume that it’s the athletes at the top of their sport or the top of their game that are using,” said Frank Uryasz, Drug Free Sport’s founder and president. “But I can assure you that’s not the case. There’s always that desire to be the best, to win. That permeates all level of sport — abuse where you just wouldn’t expect it.”

Over the past quarter-century, athletes like Johnson, Bonds and Alzado stirred widespread concern about doping in sports.

Professional leagues without drug-testing programs have put them in; leagues with drug-testing programs have strengthened them. Congress and medical experts have called on sports officials at all levels to treat doping like a scourge.

It was in this budding American culture of doping awareness that Uryasz found a niche business model. He has spent the past decade selling his company’s services to the country’s sports officials.

The company advises leagues and teams on what their testing protocols should look like — everything from what drugs to test for to how often athletes will be tested to what happens to the specimens after testing. It also handles the collection and testing of urine samples, often with the help of subcontractors.

Drug Free Sport provides drug-testing programs for high school, college and professional leagues.

A privately held company with fewer than 30 full-time employees, it counts among its clients Major League Baseball, the N.F.L., the N.B.A., the N.C.A.A. and about 300 individual college programs.

Many, if not all, of the players on the field Monday night for the Bowl Championship Series title game between Alabama and Notre Dame have participated in a drug-testing program engineered by Drug Free Sport.

Uryasz says his company’s programs provide substantial deterrents for athletes who might consider doping.

Critics, however, question how rigorous the company’s programs are. They say Drug Free Sport often fails to adhere to tenets of serious drug testing, like random, unannounced tests; collection of samples by trained, independent officials; and testing for a comprehensive list of recreational and performance-enhancing drugs.

The critics, pointing to a low rate of positive tests, question Drug Free Sport’s effectiveness at catching athletes who cheat. Since the company began running the N.C.A.A.’s drug-testing program in 1999, for example, the rate of positive tests has been no higher than 1 percent in any year — despite an N.C.A.A. survey of student-athletes that indicated at least 1 in 5 used marijuana, a banned substance. (The N.C.A.A. tests for marijuana at championship competitions but not in its year-round program.)

Uryasz said the rate of positive tests was not meaningful. “I don’t spend a lot of time on the percent positive as being an indicator of very much,” he said.

Independent doping experts contend that having a contract with Drug Free Sport allows sports officials to say they take testing seriously without enacting a truly stringent program.

Don Catlin, the former head of U.C.L.A.’s Olympic Analytical Lab, best known for breaking the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative doping ring, oversaw the testing of many of Drug Free Sport’s urine samples when he was at U.C.L.A. He said the work by Drug Free Sport and similar companies could be used to mislead fans.

“The problem with these schools is they all want to say they’re doing drug testing, but they’re not really doing anything I would call drug testing,” he said.

A Company’s Origins

Uryasz said he became interested in working with student-athletes while tutoring them as an undergraduate at Nebraska. After he graduated, he earned an M.B.A. from Nebraska and worked in health care administration in Omaha. He said he heard about an opening at the N.C.A.A. through a friend.

Driven in part by scandals in professional sports, the N.C.A.A. voted at its 1986 annual convention to start a drug-testing program.

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Chinese Newspaper, Southern Weekend, Challenges Censors

Pool photo by

Xi Jinping at a meeting in Beijing in December. Unrest at an influential newspaper, Southern Weekend, has caught the public’s attention.

BEIJING — Turmoil at one of China’s leading newspapers is posing an early challenge to the measured political program of the new Chinese leader Xi Jinping, pitting a pent-up popular demand for change against the Communist Party’s desire to maintain a firm grip.

The unrest at the influential newspaper Southern Weekend began last week when censors appeared to have toned down the paper’s New Year’s letter to readers — traditionally a call for progress in the new year. That caused journalists and their supporters — including students at nearby Sun Yat-sen University — to issue open letters expressing their outrage.

“Our yielding and our silence has not brought a return of our freedom,” the students said in their petition on Sunday, according to a translation by Hong Kong University’s China Media Project. “Quite the opposite, it has brought the untempered intrusion and infiltration of rights by power.”

By Sunday night, the protests had transformed into a real-time melee in the blogosphere — a remarkable development in a country where protests of all kinds are tightly controlled and the media largely know the boundaries of permissible debate.

