News Corp. Financial Officer to Resign After Company’s Split

David F. DeVoe, who has served as chief financial officer of News Corporation for more than two decades, will step down later this month, the company said on Thursday.

Mr. DeVoe, 66, joined News Corporation in 1983 and had been a strong behind-the-scenes presence in steering the media conglomerate through a period of growth, and more recently through the phone hacking scandal in Britain and the challenges in the print publishing business. He is among a handful of close confidants to Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation’s chairman and chief executive.

“I would like to express my profound gratitude to Dave for his enormous contributions to News Corp.,” Mr. Murdoch said in a statement. “He has played a pivotal role in building the company into a global leader.”

Among Mr. DeVoe’s lasting contributions was his strong advocacy for the company to split itself into two publicly traded companies. During a brief shareholder meeting in New York on Tuesday, investors voted to approve a separation.

That split will take place on June 28, when entertainment assets like Fox News, FX and a Hollywood studio will form a new company called 21st Century Fox. Publishing units, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and HarperCollins, and a handful of Australian television assets will form a company called News Corporation.

Mr. DeVoe will continue to serve on the board and as a senior adviser to 21st Century Fox. John Nallen, 56, will succeed Mr. DeVoe beginning July 1. Mr. Nallen has worked at News Corporation since 1995 and has served as deputy chief financial officer and executive vice president since 2001. Mr. Nallen will report to Chase Carey, who will serve as president and chief operating officer of 21st Century Fox.

“To work with Rupert as he built News Corporation into one of the most dynamic companies of all time was the opportunity of a lifetime,” Mr. DeVoe said in a statement.

Palin Returns to Fox News, After a Brief Split

Months after ending a sometimes tense working relationship, Sarah Palin and the Fox News Channel are back together.

Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate, has returned to Fox News as a paid contributor, Roger Ailes, the channel’s chairman, announced on Thursday afternoon. Her first appearance will come Monday on “Fox and Friends,” the channel’s conservative morning show.

The announcement came about five months after Ms. Palin’s contract with Fox News expired. That contract, signed barely a year after Ms. Palin’s unsuccessful 2008 bid for vice president, was said to be worth $1 million a year, making her the highest-paid pundit at the channel.

Her new contract is almost certainly less costly for Fox, since Ms. Palin does not have the star power she once did. (Fox’s news release on Thursday noted that in 2010, the year she joined Fox the first time, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.)

She continues to have an ardent fan base. Some were disappointed when she left Fox in January. That month she seemed to take a shot at Fox in an interview published on Breitbart.com; in it, she encouraged people to “jump out of the comfort zone” and broaden their horizons.

“I’m taking my own advice here as I free up opportunities to share more broadly the message of the beauty of freedom and the imperative of defending our republic and restoring this most exceptional nation,” she said. “We can’t just preach to the choir; the message of liberty and true hope must be understood by a larger audience.”

On Thursday, she said in a statement that “the power of Fox News is unparalleled” and “the role of Fox News in the important debates in our world is indispensable.”

Mr. Ailes, who was reportedly critical of Ms. Palin in the past, praised her in Fox’s announcement. “I’ve had several conversations with Governor Palin in the past few weeks about her rejoining Fox News as a contributor,” he said. “I have great confidence in her and am pleased that she will once again add her commentary to our programming. I hope she continues to speak her mind.”

Clear Channel Makes Revenue-Sharing Deal With Fleetwood Mac

The radio giant Clear Channel has struck a deal to pay Fleetwood Mac when the band’s songs are played on the radio and on the Internet.

The revenue-sharing deal, announced on Wednesday, was characterized as the first of its kind between a radio station owner and a music act. Last year, Clear Channel started to sign similar deals with record labels.

The agreement with Fleetwood Mac “is the clearest sign yet that this kind of revenue-sharing model represents the industry’s future â€" it is a win-win-win, for artists, fans and the music business,” Bob Pittman, the chief executive of Clear Channel, said in a statement.

Payments for radio broadcasts of songs, called royalties, have been a source of disagreement within the recording industry for decades. Historically songwriters and music publishers have received those royalties while the record labels and musicians have not. The Web works differently: there, whenever songs are streamed, the performers are paid. As radio stations have migrated to the Web, these two systems have come into conflict, leading companies like Clear Channel to come up with fixes.

