Mediagazer: The Washington Post Launches Trove, A Personalized Social News Site (Robin Wauters/TechCrunch)

3:20 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: Betabeat, Adweek, Yahoo! News, PC Magazine, Poynter, Techland, FishbowlNY, mocoNews, INFOdocket, NewsGrange, Garcia Media, Future of Journalism, eMedia Vitals 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: 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, Mediaite, Future of Journalism, MediaPost, The Wrap, FishbowlNY, mediabistro.com, Journalism.co.uk, On Media's Blog, Weigel, 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 and eMoney, more at Techmeme »

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: FishbowlNY, Adweek and NYConvergence.com

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

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, New York Observer, @jenny8lee, The O. J., 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

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, Communications …, ClickZ, Between the Lines Blog, Search Engine Land, MarketingVOX and CNET News, more at Techmeme »

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

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: The Awl, @nicknotned and FishbowlNY

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

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

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.

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Surprising Honesty 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 have to say about the merger of AOL and the Huffington Post.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

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

Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:

Tag a TV Ad, Get a Free Pepsi — Television-tagging iPhone application IntoNow has partnered with PepsiCo in a promotion that will reward app users with a free soda for tagging the drink-maker's new Pepsi MAX spot. — “The basic concept is to find the Pepsi MAX commercial, tag it and select a store …

Discussion: Lost Remote, Future of Journalism and MediaPost

Keach Hagey / On Media's Blog:

WSJ: Leak killed Gibbs's Facebook talks — The New York Times Dealbook scoop that former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was in talks to take a communications job at Facebook apparently put an end to those talks, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine and Yahoo! News, more at Techmeme »

Deborah Potter / NewsLab:

Does commentary belong in local newscasts? — Wearing dark sunglasses and a baseball cap, Bubba the Love Sponge brings it on. “Oil prices are a scam,” he roars. “A select few people are getting ultra-rich on the backs of the American family!” It's classic Bubba, the same shock jock shtick he's been doing for years on the radio.

Discussion: WLTX-TV