In this case, the newspaper’s economics and environmental news staffs appeared to declare that they were on strike, while editors loyal to the government shut down or took control of the paper’s official microblogs. One widely distributed staff declaration with 90 signatures said the publication’s microblogs were no longer authentic.

“I don’t know whether it will be a full strike, but I do know the joint statement about the confiscation of the Weibo account has widespread support,” said one former editor, referring to a microblogging site and speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The turmoil at the Guangzhou-based newspaper resonates especially strongly among politically aware Chinese because Mr. Xi chose southern China for a tour after taking power in November. He made a pilgrimage to nearby Shenzhen, where the father of China’s economic reforms, Deng Xiaoping, initiated them two decades ago.

Indeed, Mr. Xi seems to be casting himself in the mold of Deng, who was known for bold economic reforms but who also brooked no opposition to the rule of the Communist Party.

The latest indication was a speech Mr. Xi made that also was published in newspapers on Sunday. Speaking to senior leaders, Mr. Xi repeatedly invoked Deng, especially on the need to adhere to “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” a phrase often used to mean a combination of pragmatic policies and one-party rule. He also praised the prereform era, in what appeared to be an effort to appeal to harder-line Communists.

But part of the reason for the clamor for reforms are hopes that Mr. Xi himself has raised. So far he has won praise by calling for China’s constitutional protections to be put in effect, ordering officials to cut pomp and setting in motion an anticorruption campaign.

These actions seem to have prompted the calls for even bolder reforms.

Beyond the unrest at Southern Weekend, editors of the edgy historical journal Yanhuang Chunqiu published a cover article last week arguing that the existing Constitution offered a basis for political reform and that the party’s failure to abide by it was a central cause of political instability. On Friday, the magazine’s Web site was shut down, with officials claiming that it had failed to update its registration.

A message posted by the journal about the shutdown was forwarded 31,000 times, provoking many scathing criticisms of the government. The chief editor, Wu Si, said the journal’s staff had filed the paperwork and could be back online in 10 days.

Optimists say they hope the measures against the two publications were the result of recalcitrant officials appointed by the departing team of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, whose decade in power was marked by an overriding desire for stability. Many members of Mr. Xi’s team will not take office until the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in March, and it could take years for Mr. Xi to put allies into important positions of power.

“If Xi does not remove people and promote some officials, his new policies — if he has any — will be sunk by the old people,” said a senior editor at a top party newspaper who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicacy of the subject. “The conflicts between the old and the new have just emerged.”

Chinese politics since Deng’s time have been defined by similar tensions between liberalization and reaction. But Mr. Xi also confronts millions of increasingly outspoken Internet users whose outpourings can confound even China’s heavy censorship.

Zhan Jiang, a professor of media at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said the public anger showed how expectations had risen. “Currently in China people are unusually sensitive to developments like this, and so the reaction has been quite intense,” Mr. Zhan said.

Some are less sure that the atmosphere is more open, saying the media shutdowns have occurred because Mr. Xi has avoided taking a clear position.

“There are still no clear rules on the media, and so officials stick to using their habitual ways to control the media,” said Li Datong, a prominent Chinese newspaper editor fired for his views. “There won’t be any change until Xi Jinping enunciates any ideas about major change.”

Other commentators doubt this will happen. They note that in previous jobs Mr. Xi upheld the status quo and that now that he has reached the pinnacle of his career he is unlikely to support systemic reform.

“This is a traditional viewpoint: if you change the emperor you’ll have a change of policy and maybe some new, hopeful things,” said the exiled Chinese political commentator Zhang Ping, who goes by the pen name Chang Ping. “But I don’t think this is likely, because you still have an emperor.”

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting from Beijing, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong.

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New High for Tuna at Tokyo Fish Sale

TOKYO — Tokyo’s main fish market ushered in the new year with an auction on Saturday that resulted in the highest price paid here, and probably anywhere, for a tuna.

A Tokyo-based sushi restaurant chain owner paid 155.4 million yen, or about $1.76 million, for a 488-pound bluefin, or about $3,600 per pound.

The record price was offered at the year’s first auction at the Tsukiji fish market, which provides Tokyo with much of its fresh fish. Restaurant owners from Japan and elsewhere in Asia compete annually for the prestige of buying the year’s first tuna, whose meat is prized by sushi fans. Conservationists warn that bluefin has been severely overfished.