Clear Channel’s first revenue-sharing deal, announced this time last year, was with Big Machine, the record label that counts Taylor Swift among its artists. Since then Clear Channel has signed similar deals with a number of independent labels.

Earlier this year Fleetwood Mac released four songs, its first set of new music since 2003. Fleetwood Mac’s longtime manager Irving Azoff, the former chairman of Live Nation, is a Clear Channel board member. In a statement he said, “It’s fitting that a group that’s played such an integral role in radio and music history would be the first band to take such a major step â€" helping the music industry create a sustainable digital marketplace so it can thrive for decades to come.”

Two Ex-Interns Sue Condé Nast Over Wages

Two former interns filed a lawsuit against Condé Nast on Thursday, saying the company failed to pay them minimum wage at their summer jobs at W Magazine and The New Yorker, and asked that it be approved as a class-action suit.

Lauren Ballinger, who worked as an intern at W Magazine in 2009, and Matthew Leib, an intern at The New Yorker in 2009 and 2010, said in the suit that Condé Nast, which owns the magazines, paid them less than $1 an hour.

According to court papers filed Thursday morning in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Leib was paid $300 to $500 for each summer he worked. During that time, he was asked to review pieces for submission to the “Shouts and Murmurs” section and proofread and edit articles for the “Talk of the Town” section. Mr. Leib, a cartoonist, also helped maintain the online cartoon database, did research in the cartoon archives and coordinated the work of cartoon artists, the suit claims. He worked three days a week from 10 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.

A Condé Nast spokeswoman said the company did not comment on litigation.

The case is the latest in a series of lawsuits filed by interns for media companies who have sued for lack of payment. Juno Turner, the lawyer representing Ms. Ballinger and Mr. Leib, said that her law firm, Outten & Golden, settled a case against the "Charlie Rose" show last year. In February 2012, a former Harper’s Bazaar intern sued Hearst Magazines, asserting that she regularly worked 40 to 55 hours a week without being paid. Last July, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the plaintiff could move forward with her lawsuit as collective action that others could join voluntarily. But in May, that same judge ruled that the intern’s parallel claims under New York State’s wage laws could not proceed as a class action.

On Tuesday, a Federal District Court judge in Manhattan ruled that Fox Searchlight Pictures violated federal and New York minimum wage laws by not paying two interns who worked on the film “Black Swan.”

Thursday’s lawsuit cited United States Labor Department guidelines, which consider unpaid internships lawful if they are part of an educational training program and do not replace employees and if the company does not gain immediate advantage from an intern’s work. The work experience also must benefit the intern.

Ms. Ballinger, a graduate of the American University of Paris, said in a phone interview that she saved one credit before graduating to use toward an internship at W. Ms. Ballinger was paid $12 a day to work in W’s accessories department. She said she worked from 8 or 9 a.m. each morning until 8 to 10 p.m. each night, packing, organizing and delivering accessories to editors. She later worked 10-hour days, three days a week, in W’s fine jewelry department, she said.

For both jobs, she said she was trained only by other interns. She said that even one of the editors at W marveled how poor their work conditions were.

The editor said the job was reminiscent of Anne Hathaway’s job in “The Devil Wears Prada,” but worse, “because we don’t get any makeover in the end,” Ms. Ballinger said in the interview.

Ms. Ballinger said she decided to get involved in a class-action lawsuit because W editors failed to give a recommendation to her university that she needed for course credit.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Leib graduated from Northwestern University and works for Ad Lubow Advertising. Ms. Ballinger, who graduated from the New School in January with a master’s degree in media studies. said she was currently looking for a job in marketing and advertising.

Rupert Murdoch Files for Divorce After 14 Years of Marriage

Rupert Murdoch has filed for divorce from his wife of 14 years, Wendi Deng Murdoch, with whom he has two daughters, according to a filing with New York State Supreme Court.

Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Wendi, appeared at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. On Thursday, Mr. Murdoch filed for divorce.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Murdoch’s media company, News Corporation, confirmed that Mr. Murdoch had made the filing, which said that the “relationship between husband and wife has broken down irretrievably.”

Mrs. Murdoch was informed in advance of Mr. Murdoch’s decision, according to a person close to the family. Ira E. Garr of the law firm Garr Silpe is representing Mr. Murdoch in the divorce.

