Mediagazer: Sources Say AOL Seeking Buyers for Engadget and TechCrunch, Arrington “Not In The Least Bit Interested” (Sarah Lacy/PandoDaily)

12:35 PM ET, May 9, 2012

Top News:

Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:

Sources Say AOL Seeking Buyers for Engadget and TechCrunch, Arrington “Not In The Least Bit Interested” — We weren't sure about this one at first, but now we have two independent sources confirming that AOL is exploring the sale of its cornerstone technology sites Engadget and TechCrunch.

Discussion: paidContent, Gawker, TechCrunch, AllThingsD, New York Magazine, Forbes, FishbowlNY, Poynter, The New Yorker Blog, VentureBeat, WebProNews, Business Insider, Betabeat and Tech Trader Daily

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

AOL First-Quarter Profit Increases on Advertising Gains — AOL Inc. (AOL), owner of the Huffington Post and TechCrunch, reported a more than fourfold jump in first- quarter profit as online-advertising revenue increased. — Net income advanced to $21.1 million, or 22 cents a share …

Discussion: @edmundlee and AdExchanger.com

Josh Halliday / @joshhalliday:

AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong: reports AOL seeking a buyer for TechCrunch and Engadget are “100% untrue” http://www.reuters.com/...

Discussion: Reuters

David Leigh / Guardian:

Milly Dowler: truth about deletion of messages may never be known — The full truth about the extent of hacking into Milly Dowler's phone may never be known, police have admitted. Their report to the Leveson inquiry followed an investigation lasting five months into the hacking of the murdered teenager's phone.

Roy Greenslade / Guardian: News International misses another accounting deadline

Patrick Wintour / Guardian: David Cameron texted Rebekah Brooks before she quit NI, claims biography

Guardian:
Rupert Murdoch's big backer sounds News Corp warning

Discussion: Press Association, Guardian, New York Magazine, Media Matters for America, Hillicon Valley, Free Press and Guardian

Bill Dedman / msnbc.com:

Conservative author Jonah Goldberg drops claim of two Pulitzer nominations — On the dust jacket of his new book, “The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas,” best-selling conservative author and commentator Jonah Goldberg is described as having “twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.”

Discussion: mediabistro.com, FishbowlDC, Mediaite, JIMROMENESKO.COM, The Huffington Post and Mother Jones

Keach Hagey / Digits:

LA Times Developer Begins Archiving Newspaper Websites — Newspaper front pages are considered such an important mirror of American culture that they get their own rotating daily museum exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. — But there has never been an equivalent archive for the more ephemeral …

Discussion: Poynter

Voice of America:

Chinese Official Questioned About Al Jazeera Reporter's Expulsion — Al Jazeera English announced Tuesday that its Beijing correspondent Melissa Chan did not have her visa renewed. That is in effect, an expulsion from China. The following is a transcript of some of the questions and answers …

Discussion: Guardian, Reuters, Journalism.co.uk, Committee to Protect …, Global Voices, FP Passport, China Digital Times, IHT Rendezvous, The New Yorker Blog and Globe and Mail

Betsy Rothstein / FishbowlDC:

An Editor's Dangerous Mea Culpa — In a most unusual editor's note on the Chronicle of Higher Education website last night, Editor Liz McMillen apologizes profusely for what turned out to be a controversial post written by now fired “Brainstorm” blogger, former WSJ editor and Harvard graduate Naomi Schaefer Riley.

Discussion: Poynter, Gawker, mediabistro.com, Brainstorm, WebProNews and Poynter

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:

The making of a brand-new iPad magazine that's already sick of the Internet — Jim Windolf, a contributing editor and writer for Vanity Fair, was sitting in a large, multi-desk cubicle in a warren of similar cubicles in a 10th floor office on West 27th Street on a rainy afternoon, explaining his new project.

Reuters:

Romeo Langlois: Colombia Won't Negotiate With FARC Rebels Over Kidnapped French Reporter — Colombia on Tuesday rejected a call by FARC rebels to debate freedom of information and news media bias as a condition for the release of a French reporter they hold hostage.

Discussion: BBC

Elyssa Pachico / Christian Science Monitor:
Is French journalist kidnapped in Colombia a prisoner of war?

Discussion: Colombia Reports

Farhad Manjoo / PandoDaily:

Nobody Seems to Understand What Jeff Bezos is Doing. Does He? — A couple months ago, realizing it would be futile to hold out any longer against the tsunami of pop cultural peer pressure, I decided to go ahead and read The Hunger Games. I jumped over to Amazon, searched for the Kindle edition …

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and GeekWire

Gail Shister / The Philly Post:

Wendy Ruderman Talks About Why She's Leaving the Daily News — How bad are things at the Daily News? New York Times-bound Wendy Ruderman, a 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner, is urging her colleagues to jump ship. “I hate to say it, but if people at the Daily News aren't looking, they should be …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Maurice Chammah / The Huffington Post:

Should Journalists Be Protected? — Thursday was World Press Freedom Day. On Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP) published an article listing the arrests, injuries, and assaults of at least eighteen journalists covering recent clashes near the Egyptian Ministry of Defense.

Discussion: World Now