The winning bidder was Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the company that runs the Sushi Zanmai chain. The bluefin was caught by a fisherman from Oma, a town renowned in Japan as the source of the most delicious tuna.

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We Salute the First Baby Senator

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: Claire McCaskill and How to Attack the Opponent You’re Rooting For

Here’s our suggestion to improve the (already pretty hilarious) swearing-in process for U.S. Senators: Each new member of Congress must bring a cute baby.

RELATED: Rand Paul Doesn’t Want You to Go to Jail for Smoking Pot

RELATED: Larry David’s Two-Minute Guide to Etiquette

Apparently the BBC has decided to market a line of lunch boxes specifically made for hungry polar bears. They are still working out the kinks: 

RELATED: Homer Simpson, Fox News Pundit; Books After Dark

RELATED: Bo Obama Stays On Message; Sarah Palin Can See HBO in Her House

The Golden Globes will be bittersweet this year. Don’t get us wrong — we’re really excited to watch Amy Poehler and Tina Fey entertain us. But we’ll also be also really sad when this thing is over because it means the end of these promos:

And finally, it’s Friday. And it’s time to dance. Enjoy your weekend. 

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Houston beats Bengals 19-13 in wild-card playoff

HOUSTON (AP) — J.J. Watt swatted away passes, Arian Foster ran away from tacklers and the Houston Texans did just enough to knock Cincinnati out of the playoffs for the second straight year.

Matt Schaub made his postseason debut a successful one when Foster's 1-yard touchdown in third quarter helped the Texans to a 19-13 AFC wild-card playoff win over the Bengals on Saturday.

Now comes the big test. The Texans (13-4) move on to the second round on Jan. 13, when they visit the New England Patriots, who beat them 42-14 in Week 14.

Shayne Graham kicked four field goals for the Texans, while Foster finished with 140 yards and became the first NFL player to have 100-yard games in each of his first three playoff games. Watt finished with a sack and swatted away two of Andy Dalton's pass attempts, once wagging his finger at the Bengals quarterback after the play.

The Texans had trouble finishing drives and managed three field goals in the first half against the Bengals (10-7). Houston struck first after the break, with Foster scoring the game's only offensive touchdown to make it 16-7.

Schaub, who missed last year's playoffs with a foot injury, had an interception returned for a touchdown by Leon Hall before halftime.

"It was never easy," Schaub said. "Cincinnati is a great team. I made a turnover and gave them points. We just had to rally around each other and we did that."

Johnathan Joseph, a former Bengal, came up with an interception for the Texans, who kept Cincinnati without a playoff win since 1991, the league's longest current streak.

"I think it was a full defensive effort, everybody was flying around and we were getting off the field on third downs," Watt said.

Houston had struggled on third downs lately. This time, the Texans didn't let the Bengals convert a third down on nine tries.

The Texans rebounded from a terrible month where they lost three of four games and the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs. The win came in front of a record crowd of 71,738, including former Oilers great Earl Campbell.

"We like to run the ball and play good defense," Foster said. "It only takes one week to turn things around in the NFL and we did that."

Schaub shook off his first-half miscue to finish 29 of 38 for 262 yards.

The Bengals couldn't do anything offensively before the break, and were outgained 250-53 in the first half. Dalton was 4 of 10 for 3 yards in the first half. He finished 14 of 30 for 127 yards.

Houston piled up 351 yards and held the ball for 32 minutes through three quarters, but got into the end zone only once.

Dalton's 45-yard pass to A.J. Green got Cincinnati moving in the third quarter and set up Josh Brown's 34-yard field goal. When Dalton tried to go to Green again, Joseph intercepted and got the Texans in scoring range again as the quarter ended.

In last year's playoffs, the Texans trounced the Bengals 31-10, with Dalton throwing three interceptions.

The main difference in this one: Schaub was back in charge for Houston. Rookie T.J. Yates filled in for Schaub, got the Texans a win in their first-ever playoff game, but couldn't take them any farther.

On their second possession, the Texans started moving. Schaub completed an 18-yard pass, Foster had a 17-yard run and Keshawn Martin went 16 yards on a reverse, setting up Graham's field goal.

It became a pattern — move the ball down the field, settle for three points. The fans started booing.

And then Schaub did the one thing he wanted to avoid — he let Cincinnati's defense get its hands on the ball. Hall anticipated Schaub's throw, stepped in front and returned it untouched, high-stepping the last few yards, for the defense's fourth touchdown in the last four games.

