Mediagazer: Amazon Low Prices Disguise a High Cost (David Carr/New York Times)

11:45 AM ET, April 16, 2012

Top News:

Amazon Low Prices Disguise a High Cost — The Justice Department finally took aim at the monopolistic monolith that threatened to dominate the book industry. So imagine the shock when the bullet aimed at threats to competition went whizzing by Amazon — which not long ago had a 90 percent stranglehold …

Discussion: Disruption, New York Times, Mike Cane's xBlog, TeleRead, Techdirt and Digital Book World

Charlie Stross / Charlie's Diary:

What Amazon's ebook strategy means — It seems to me that a lot of folks in the previous discussion don't really understand quite what makes Amazon so interesting—and threatening, for that matter—to the publishing industry. — So I'm going to take a stab at explaining.

Discussion: Baldur Bjarnason, Jeff Jarvis, Beyond Search and Forbes

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

George Zimmerman Trial Could Start a News Swarm — The Orlando Sentinel's Twitter account for the Trayvon Martin case is up and running. So, too, is its topics page, with links to all the newspaper's articles about Mr. Martin and the man who shot and killed him, George Zimmerman …

Discussion: TVNewser, Free Press, msnbc.com, Media Decoder, The Huffington Post, mediabistro.com and Inside Cable News

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Chartbeat raises $9.5M to give publishers better radar — Launched three years ago as a way of giving publishers and media companies better real-time analytics related to their content, Chartbeat announced Monday that it has closed a new round of Series B financing worth $9.5 million …

Discussion: Betabeat, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, AllThingsD and PandoDaily

Ben Smith / BuzzFeed:

Cuomo Aide Slammed Reporter In Dossier — A top aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo assembled a 35-page dossier on the work of an Albany political reporter considered hostile to his administration, highlighting any shred of criticism in a document that reflects the intense sensitivity …

Discussion: Capital New York and New York Times

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

The News Cycle, From Fireworks to Fizzle — I DON'T remember how old I was when I first climbed up to the roof of my family's home in suburban Maryland. Eleven, maybe? Twelve? But I do remember what I saw up there. It was the night of the Fourth of July, and it was turning dark enough for the fireworks.

Discussion: @jonathanwald, @chanders, @chanders and Forbes

Paul McNally / Journalism.co.uk:

Scarborough Evening News to go weekly in latest round of Johnston Press cuts — Scarborough, Northampton, Peterborough and Halifax are among the titles switching to weekly in ‘platform-neutral’ publishing move — The NUJ say they will defend members at JP titles ‘in every way we can’

Discussion: Press Gazette, Scarborough Evening News, Guardian, Press Gazette and Jon Slattery

Josh Feldman / Mediaite:

Fox News Mole Tells Howard Kurtz He Wanted To Leave But Got ‘Blackballed’ At Other Networks — Joe Muto, the “Fox News Mole,” sat down for an appearance with Howard Kurtz that aired on CNN's Reliable Sources today to recount his tales of working at Fox and explain why he went rogue.

Discussion: Capital New York, TVNewser, Inside Cable News, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Reliable Sources and Chickaboomer

Joe Fassler / The Atlantic Online:

Can the Computers at Narrative Science Replace Paid Writers? — A look at new software that could transform journalism — In a few short years, we've learned to delegate all manner of tasks to computers. For music recommendations or driving directions or academic scouring, we readily turn to our clever machines.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Why CBS pulled the trigger too soon on the Bush National Guard story — Joe Hagan unravels the tangled tale of “the great untold story of modern Texas politics” — the story of the story of George W. Bush's National Guard service in the early '70s. It's a fascinating piece of forensics …

Discussion: Texas Monthly and TVNewser

International Business Times:

Gannett's Revenue Declines On Restructuring Costs, Ad Slump … By ROLAND LI: Subscribe to Roland's RSS feed — Gannett Co. (NYSE: GCI), the largest U.S. newspaper group by circulation, said Monday that earnings fell in the first quarter due to a slump in advertising revenue and restructuring costs.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, PR Newswire, Reuters, Bloomberg and MediaPost

Alan Finder / New York Times:

E-Books Are Easier to Borrow, Just Be Prepared to Wait — As a technical matter, it's remarkably easy to borrow an e-book from your local library. But not if you want to take out the best-selling biography of Steven P. Jobs, the hero of the Internet age who helped lure tens of millions …

Discussion: @mathewi