Mediagazer: Bleacher Report Doubles Down On Personalized Content, Brings Team Stream To The Web (Rip Empson/TechCrunch)

2:05 PM ET, April 1, 2012

Top News:

Keith Olbermann: Machine Gun for Hire — Given his abrupt removal at Current and his typically temperate response — “Current's statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently” — it seems as if his next stop will be a puppet show shot from a basement somewhere.

Discussion: Business Insider, The Daily Caller and Mediaite

Keith Olbermann / TwitLonger:
My full statement:

Discussion: Mediaite, The Huffington Post, TMZ.com, TVNewser, Business Insider, Gawker, Show Tracker, @keitholbermann, The Wrap, Politicker, Adweek, The New York Observer, The FJP, JIMROMENESKO.COM, RumorFix, TVbytheNumbers and Politico

Current TV:
Open letter to the viewers of Current

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post:
Keith Olbermann Out At Current TV, Replaced By Eliot Spitzer

Discussion: The Daily Beast, Hollywood Reporter and Politico

Erik Wemple:

NBC to do ‘internal investigation’ on Zimmerman segment — NBC told this blog today that it would investigate its handling of a piece on the “Today” show that ham-handedly abridged the conversation between George Zimmerman and a dispatcher in the moments before the death of Trayvon Martin.

Discussion: NewsBusters.org, Mediaite, @romenesko, Mother Jones, americanthinker.com and The Volokh Conspiracy

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

DirecTV and Tribune Fail to Reach Deal — Some DirecTV customers woke up on Sunday without Fox or the CW networks on their television sets, the result of a failed negotiation with Tribune Broadcasting, which owns or operates 23 television stations across the United States.

Discussion: The Wrap, Adweek, Broadcasting & Cable, Chicago Tribune and Bloomberg

Diane Bartz / Reuters:

E-books settlement talks advancing: sources — (Reuters) - The Justice Department could reach a settlement in the next few weeks with Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and some of the major publishers suspected of colluding to push up electronic book prices, according to two people close to the negotiations.

Discussion: CNET, Digitopoly, The Verge and MacRumors

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

Twitter UK boss says social TV happens whether broadcasters like it or not — ‘But they have a choice about how to harness that social TV energy’ explains Tony Wang — Twitter's UK general manager Tony Wang expects broadcasters to start using the microblogging service in more “artful” …

Discussion: WatchingTV Online

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:

Why the next News Corp. scandal may be harder to understand and much more important — What if that last Murdoch scandal turns out to have been the little one, in business terms? — You've read, or heard, about the phone-hacking scandal in Great Britain involving newspapers owned …

Discussion: TorrentFreak, Sydney Morning Herald and Guardian

Rip Empson / TechCrunch:

Bleacher Report Doubles Down On Personalized Content, Brings Team Stream To The Web — It's been fun to watch Bleacher Report grow from some random publishing site for amateur sports writers to a full-blown digital sports network backed by $40+ million in venture capital.

Matt Sanchez / AdAge:

Take a Lesson from Print Media: Clean Up Web Layouts — Amid the Clutter, With Too Many Entry Points, Viewers Can't Focus on the the Content — 5,000. That's the average number of ads and marketing messages Americans are exposed to each day, and if you're online reading this, I'd skew that number higher.

Tania Branigan / Guardian:

Censorship in China: Crackdown on bloggers as rumours of coup swirl — Six people are held and 16 websites shut down as political crisis grips Beijing after sacking — China has intensified online censorship by closing 16 websites, taking the toughest steps yet against major microblogs …

Discussion: BBC, Wall Street Journal, @jeffjarvis and The Next Web

David Bauder / Associated Press:

CBS expands ‘Face the Nation’ to 1 hour on Sunday — NEW YORK (AP) — Five years ago, just off a bout from cancer, Bob Schieffer was set to retire from CBS's “Face the Nation.” That never stuck, and now he's doubling his workload. — Starting Sunday, the public affairs program expands to an hour.

Discussion: TVNewser

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Healthy snacks, ‘digital first’ and the speed of the news industry's transformation — Reading stories about the travails of non-media companies, I find myself drawn to analogies to the plight of the newspaper industry. — Thus I was stopped short a few weeks back by a New York Times report on a strategy shift at PepsiCo.

Discussion: Net Worked and @jayrosen_nyu

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:

Apple Doesn't Need To Make the TV of the Future — The revolution is already here—and it's called the Xbox. — If the rumors are true, Apple will release a television set later this year that it will tout as the most amazing boob tube ever invented. Apple's TV will be able to access shows …

Discussion: TechCrunch and TechNet Blogs

Jonathan Stempel / Thomson Reuters News …:

Unpaid bloggers' lawsuit vs Huffington Post tossed — AOL Inc on Friday won the dismissal of a lawsuit by unpaid bloggers who complained they were deprived of their fair share of the roughly $315 million that the company paid last March to buy The Huffington Post website.