The filing â€" which was first reported by Deadline Hollywood â€" comes after years of whispered comments that the couple had largely grown apart, pursuing separate interests, often from different coasts.

Mr. Murdoch, 82, first met Wendi Deng, 44, on a business trip to China when she was a young executive at his company’s Star TV division in Hong Kong. They wed in front of 82 guests in 1999 aboard Mr. Murdoch’s 155-foot yacht, the Morning Glory, in New York Harbor.

A year before they were married, Mr. Murdoch left his wife, Anna, to whom he had been married for 31 years. That divorce is reported to have cost Mr. Murdoch $1.7 billion, including $110 million in cash. He and Anna had three children â€" Lachlan, James and Elisabeth. Mr. Murdoch divorced his first wife, Patricia, in 1967. They had one daughter, Prudence.

The divorce from Wendi Murdoch and decisions about the place the couple’s daughters, Grace, 11, and Chloe, 9, will have in Mr. Murdoch’s media empire are expected to be contentious.

In 2006, a battle broke out when Mr. Murdoch said in an interview with Charlie Rose that Grace and Chloe would have an equal economic interest in the family’s trust, but would not have the same voting rights as his children from his previous two marriages. The couple worked out a more mutually acceptable agreement.

In recent years, Mrs. Murdoch, who was born to humble beginnings as Deng Wen Di in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, has taken on a wider range of professional endeavors, including producing the movie “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.” The movie was released by News Corporation’s Fox Searchlight division in July 2011 and was eclipsed when news surfaced that Mr. Murdoch’s British tabloid News of the World tabloid had hacked into the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a kidnapped and murdered teenager.

Mrs. Murdoch became a viral sensation during the phone hacking crisis when Mr. Murdoch testified in front of a British parliamentary subcommittee about the scandal. Wearing a pink blazer, Mrs. Murdoch, a former volleyball player, instinctively lurched toward a protester to protect her husband from a pie attack.

The News Corporation spokeswoman said the divorce would have no impact on the company. On June 28, the corporation will complete the split of its publishing and entertainment assetsinto two separate companies, to be called News Corp and 21st Century Fox, respectively.

Cesar Chavez Film to Avoid Immigration Debate

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Heat’s Clutch Stats Meet Match in Spurs’ Strategy

SAN ANTONIO â€" The Miami Heat were heavy betting favorites over the San Antonio Spurs before the N.B.A. finals began, despite computer rankings that showed the teams to be relatively even.

There were several reasons for this. First, the Heat were scheduled to have home-court advantage in four of the seven games. Second, the Heat won more games during the regular season, 66 to San Antonio’s 58. (The reason the teams’ computer rankings were about equal is because San Antonio played a considerably tougher schedule.)

But there was also the notion that the Heat had another gear â€" that they could elevate their performance to close out a game or a playoff series when they needed to. Now, down two games to one in the series and facing elimination if they lose games four and five in San Antonio, Miami will need to find its best basketball.

The Heat’s record in critical situations in the regular season was, in fact, extraordinarily impressive. The N.B.A. keeps statistics on what it calls “clutch time” performance, which it defines as situations in the last five minutes of the game when the score is within five points or less. In these cases, representing 176 total minutes of play, the Heat outscored their opponents 427 to 294. That’s the equivalent of beating an opponent 116-80 per 48 minutes, the length of a full N.B.A. game.

Stat geeks like me default toward skepticism about the notion that certain teams or athletes perform especially well in the clutch. Numerous studies of baseball, for example, have found that clutch hitting is a largely random phenomenon. And studies of basketball have found that fans tend to overrate the notion of the “hot hand”, misinterpreting essentially random sequences of field goals and free throws as being deeply meaningful.

At the same time, the case for clutch performance is perhaps stronger in the National Basketball Association than in any other sports league â€" and may reflect rational decision-making by teams and players as much as psychological factors. The N.B.A. has an extremely long season. It is considerably more physically demanding than a sport like baseball. And unlike N.H.L. players, who take shifts on the ice, the best N.B.A. players are on the court for the vast majority of the game. So N.B.A. players need to pace themselves â€" and it makes sense for them to conserve the most effort for when they have the most on the line.