Hall also ran back an interception 17 yards for the only Bengals touchdown in a 13-10 win over Pittsburgh that clinched a playoff spot. It was the first interception return for a touchdown against the Texans this season.

Like the Texans, the Bengals ended the season by hitting a wall on offense — one touchdown in the last two games. The offensive woes continued on Saturday when the Bengals failed to score a touchdown on offense again.

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The New Old Age: Murray Span, 1922-2012

One consequence of our elders’ extended lifespans is that we half expect them to keep chugging along forever. My father, a busy yoga practitioner and blackjack player, celebrated his 90th birthday in September in reasonably good health.

So when I had the sad task of letting people know that Murray Span died on Dec. 8, after just a few days’ illness, the primary response was disbelief. “No! I just talked to him Tuesday! He was fine!”

And he was. We’d gone out for lunch on Saturday, our usual routine, and he demolished a whole stack of blueberry pancakes.

But on Wednesday, he called to say he had bad abdominal pain and had hardly slept. The nurses at his facility were on the case; his geriatrician prescribed a clear liquid diet.

Like many in his generation, my dad tended towards stoicism. When he said, the following morning, “the pain is terrible,” that meant agony. I drove over.

His doctor shared our preference for conservative treatment. For patients at advanced ages, hospitals and emergency rooms can become perilous places. My dad had come through a July heart attack in good shape, but he had also signed a do-not-resuscitate order. He saw evidence all around him that eventually the body fails and life can become a torturous series of health crises and hospitalizations from which one never truly rebounds.

So over the next two days we tried to relieve his pain at home. He had abdominal x-rays that showed some kind of obstruction. He tried laxatives and enemas and Tylenol, to no effect. He couldn’t sleep.

On Friday, we agreed to go to the emergency room for a CT scan. Maybe, I thought, there’s a simple fix, even for a 90-year-old with diabetes and heart disease. But I carried his advance directives in my bag, because you never know.

When it is someone else’s narrative, it’s easier to see where things go off the rails, where a loving family authorizes procedures whose risks outweigh their benefits.

But when it’s your father groaning on the gurney, the conveyor belt of contemporary medicine can sweep you along, one incremental decision at a time.

All I wanted was for him to stop hurting, so it seemed reasonable to permit an IV for hydration and pain relief and a thin oxygen tube tucked beneath his nose.

Then, after Dad drank the first of two big containers of contrast liquid needed for his scan, his breathing grew phlegmy and labored. His geriatrician arrived and urged the insertion of a nasogastric tube to suck out all the liquid Dad had just downed.

His blood oxygen levels dropped, so there were soon two doctors and two nurses suctioning his throat until he gagged and fastening an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

At one point, I looked at my poor father, still in pain despite all the apparatus, and thought, “This is what suffering looks like.” I despaired, convinced I had failed in my most basic responsibility.

“I’m just so tired,” Dad told me, more than once. “There are too many things going wrong.”

Let me abridge this long story. The scan showed evidence of a perforation of some sort, among other abnormalities. A chest X-ray indicated pneumonia in both lungs. I spoke with Dad’s doctor, with the E.R. doc, with a friend who is a prominent geriatrician.

These are always profound decisions, and I’m sure that, given the number of unknowns, other people might have made other choices. Fortunately, I didn’t have to decide; I could ask my still-lucid father.

I leaned close to his good ear, the one with the hearing aid, and told him about the pneumonia, about the second CT scan the radiologist wanted, about antibiotics. “Or, we can stop all this and go home and call hospice,” I said.

He had seen my daughter earlier that day (and asked her about the hockey strike), and my sister and her son were en route. The important hands had been clasped, or soon would be.

He knew what hospice meant; its nurses and aides helped us care for my mother as she died. “Call hospice,” he said. We tiffed a bit about whether to have hospice care in his apartment or mine. I told his doctors we wanted comfort care only.

As in a film run backwards, the tubes came out, the oxygen mask came off. Then we settled in for a night in a hospital room while I called hospices — and a handyman to move the furniture out of my dining room, so I could install his hospital bed there.

In between, I assured my father that I was there, that we were taking care of him, that he didn’t have to worry. For the first few hours after the morphine began, finally seeming to ease his pain, he could respond, “OK.” Then, he couldn’t.

