Mediagazer: James Murdoch to step down as BSkyB chairman. More details soon ... (Media Guardian/@mediaguardian)

8:25 AM ET, April 3, 2012

Top News:

Media Guardian / @mediaguardian:

James Murdoch to step down as BSkyB chairman. More details soon ...

Discussion: Reuters, @dansabbagh and The Huffington Post

James Murdoch to step down as BSkyB chairman - live — 1.14pm: The Guardian's media commentator Roy Greenslade has given his reaction to the news of Murdoch's resignation in an interview with Sky News. He says it was somewhat “inevitable” and adds: “I don't think it's a massive surprise even though the timing may be surprising.

Ross Kerber / Reuters:

News Corp faces proxy call for independent chairman — (Reuters) - News Corp faces a call to appoint an independent board chairman on concerns Rupert Murdoch's media company needs to pursue more reforms following a phone-hacking scandal last summer. — The proxy proposal …

Discussion: @skynewsbreak

Katherine Rushton / Telegraph:

It has finally dawned on the Murdochs that James' days at BSkyB are numbered — BSkyB, knowing the game is up, is staging a dignified exit for James Murdoch, writes Katherine Rushton. — James Murdoch's best defence over the phone hacking scandal went from being ‘none of my staff told me’ to 'my staff told me but I didn't notice'

Discussion: Deadline.com

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Robert Redford to Produce a Documentary About Watergate — Rarely does reality intersect with role playing the way it did two Sundays ago in Bob Woodward's living room. — Meeting him there were Carl Bernstein, his writing partner at The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s …

Discussion: BBC

Rupal Parekh / AdAge:

Many Magazines Racing to Capitalize on Pinterest — Publishers Exploring Platform, Watching Rivals' Moves — Last month, digital executives from Hearst's 20 or so titles were summoned for an important meeting at the company's Manhattan headquarters. — The pressing subject was Pinterest …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Thanks:@matt_creamer

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:
MPA Levels Playing Field for Publishers' Tablet Data

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk, New York Times, MinOnline, Folio, BtoB Magazine, paidContent and eMedia Vitals

Matt Chaban / The New York Observer:

T-Squared Off: With Paul Goldberger Leaving for Vanity Fair, Is This the End of Architecture Criticism at The New Yorker? — There are two great thrones in American architectural criticism, that of The New Yorker and The New York Times. It was at these two journalistic institutions …

Discussion: UnBeige, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Capital New York, The Huffington Post, FishbowlNY and LA Observed

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Philly papers sold at 10% of 2006 value — After changing hands three times in six troubled years, Philadelphia's legendary newspapers were sold Monday for a tenth of the half-billion dollar price they fetched as recently as 2006. — The stunning plunge in the value of the Philadelphia Inquirer …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Mike Armstrong / Philly.com:
Local investors buy Inquirer, Daily News, website

Discussion: mediabistro.com, Top Dollar, Associated Press, Media Decoder, Politico, Poynter, JIMROMENESKO.COM, @wendywarren, @wendywarren, The Wrap and The Newspaper Guild

Tim Carmody / Wired:

How Licensing and Hardware Bottlenecks Confound Magazine Text on the iPad — For the most part, text on the new Retina Display iPad looks amazing. Load a PDF with proper vector-based text onto it, and your document doesn't just look like paper; it looks like perfect paper.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Tabloid Tangle: Jim Dolan Accuses Mort Zuckerman of Extortion — Publishing a tabloid newspaper in New York is not for the timid, but the accusation Cablevision CEO Jim Dolan just leveled against New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman is strong stuff even by those standards.

Discussion: Newsday, New York Post, BuzzFeed, The Big Lead and Runnin' Scared

Paul Smalera / Reuters:

The recession killed journalism - and saved it — Over the last few years, thanks to the global economic crisis - encapsulating everything from the 2008 housing crash to today's ongoing euro zone sovereign-debt debacle - much ink has been spilled about the reshaping of the world's economy, especially about the domestic job market.

Elspeth Reeve / The Atlantic Wire:

In Defense of the Media's Coverage of Trayvon Martin — The headline on New York Times media critic David Carr's column on media coverage of Trayvon Martin in only five words, “A Shooting, and Instant Polarization,” but it really contains two arguments, neither of which bear up to facts.

Discussion: CJR, Slate, Mediaite, Politico and New York Times

Ilaina Jonas / Reuters:

Goldman fund to exit company owning sex traffic site — A private equity fund run by Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) has agreed to sell its stake in the media company that runs a sex trafficking forum back to company's management, a spokeswoman said on Sunday.

Discussion: CNBC and business.time.com