Is there any evidence that the Heat do this more effectively than other N.B.A. teams? An N.B.A. team that wanted to maximize its number of regular-season wins would put more effort into games that it expected to be the closest. It could slack off some in games it was almost certain to win â€" for instance, in a home game against the Charlotte Bobcats â€" while perhaps being willing to concede some games in which it would be a clear underdog even if it played its best.

I went back through this year’s N.B.A. regular-season schedule and estimated the probability that each team would win each game on the basis of the teams’ power ratings and which team had home-court advantage. I then identified the games that projected to be the most competitive â€" those where neither team had better than a two-in-three chance (or worse than a one-in-three chance) of winning. These cases represent the rough equivalent of games in which neither team would be favored by more than four points in the point spread.

The Heat played in 21 such games during the regular season. Essentially, these were the toughest games on their schedule â€" road games against other playoff-bound teams, especially from the Western Conference, or home games against the very best teams in the league like San Antonio. (In only one instance â€" a road game in Oklahoma City in February â€" were the Heat assigned less than a one-in-three chance of winning, according to the formula. This game is excluded from the analysis, although the Heat won it 110-100.)

How well did the Heat do in these games? They went 14-7, winning two-thirds of the time. That reflects the best winning percentage in the league in games that seemed like even matchups on paper. Miami also outscored their opponents by a margin of 3.3 points in these games.

One qualification is in order: although these games were, by definition, relatively even, the Heat still rated as slight favorites in most of them, and would have projected to go somewhere between 11-10 and 12-9 in them on the basis of their overall power rating. So we’re talking about two or three extra wins, which is statistically not all that definitive.

Nevertheless, the evidence is consistent with the notion that Miami was saving its best performances for when it had the most to gain or lose - and the implication is that computer ratings that weight all games equally may underrate the Heat when it comes to key games.

So why hasn’t Miami’s performance carried forward into the playoffs? Actually, the Heat were doing just fine - until they encountered the Spurs.

San Antonio did not perform especially well in even-strength matchups during the regular season, going 13-14 in these games. However, under their coach, Gregg Popovich, the Spurs take the notion of timing their players’ performances to the extreme, resting their veteran stars whenever they can during the regular season to preserve their fitness for the playoffs - even at the price of drawing fines from the N.B.A. commissioner, David Stern.

Tim Duncan, for example, averaged only 25 minutes per game during the regular season (accounting for the fact that he sat out 13 games entirely) - but has played 34 minutes per game in the playoffs. Tony Parker’s minutes have increased to 36 per game from 27, while Manu Ginobili is playing 25 minutes per game instead of just 17. Although Miami’s “Big Three” - LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh - are also playing more minutes per game, the increased playing time for the Spurs’ stars is far more dramatic.

If Miami loses the series, there are sure to be questions about whether the Heat burned themselves out during the regular season. But Miami may be every good as their 66-16 record implies, and perhaps even better in key games.

The Spurs, however, are practically a whole different team during the postseason. On the basis of John Hollinger’s Wins Added statistic, I estimate that the playing time allocations the Spurs are using in the playoffs make them the equivalent of 14 wins stronger than their record suggested during the regular season â€" tantamount to adding a star player like Blake Griffin to their lineup. Who needs clutch players when you have Popovich’s clutch strategy?

DealBook: Gannett to Buy Belo for $1.5 Billion

The Gannett Company agreed on Thursday to buy the Belo Corporation for about $1.5 billion in cash, in a deal that almost doubles Gannett’s television operations.

Under the terms of the deal, Gannett will pay $13.75 a share in cash, 28 percent above Belo’s closing price on Wednesday. Gannett will also assume $715 million of Belo’s existing debt.

The takeover is a move by Gannett to diversify its media operations, at a time when traditional print media continues to struggle. The company said the transaction would increase its television portfolio to 43 stations from 23, while its revenue from digital and broadcasting operations would make up two-thirds of its pro forma earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

“We have been successfully transforming Gannett into a diversified multimedia company with broadcast, digital and publishing components across high-growth markets nationwide, and this is another important step in the process,” Gracia C. Martore, Gannett’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The deal is expected to close by the end of the year, subject to approval by regulators.

JPMorgan Chase and the law firms Nixon Peabody and Paul Hastings advised Gannett. RBC Capital Markets and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised Belo.