Mediagazer: Settlement With Some Publishers Near on E-Book Pricing (Wall Street Journal)

8:00 PM ET, April 4, 2012

Top News:

James Murdoch's BSkyB exit puts Rupert in firing line — (Reuters) - James Murdoch's exit from the chairmanship of BSkyB moves his father Rupert into the firing line in Britain, just as an inquiry into a phone-hacking scandal turns its focus on his peculiar influence in the country.

Discussion: Guardian

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:
News International misses deadline to file its accounts

Discussion: NPR and AllThingsD

Michael Wolff / Guardian:
Rupert Murdoch's American media immunity

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Nieman Journalism Lab

Paul McNally / Journalism.co.uk: QC defends scope of original phone-hacking prosecution

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
DPP says there was ‘pushback’ from Met over hacking investigation

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Lucy Manning / ITV:
Report likely to accuse hacking witnesses of misleading parliament

Discussion: paidContent

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

New high score: How the NYT created its “stupid game” — When Jon Huang was younger he was the type of kid who spent his time making mods for Duke Nukem 3D. So it makes a kind of sense he's now turned The New York Times into its own kind of shoot 'em up. — Huang was the multimedia producer behind …

Discussion: Co.Create, Gothamist, FishbowlNY and The Huffington Post

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Stupid game lets you destroy parts of NYT story about stupid games — The Times has figured out a great way to increase time-on-site (and destroy our productivity) by illustrating a story about our obsession with “stupid games” with a game that lets you shoot and destroy parts of its website.

Discussion: New York Times, The 6th Floor, Mediaite, Engadget, Betabeat and AllThingsD

Media Decoder:

Marimow to Return as Editor of Philadelphia Inquirer — William K. Marimow, who served as top editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer from 2006 to 2010, will rejoin the paper in the same role in a move that is expected to be announced this afternoon. — His appointment comes days …

Discussion: Politico, Poynter, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Philly.com, JIMROMENESKO.COM and Off Mic

Paul Nussbaum / Philly.com:

PMN's new owners meet the employees, discuss the future — In an informal session Tuesday with newspaper and website employees, three new owners of Philadelphia Media Network reiterated their plans to make long-term investments in the media company to improve its financial and journalistic prospects.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:

Reed Hastings Will Get His HBO Go as Comcast Nears Deal on Xbox — Updated Comcast and HBO are close to finalizing a deal to make the HBO Go app available on Xbox, according to several people familiar with the negotiations. — The app, which offers all of the pay cable channel's shows …

Discussion: VentureBeat, Multichannel and The Verge

David Barboza / New York Times:

Flattering News Coverage Has a Price in China — SHANGHAI — China is notorious for censoring politically delicate news coverage. But it is more than willing to let flattering news about Western and Asian businesses appear in print and broadcast media — if the price is right.

Discussion: Reason and Media Decoder

Jim Romenesko:

Gannett announces 2Q furloughs for USA Today employees — Gannett community publishing division president Bob Dickey tells his employees that “I am happy to announce USCP [U.S. community publishing] will not institute furloughs in the second quarter.”

Discussion: Politico

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

New ASNE figures show percentage of minorities in newspaper newsrooms continues to decline — The number of minorities in the U.S. is growing, but in newspaper newsrooms it continues to creep downward. — New ASNE figures show that the percentage of minorities in newsrooms is now 12.32 percent.

Discussion: rjionline.org, Gannett Blog, Jon Slattery and Reflections of a Newsosaur

Austin Carr / Fast Company:

Zite, CNN Launch Publisher Program To Ease Cease-And-Desist Concerns — Last April Fools' Day, publishers from Time Inc. to the Washington Post Company sent fast-growing startup Zite an aggressive cease-and-desist letter. The publishers weren't joking, accusing Zite's app …

Discussion: GigaOM, Poynter, Adweek, CNET and VentureBeat

Marc Berman / New York Post:

Keith needed ‘Diva’ limos e-mails reveal — Liberal bloviator Keith Olbermann spent his last days at Current TV driving colleagues nuts with rants about “smelly” drivers who had the audacity to talk to him, according to startling e-mails obtained by The Post.

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Capital New York and Mediaite

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:
Olbermann on Joining Current TV: 'I Didn't Think the Whole Thing Through'

Discussion: mediabistro.com, NPR, TVNewser and New York Magazine

Wall Street Journal:

Settlement With Some Publishers Near on E-Book Pricing — Talks to resolve U.S. and European price-fixing probes into e-books are heating up, with three international publishers inclined to settle the matter, according to people familiar with the matter. — Apple Inc., another target …

Discussion: @tcarmody

Dan Zak / Washington Post:

Woodward and Bernstein: Could the Web generation uncover a Watergate-type scandal? — The gabby, gray-haired grand poobahs of journalism sprang from the back flaps of their book jackets onto a real-life panel Tuesday afternoon in the air-conditioned guts of the Marriott Wardman Park …

Discussion: ShortFormBlog

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Yahoo Cuts 2,000 Jobs in ‘Urgent’ Restructuring — Purple people eater? (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife) — The anticipated wave of layoffs at Yahoo has arrived, and it's as big as promised. — The Sunnywale, Calif.-based internet giant announced plans to eliminate 2,000 jobs, or about 14% of its workforce of 14,000.

Discussion: AllThingsD, BBC, Adweek, Yahoo! Pressroom Home, CNET and mnilive.com

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Can ‘Vice’ keep it real, after lauds from the media establishment's most establishmenty award-dealers? — Remember ten years ago, when Vice was mostly just this slick hipster rag that you'd pick up for free on the floor of some grimey record shop in the East Village, and maybe you'd skim through …

Discussion: Adweek

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Nonprofit status: A maybe for news orgs, a yes for the NFL — I like football, so I was interested in this piece over at Pro Football Talk that details the salary of National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell. (That's $11,554,000 — not bad.) But then I was surprised …

Discussion: ProFootballTalk

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Pottermore sold over $1.5m worth of Harry Potter e-books in 3 days — Pottermore sales were “considerably higher than I expected,” said Pottermore CEO Charlie Redmayne on a Radio Litopia show, “The Naked Book,” this afternoon. — Redmayne said Pottermore sold over £1 million worth of e-books …

Discussion: AllThingsD

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Instapaper, Readability and monetizing other people's content — There's been a minor furor brewing in the digital-content sphere over the past few days involving Readability, an app and web service that allows readers to save content from any website and read it later …

Discussion: Melville House Books and The Brooks Review