Mediagazer: Amazon Launches Library Lending, But Who Owns the Books? (Mathew Ingram/GigaOM)

4:15 PM ET, April 20, 2011

Top News:

C.J. Chivers / New York Times:

‘Restrepo’ Director Is Killed in Libya — BENGHAZI, Libya — Tim Hetherington, the Oscar-nominated film director and conflict photographer who produced the film “Restrepo,” was killed in the besieged city of Misurata on Wednesday, and three photographers working beside him were wounded.

Glynnis MacNicol / The Wire:

Oscar Nominated Documentary Filmmaker And Photographer Killed In Libya — UPDATE: Both the AP and the AFP are confirming Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed in Libya earlier today. — UPDATE 2: Vanity Fair tweets Hondros “remains in grave condition.”

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

News.me, the iPad News Aggregator Blessed by Big Publishers, Gets Ready to Launch — News.me, Bit.ly's social news iPad app, was supposed to launch by the end of 2010. But developers didn't submit it for Apple's approval until about a month ago. — Now it looks as if News.me is just about ready for public consumption.

Discussion: Adweek, Betabeat, Poynter, PC Magazine, Techland, Yahoo! News, mocoNews, INFOdocket, FishbowlNY, NewsGrange, Garcia Media, eMedia Vitals, Future of Journalism and Soup

Jenna Wortham / Bits:

News.Me, Social News Service, Debuts for iPad — News.me, the long-awaited social news service developed in collaboration with Betaworks, a technology incubator, and The New York Times Company, is ready for its debut. — News.me is a newsfeed that uses artificial intelligence to monitor …

Discussion: Techi.com, Marco.org and NYConvergence.com

Ellis Hamburger / SAI: News.me's iPad App Will Get You Around The New York Times Paywall For A Fraction Of The Cost

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

The Washington Post Launches Trove, A Personalized Social News Site — The Washington Post Company this morning debuted its free, personalized, social news site and aggregator Trove in public beta. — First reported to be in the works and nearing launch by The Wall Street Journal in February 2011 …

Discussion: Business Wire, MediaMemo, Fast Company, Lost Remote, The Wrap, MediaPost, Mediaite, Future of Journalism, FishbowlNY, Weigel, On Media's Blog, Journalism.co.uk, Noted and Facebook

Amazon.com:

Amazon to Launch Library Lending for Kindle Books — Customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 local libraries to read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps — Whispersyncing of notes, highlights and last page read to work for Kindle library books

Discussion: VentureBeat, Engadget, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb, 9 to 5 Mac, The Next Web, Brave New World, GeekWire, Between the Lines Blog, The Consumerist, eMoney and Media Buyer Planner, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Amazon Launches Library Lending, But Who Owns the Books?

Discussion: paidContent, TechCrunch and Jacket Copy, more at Techmeme », Thanks:thibetian

New York Post:

Condé Nast is making customers very app-y — Consumers may start seeing more free downloads of tablet editions from Condé Nast magazines — at least as temporary traffic builders. — Industry watchers were wondering what was up last week following the appearance of a free …

Discussion: Adweek, FishbowlNY and NYConvergence.com

David Kaplan / paidContent: Magazine Publishers Scramble To Streamline Their App Production

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

eBay Acquires Location-Based Media And Advertising Company WHERE — eBay has acquired location-based media company Where.com, the ecommerce giant tells us. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed and the acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of 2011.

Discussion: BostInnovation.com, AdAge, GigaOM, PC Magazine, ClickZ, Communications …, Search Engine Land, mocoNews, eMoney, CNET News and MarketingVOX, more at Techmeme »

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

Byliner Launches With A Splash, Aims To Disrupt Long-Form Journalism — The media is buzzing with allegations that Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greg Mortenson fabricated his bestselling books and misused millions of dollars in donations. — Amazingly, within days of 60 Minutes breaking the story …

Discussion: Forbes.com, Future of Journalism, The O. J., @jenny8lee, New York Observer, Sun Herald, eMedia Vitals, Poynter and The Wire

Kat Stoeffel / New York Observer:

‘Glenn Beck Threw Me Under the Bus’: Breakfast with Andrew Breitbart … Over crème brûlée oatmeal on Monday, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart talked sting videos. Mr. Breitbart explained to the Transom that Breitbart blog protocol requires undercover video kingpin James O'Keefe …

Discussion: Media Matters for America, Mediaite, New York Magazine and On Media's Blog

Nicholas Jackson / The Atlantic Online:

Gawker's Traffic Numbers Are Worse Than Anyone Anticipated — When Gawker launched an aggressive redesign back in early February, the tech blogs were waiting to see what would happen. How would readers respond? (The assumption was that the reaction would be negative …

Discussion: Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, @nicknotned, The Awl and FishbowlNY

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The writing on the wall: Why news organizations are turning to outside moderators for help with comments — When a news organization decides to have someone else deal with their online comments, it's sometimes seen as waving the white flag or the equivalent of dumping a problem child at a boarding school.

Discussion: Poynter

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Lebedev to launch Saturday i — Paper expected to hit newsstands within the next few weeks priced at 30p — Alexander Lebedev is poised to bring his brand of cut-price national news to the weekend market with the launch of a 30p Saturday edition of the i.

Discussion: Editors Weblog, The Independent and Media Week

Louis Gray:

Physical Media Has To Go. I'm Digital Only From Here. — Moving across town last summer was a real eye opener in terms of seeing how tied we still are to physical things. Beyond all our sundry items needed to survive, there were boxes upon boxes of nice-looking and possibly interesting books …

Discussion: Techland

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Surprising Straight Talk About the Politics of AOL-Huffpo — Image by Getty Images for AOL via @daylife — Arianna Huffington is skilled at staying on message like the former political candidate she is. So it's interesting, sometimes, to hear what people who aren't Huffington …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Poynter

Johnnie L. Roberts / The Wrap:

Battles for Profits — and Survival — on the Media Landscape — Old Media is not going down without a fight. — The past few months, content owners, producers, distributors, aggregators and tech enablers all over the media landscape have been pitted in momentous clashes, with tens of billions of dollars of revenue at stake.

Chuck Darrow / Philly.com:

National Enquirer editor Barry Levine helps set the gossip agenda — NEW YORK - When the National Enquirer last week broke the news that Hollywood glam gal Catherine Zeta-Jones had undergone treatment for bipolar disorder, it set off a predictable bleating-and-tweeting frenzy among the media and their gossip-devouring audience.

Bloomberg:

Cuban Puts Landmark Theatres, Magnolia Pictures Up for Sale — Billionaire Mark Cuban has put his Landmark Theatres and Magnolia Pictures up for sale, saying entertainment companies are attracting “huge valuations.” — Cuban, 52, is “just testing the waters,” he said today in an e-mail in response to a question from Bloomberg News.

Discussion: Company Town, The Wrap and Deadline.com

New York Observer:

Sarah Douglas Named Culture Editor of ‘The New York Observer’ — Elizabeth Spiers announced this morning that Sarah Douglas has been named culture editor of The New York Observer. — Ms. Douglas is currently a staff writer at Art+Auction magazine and its affiliate web site, Artinfo.com.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and mediabistro.com