Mediagazer: Digital Notes: Updating Digital Royalties, and a Peek Under Pandora's Hood (Ben Sisario/Media Decoder)

8:45 AM ET, April 13, 2012

Top News:

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Apple Fires Back at the Feds, Amazon — Nearly two days after the Department of Justice filed antitrust charges against Apple and major book publishers, Apple is responding. Here's comment from Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr: … Apple's response is similar to ones made by Penguin Group and MacMillan …

Discussion: Business Insider, CNET, The Verge, The Next Web, App Advice, MacRumors, Softpedia News, eBookNewser and 9to5Mac

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Antitrust Settlement Hits Barnes & Noble Shares — Barnes & Noble Inc. bore the brunt of Wednesday's antitrust settlement between the U.S. government and three major book publishers, losing 6.4% of its market value on Thursday alone and tumbling 17% this month.

Discussion: Thad McIlroy, SlashGear, eBookNewser and The Daily Caller

Michael Bobelian / Forbes: The Irony Of The Government's Antitrust Case Against Apple And Five Publishers

Economist:
A too-cosy world? — Readers may not be the ultimate winners in an e-book antitrust case

Discussion: NPR and Technology Review

David Streitfeld / New York Times:
Cut in E-Book Pricing by Amazon Is Set to Shake Rivals

Discussion: msnbc.com, GigaOM, Melville House Books, PandoDaily, Fortune, The Huffington Post, App Advice, Media Decoder, Boing Boing, The Billfold, CNET, Wired and Media News

Declan McCullagh / CNET:
DOJ is likely to lose e-book antitrust suit targeting Apple

Discussion: Guardian, Forbes, Bits, App Advice, Ricochet Conversations Feed, VentureBeat, MacRumors, Publishers Weekly, 9to5Mac, The Authors Guild Blog, SlashGear, MarketingVox News & Trends, Business Insider, MacStories and parislemon

John Cook / Gawker:

Here's a Picture of Bill O'Reilly With a Topless Woman Along With the Fox News Legal Threat Meant to Quash It — Hey, look what just came in through the Gawker mailbag from the good people at Epstein Becker & Green P.C.: “Gawker should immediately stop publishing information and videos …

Discussion: mediabistro.com, TVNewser, Guardian, @producermatthew, Business Insider, Deadline.com, Mediaite, @joemuto, New York Magazine, Erik Wemple, Forbes, FishbowlLA and Forbes

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

The ‘Fox News Mole’ Only Cost Gawker $5,000 — What's the going rate for inducing someone to commit career suicide? Apparently you can do it for five grand, as long as that person has a sufficiently large ax to grind against his employer. — Gawker's John Cook tells …

Discussion: Associated Press, NY Daily News, Deadspin, Mashable!, Company Town, Media & Entertainment, TVNewser, WebProNews, Show Tracker, Forbes, Business Insider, Mediaite, Ricochet Conversations Feed, Vanity Fair, FishbowlNY and FishbowlDC

Foster Kamer / The New York Observer:

The Annotated Gawker Legal Threat: What Fox News Lawyers Fired Off at Their ‘Mole’ Problem — Well, it wasn't long, but Gawker's Fox News Mole, Joe Muto, was nabbed. Meanwhile, sometime after Fox News chief Roger Ailes joked to the New York Times' David Carr about the incident ("'I am the Fox Mole,' he told me, then quickly added.

Discussion: Gawker, Erik Wemple and Mediaite

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:
Why Fox News Shouldn't Sue Over the ‘Fox Mole’ (Analysis)

Discussion: Gawker and The Huffington Post

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Study: 7 in 10 local news readers wouldn't greatly miss their hometown paper — Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project — Pew's latest report, a deep dive into the characteristics of people who closely follow local news, is one of those glass-half-full/half-empty situations.

Discussion: Pew Internet

Pew Internet:
72% of Americans follow local news closely

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Khristopher Brooks / The Huffington Post:

How to Get Fired Before Your First Day — Most college students hope to land a nice-paying job in their field of study immediately after graduation. — And for the most part, I was headed in that direction. I finished my last two classes of graduate school at New York University …

Discussion: 10,000 Words and B2B Memes

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
Newspaper Fires Reporter for Showing Mild Sense of Enthusiasm

Discussion: Gannett Blog, MyFoxPhilly.com, @yurivictor, @stevebuttry, @mattderienzo and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Dan Watson / CJR:

Unpublishing Requests Are on the Rise — As more content shifts from print to web, journalists are seeing rising requests from sources to remove stories — I recently encountered a sticky conundrum as editor of a student-run digital news website at the University of Southern California.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and NetNewsCheck Latest

Michael Holden / Reuters:

UK police judgment poor in News Corp hacking case: report — (Reuters) - Senior London police staff linked to the News Corp phone hacking scandal showed poor judgment, took bad decisions and got too close to journalists working for Rupert Murdoch's newspapers, an independent watchdog said on Thursday.

Discussion: Bloomberg

Melody Guyton Butts / Durham Herald-Sun:

Ailes lectures young journalists — CHAPEL HILL - Fox News chief Roger Ailes offered more than a few words of advice Thursday in a room filled mostly with young journalists, starting with a recommendation that elicited at least a few eye rolls: “I think you ought to change your major.”

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Poynter, The Daily Tar Heel and News14.com

Ken Wheaton / AdAge:

Court Declares Public TV's Ban on Political Ads Unconstitutional — Says There Is No Evidence It Would Harm Programming — Will your children be accosted by ads from Mitt Romney and Barack Obama while watching “Sesame Street”? A court ruling today makes it a possibility (even if it isn't a strong one).

Discussion: Reuters, Media Decoder, Company Town, Adweek, The Wrap, The Consumerist and Hillicon Valley, Thanks:@learmonth

Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:

Digital Notes: Updating Digital Royalties, and a Peek Under Pandora's Hood — A Royalties Deal: The music industry has never been accused of moving too fast when it comes to new technologies. On Wednesday, after months of negotiations, the major trade groups representing labels …

Josh Stearns / Save the News:

Governments Around the World Grapple with Nonprofit Journalism — In Free Press' 2011 report on international models for public media, we noted how many of the changes we are witnessing in the American media landscape are also happening internationally. Public media systems around the world …

Thanks:@jcstearns