The next morning, as I awaited the hospital case manager to arrange the hospice transfer, my father stopped breathing.

We held his funeral at the South Jersey synagogue where he’d had his belated bar mitzvah at age 88, and buried him next to my mother in a small Jewish cemetery in the countryside. I’d written a fair amount about him here, so I thought readers might want to know.

We weren’t ready, if anyone ever really is, but in our sorrow, my sister and I recite this mantra: 90 good years, four bad days. That’s a ratio any of us might choose.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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New High for Tuna at Tokyo Fish Sale

TOKYO — Tokyo’s main fish market ushered in the new year with an auction on Saturday that resulted in the highest price paid here, and probably anywhere, for a tuna.

A Tokyo-based sushi restaurant chain owner paid 155.4 million yen, or about $1.76 million, for a 488-pound bluefin, or about $3,600 per pound.

The record price was offered at the year’s first auction at the Tsukiji fish market, which provides Tokyo with much of its fresh fish. Restaurant owners from Japan and elsewhere in Asia compete annually for the prestige of buying the year’s first tuna, whose meat is prized by sushi fans. Conservationists warn that bluefin has been severely overfished.

The winning bidder was Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the company that runs the Sushi Zanmai chain. The bluefin was caught by a fisherman from Oma, a town renowned in Japan as the source of the most delicious tuna.

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China Says Reporter for The Times Was Not Expelled

BEIJING — Responding for the first time publicly to the case of a reporter for The New York Times who was forced to leave mainland China, the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that he had not been expelled but that his visa application had simply been filed incorrectly.

Speaking at the Foreign Ministry’s daily news briefing, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman, said foreign news organizations were to blame for the departure on Monday of Chris Buckley, a 45-year-old Australian who had been a correspondent for Reuters until September, when he rejoined The Times.

Ms. Hua said the ministry had not been properly informed of his changed status.

“So far, we have neither received any notice of resignation (from Reuters), nor has the press card, which was issued by the information department (of the Foreign Ministry), been returned by Chris Buckley,” Ms. Hua said, according to the Xinhua news agency. “So, we do not know who his real boss is now.”

When Mr. Buckley’s visa, which had been issued while he worked for Reuters, ran out on Dec. 31, he and his family were forced to fly to Hong Kong, despite repeated requests from The Times for a new visa to be issued.

Ms. Hua said Mr. Buckley had not been expelled.

“There has been no such thing as a rejection of a visa extension, and there is no such thing as Chris being expelled,” Ms. Hua said, according to The Associated Press.

On a related matter, The Times is also waiting for the visa of its new Beijing bureau chief, Philip P. Pan, to be issued. Mr. Pan first requested a visa last March. The English- and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times have been blocked in China since October, when it published an investigative article about the finances of the family of China’s premier, Wen Jiabao.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 4, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the job title of Philip P. Pan. He is the new Beijing bureau chief of The New York Times, not the China bureau chief.

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How BuzzFeed Is Betting on Hollywood, Long-Form Writing to Grow

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Last January, BuzzFeed, then an aggregator of memes and cat videos, secured a $ 15.5 million round of venture capital to beef up a craft that most traditional media was downsizing: journalism.

It hired dozens of reporters and editors, opened bureaus in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and became a must-read for political junkies during the 2012 presidential election.

On Thursday, the company took another step.

It added adding a fourth round of capital investment – this time worth $ 19.3 million. And it plans to expand in two major ways: literary, long-form journalism like the kind practiced by New York magazine and the New Yorker, and – with two former Los Angeles Times staffers newly on board – its Hollywood coverage.

BuzzFeed’s been on a roll. According to the privately held company‘s internal traffic numbers, the 8 million unique monthly visitors it drew in 2008 has swelled to 40 million, and revenue for 2012 may triple that of 2011, a spokeswoman for BuzzFeed told TheWrap.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Tom Gara reported that some analysts place the company’s valuation at $ 200 million and say that revenues may reach $ 40 million this year.

Most of BuzzFeed’s traffic currently comes from its odd mix of news and eccentricity on the homepage. Friday morning, spotlighted stories ranged from J.J. Abrams screening his new “Star Trek” for a dying fan and Sen. Tammy Baldwin talking about breaking the glass ceiling to: “How to Murder Your Friend’s Facebook Page” and “Here Are Some Elephants Eating Christmas Trees.”

But there’s no question things are changing.

