Mediagazer: China's communist state news website aims for $245 million IPO raise (Robert Andrews/paidContent)

1:45 PM ET, April 17, 2012

Top News:

CJR:

Six degrees of aggregation — Of the many and conflicting stories about how Huffington Post came to be—how it boasts 68 sections, three international editions (with more to come), 1.2 billion monthly page views and 54 million comments in the past year alone, how it came to surpass the traffic …

Discussion: @peretti and NetNewsCheck Latest

Erik Wemple:

Pulitzer's embrace of the Web goes only so far — My conversation yesterday with Bob Davis was halting. Davis is the editor of the Anniston (Ala.) Star, and he served on the jury that considered entries for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. No award was bestowed in that category.

Stefanie Botelho / Folio:

EXCLUSIVE: Inside Huffington Post's Weekly Magazine App — Arianna Huffington, Tim O'Brien and Josh Klenert on HuffPo's new endeavor. — On the heels of its seventh anniversary and its first Pulitzer Prize, all-digital online publication Huffington Post is breaking into the magazine business.

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Huffington Post Wins Pulitzer Prize — NEW YORK — Huffington Post senior military correspondent David Wood has spent decades covering war, watching as wounded combat troops are loaded onto medical evacuation helicopters and, he said, “go off in a cloud of dust.”

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
Arianna Huffington and Tim O'Brien on HuffPost's Pulitzer Win

Discussion: New York Magazine and Poynter

Jolie O'Dell / VentureBeat:
Huffington Post brings home the blogosphere's first ever Pulitzer

Discussion: GigaOM, paidContent, The Huffington Post, NYConvergence.com and The Editorialiste

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Read It Later Rebrands As Free App, Pocket; Updates UI With Filters, Favorites And More — Read It Later, an app that allows you to save articles and other content on the web to “read them later, is debuting a new version of its service and rebranding as “Pocket.

Discussion: The Next Web, Poynter, VentureBeat, AllThingsD, CNET, Electronista, MacStories and 9to5Mac

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Read It Later's app goes free and gets a new name, Pocket — Read It Later is making its app completely free — no more $2.99 Pro version — and renaming it Pocket to express “how simple it is to take any content users discover with them, no matter where they go.”

Dean Starkman / CJR:

The Value of Prizes — I watched the Pulitzer announcements for the first time this afternoon, just upstairs in the World Room—and, well, it's a bit of anti-climax, as a matter of fact. Sig Gissler read the announcements in the lowest-key manner possible to an unpacked room …

Erik Wemple:
Pulitzer Prizes: Editorial writers come up short

Discussion: Lens, LA Observed and ap.org

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:
Sara Ganim, 24, wins Pulitzer for coverage of Penn State sex abuse scandal

Discussion: Softpedia News, BuzzFeed, PennLive.com, Athens News, @meganhealey, Jezebel and Hillman Foundation blogs

The Pulitzer Prizes:
2012 Winners and Finalists — Journalism Public Service …

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
Pulitzer Committee Confirms: Editorial Writing Is Worthless

Discussion: Speakeasy, ReadWriteWeb, Journalism.co.uk, LA Observed, WWD Media Headlines, Media & Entertainment, Erik Wemple, Jacket Copy, New York Times, The Stranger …, Capital New York, @mlcalderone, @jackshafer and The Wrap

Andrew Losowsky / The Huffington Post:
No Winner For Pulitzer Prize For Fiction This Year

Discussion: Media Decoder, The Millions, The New York Observer, @sarahw, Publishers Weekly and GalleyCat

Adrienne LaFrance / Nieman Journalism Lab:
Online journalism shines in 2012 Pulitzer picks

Discussion: The Latest Word and College Media Matters

Michael Hastings / BuzzFeed:

Chelsea Clinton, TV's Dork Diva, Struggles At NBC — Hillary and Bill have worked their way back into our hearts, and now it's Chelsea's turn. The only problem: she's “terrible” on television, as network executives privately admit. — Amy Sly for BuzzFeed

Discussion: New York Magazine, TVNewser, Jezebel and newsfeed.time.com

Richard Hall / The Independent:

New book ‘exposes links between Murdoch, politicians and police’ — A new book which promises to expose the connections between Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper group and senior politicians and police officers is to be published this week. Dial M for Murdoch, by the Labour MP Tom Watson …

Andrew Pulver / Guardian:
Rupert Murdoch's battles with Harold Evans at the Times to become a film

Discussion: Digital Spy and Variety

Adrienne LaFrance / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Politico Pro, one year in: A premium pricetag, a tight focus, and a business success — Most nights on Capitol Hill, the Senate and House press galleries begin to thin out around dinner time. The deadline rush subsides, and all but a scatter of reporters remain.

Discussion: Free Press and Politico

Lauren Kirchner / Capital New York:

Reuters Institute hosts a debate taking stock of the crisis in British (and U.S.) journalism — In the short time during which The Leveson Inquiry in Britain has been investigating the practice of phone-hacking by Rupert Murdoch's News International employees, the revelations have been as shocking …

Discussion: Press Gazette and Reuters Institute …

Amy Chozick / New York Times:
Mark Lewis, Lawyer in Phone-Hacking Case, Chases News Corporation in U.S.

Discussion: Media Decoder

Ed Pilkington / Guardian: Lawyer pursuing phone hacking in US considers asking FBI for help

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Study: Those Social Media Logos On TV Actually Work — There is hardly a program or ad on TV these days that doesn't ask its viewers to like its Facebook page or tweet about it. According to a new survey by global consulting firm Accenture, there's a simple reason for this: those social media symbols actually work.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, CNET, Media Buyer Planner, Business Wire and Home Media Magazine

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

China's communist state news website aims for $245 million IPO raise — What's the difference between communism and capitalism anymore? — The People's Daily newspaper, an organ of China's ruling Communist Party, has tripled the amount it expects to raise through the IPO floatation of its online publishing operations.

Discussion: Forbes and Reuters

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Content payment system Piano takes more funding to go global — Piano Media, the paid content platform currently operating bundled kiosks in Slovakia and Slovenia, is taking a €2 million ($2.6 million) second round of venture investment to boost its globalisation ambitions for and general expansion.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, NetNewsCheck Latest, Journalism.co.uk and TechCrunch

Ryan Kim / GigaOM:

Hulu Plus subscriptions hits 2 million, accelerates revenue — Hulu Plus, Hulu's paid subscription service, has hit 2 million users and is helping put the company's revenue on a faster pace than last year, said Hulu's CEO Jason Kilar. Speaking at the Ad Age Digital conference in New York …

Discussion: TechCrunch, AdAge and The Verge

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Rolling Stone rolls out Instagram-integrated fan site; apps on the way — Tupac hologram at Coachella, by Twitter user @ThisGoonIsHOT — Rolling Stone's new social networking hub, #RSFans, aims to be a “two-way conversation” between Rolling Stone editors and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram users.