Mediagazer: Hulu Plus subscriptions hits 2 million, accelerates revenue (Ryan Kim/GigaOM)

3:55 PM ET, April 17, 2012

Top News:

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, Ideashower, AllThingsD, VentureBeat, CNET, MacStories, 9to5Mac, Lifehacker and Poynter

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.”

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.

Discussion: WebProNews and Journalism.co.uk

Erik Wemple:
Pulitzer's embrace of the Web goes only so far

Discussion: paidContent, LA Observed and msnbc.com

CJR:
Six degrees of aggregation

Discussion: @peretti and NetNewsCheck Latest

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

Discussion: VentureBeat, New York Magazine, Poynter and The New York Observer

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

Discussion: GigaOM, Free Press, ReadWriteWeb, The Huffington Post, NYConvergence.com, FishbowlNY, Adweek, The Editorialiste and The Huffington Post

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: MediaPost, AdAge, the Econsultancy blog, NetNewsCheck Latest, MarketingVox News & Trends, TechCrunch and The Verge

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, The Huffington Post, Gawker, 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: The New York Observer, 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

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 …

Discussion: The Pulitzer Prizes

Erik Wemple:
Pulitzer Prizes: Editorial writers come up short

Discussion: Poynter, Speakeasy, Lens and Gawker

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

Discussion: BusinessJournalism.org …, The Latest Word, College Media Matters and Denver Post

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Curation Service Storify Partners With Pulse In First-Ever Syndication Deal — Storify, the startup that lets anyone “curate” stories from around the web by collecting posts from social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, is today announcing its first-ever syndication deal.

Chris O'Shea / FishbowlNY:

Nick Denton Defends Pathetic Fox News Mole Posts By Saying They Brought Traffic — Today Gawker announced that it was blowing up its commenting system, which of course brought out the crazies. And while they were entertaining in their passion — what ever will Gawker do with all the people lying …

Discussion: TVNewser and Gawker

Andrew Kirell / Mediaite:
Why I Never Became Mediaite's Fox News Mole

Discussion: TVNewser and Ricochet Conversations Feed

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: Multichannel, 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

Luke Harding / Guardian:

The World Tomorrow: Julian Assange proves a useful idiot — The WikiLeaks founder's Hezbollah interview on his TV show debut leaves Luke Harding with more questions than answers — It was billed as Julian Assange's “explosive” TV debut. The choice of word was perhaps unfortunate given …

Discussion: Forbes, The Wrap, New York Magazine, News RSS : Today, @harrisj, @davidleigh3, Huffington Post UK and BuzzFeed

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

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, Reuters Institute … and Guardian

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Newfangled Aggregator Trapit Hires an Old-Timer: Yahoo Editor Liz Lufkin — Liz Lufkin used to have a big say about what most of the Internet read. Now she wants to do it again. — The difference is that at Lufkin's last job, running the home page for Yahoo, she helped shape …

Thanks:@dmfreeman