The first thing CEO Jonah Peretti did with his 2012 investment cash was hire Ben Smith, a Politico veteran, as the site’s first editor-in-chief. Smith then kicked off a hiring spree of reporters and got to work. Already BuzzFeed is beginning to break stories and get quoted by aggregators.

McKay Coppins, the site’s political editor, embedded with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign. John Stanton, a veteran reporter in Washington, was named BuzzFeed’s first D.C. bureau chief. Michael Hastings, the dogged journalist whose Rolling Stone exposé of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s private disagreements with President Obama over Afghanistan led to his resignation, joined the team.

Then, less than a year into its political foray, the site hired former Spin magazine chief Steve Kandell to make the push for longform journalism.

It began with an experiment – a 7,118-word post from last October titled “Can You Die From a Nightmare?” that garnered more than 115,000 hits. Another in October titled “Making Mitt: The Myth of George Romney” drew nearly 130,000 views. This convinced Smith and his team that literary journalism had a niche in the viral news market.

Despite the internet school of thought that briefer is better, Kandell said he has no plans to restrict stories’ word counts.

“If someone has a story that has to be 10,000 words, I don’t know why that couldn’t be,” Kandell said.

“I don’t think people necessarily have a certain fatigue level when it gets to a certain length and people start trailing out.”

Kandell says he plans in the coming months to start publishing at least one long-form story a week and may even start packaging and selling the stories as Amazon Kindle singles or as audiobooks.

Kandell assembled a “Best of 2012″ post for his nascent section of the site. The stories ranged from the tale of BuzzFeed’s own political editor Coppins, a Mormon, watching attitudes toward his and Romney’s religion change throughout the campaign to an inside look at the “Dark World of Online Sugar Daddies.”

Plans are to cover more foreign policy and national security issues from a Washington-centered perspective – and to add Hollywood into the mix. The only hands-off topic, apparently, will be international news.

“We’ve played around with ways to make world news more sharable, just like every editor at every publication,” he said, noting that readers liked a roundup of Instagram photos of the civil war in Syria. “It’s really hard, it’s not something we want to jump into without really knowing what we’re doing.”

As for Hollywood, BuzzFeed hired Richard Rushfield, former entertainment editor of LATimes.com, and ex-Times television editor Kate Aurthur, also a former Daily Beast staffer, to jump-start its bureau.

Smith said he plans to forge a presence in Los Angeles second only to its flagship New York bureau. A Hollywood vertical is expected to launch on January 7.

To that end, the site is entering a crowded space – one dominated by publications like Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap, Vulture and the Times – but Rushfield said he plans to cover entertainment through BuzzFeed’s social-web lens: If it’s irresistibly share-worthy, it’s publishable.

“We have a unique position, despite how crowded the beat is,” Rushfield told TheWrap, adding that they won’t be competing with trades over stories concerning studio executives and casting deals. “One of our advantages is that we are not going to be going after every single story that the trades are – we have more room to take the things that we think can be interesting. What BuzzFeed is about is writing news that will be of interest to the social web.”

Now the trick is to make all these editorial investments worthwhile financially.

Revenue growth from its advertising model has been climbing, chief operating officer Jon Steinberg told TheWrap.

Forgoing the usual banners and display ads, BuzzFeed offers its clients “branded content.” For example, Scope mouthwash sponsored a “listicle” on the most “courageous” mustaches.

To that end, the advertising team, which is made up of 20 people that report to Steinberg, works with brands from General Electric to Virgin Mobile to devise sharable pieces of content.

The ratio of advertorial to editorial content on the homepage is usually about one to every six or so stories,” he said.

Those branded-content headlines garner 10-20 times the click-through rates of blinking banner and display ads, Steinberg told TheWrap.

“You compare those ads in the 1950s to modern advertising, you realize how broken modern advertising is,” Steinberg said. “Most publishers and media companies say you can’t make money on modern advertising.”

But – though he declined to reveal exact numbers, as BuzzFeed is a private company – the model helped to increase revenue last year and has allowed the publication to focus solely on its advertising stream.

He said the company has no immediate plans to enter the conference business popular with online publications including the Business Insider, AllThingsD and TheWrap.

“This is our Google ad words,” Steinberg said of the innovative advertising tool that Google pioneered in the mid-2000s. “If we were Apple, this would be our manufacturing of great hardware products.”

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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