Mediagazer: Universal Music Completes $1.9 Billion EMI Recorded Music Acquisition (Georg Szalai/Hollywood Reporter)

2:30 PM ET, September 28, 2012

Top News:

David Kravets / Wired:

Justice Department's Warrantless Spying Increased 600 Percent in Decade — The Justice Department use of warrantless internet and telephone surveillance methods known as pen register and trap-and-trace has exploded in the last decade, according to government documents the American Civil Liberties obtained via …

Discussion: Naked Security, Hot Air and Forbes

Pete Yost / Associated Press:
Feds' use of surveillance devices rises sharply

Discussion: ACLU and Business Insider

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Google's Copyright Crackdown Punishes Author For Torrenting His Own Book — Over the years, we've pointed out repeatedly a massive Achilles Heel for Google: its often dreadful customer service. Trying to communicate with Google can often be like facing a giant white monolith, rather than any sort of human being.

Discussion: Forbes and Start Programming with Python

Kelly McBride / Poynter:

Journalism has an originality problem, not a plagiarism problem — Professional journalism isn't facing a plagiarism problem. It's facing an originality failure. — And you can't blame the Internet. Our originality breakdown results from many pressures — the overwhelming volume …

Discussion: @laureni, Canada's online magazine and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Greg Sandoval / CNET:

Music publisher blocked iPhone 5 music service, report says — Sony/ATV and Apple couldn't agree on licensing fees and that's why we didn't see a Pandora-like music service from Apple, according to a story in the New York Post. — Some people waited days in line for the iPhone 5.

Discussion: TechCrunch, New York Post, BGR, iDownloadBlog.com and MacRumors

The Atlantic Wire:

Iran's News Agency Reruns ‘The Onion’ As Real News — Iran's state-run FARS News Agency just published a shocking new Gallup Poll that was actually “conducted” by the fake news titans at The Onion. This FARS post from today (datelined Tehran) is a word-for-word copy of this article that went …

Discussion: The Lede, Mediaite, Media Decoder, Gawker, @theonion, Guardian and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Can Boutique Publishing Be Big Business? NSFW Corp. Says Yes — Believe it or not, there was a time when 1 million people was a respectable audience. In the era of Facebook, Google and ad networks, a million people is a rounding error. Publishers who try to play the audience game …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Peter Rawlings / Bloomberg:

NBCUniversal Media Planning $2 Billion of 10- and 30-Year Bonds — NBCUniversal Media LLC, the U.S. media and entertainment company, plans to sell $2 billion of debt in two parts in its first offering in more than a year. — NBCUniversal, which is 51 percent owned by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) …

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

NYT editor takes fall for Cornell miscues — Journalist Courtney Rubin, working as a freelancer for the New York Times, alighted on Ithaca, N.Y., with a great story. College bars were struggling, she wrote, because of the transformed social habits of students these days.

Discussion: IvyGate and New York Magazine

Tim Kenneally / The Wrap:

‘Innocence of Muslims’ Filmmaker Arrested by Feds — Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man whose film “The Innocence of Muslims” has sparked violent protests across the Muslim world, was taken into custody Thursday by federal authorities for allegedly violating his probation.

Discussion: Poynter, L.A. NOW, New York Times, New York Magazine, Forbes and Reuters

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

It's official: News consumption is all about social and mobile — Anyone who watches the way those around them consume the news, or thinks about their own news consumption habits, is probably well aware of how large a role social networks like Twitter and Facebook now play in the way we get news …

Discussion: Poynter and Pew Research Center …

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:
In Changing News Landscape, Even Television is Vulnerable

Discussion: The Wall Blog, Business Insider, Noted, The Technology Chronicles, TVNewser, Chickaboomer, The Huffington Post, Cable Television News, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Poynter, CNET and Mashable!

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Exclusive: Fast and Furious whistleblower demands ‘Fortune’ retract story — John Dodson, the Special Agent who blew the whistle on the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, is calling on Fortune Magazine to retract its landmark article asserting that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco …

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Friday Q&A: Kevin Delaney on making Quartz an essential international brand — Before Quartz became a device-morphing business site and the buzz of online journalism circles, it was a blank canvas. That's an enviable position these days, particularly if you've got the backing of Atlantic Media …

Discussion: GigaOM, eMedia Vitals and Folio

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Universal Music Completes $1.9 Billion EMI Recorded Music Acquisition — “This is a next step towards ensuring the health of our industry,” says UMG chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge. — our editor recommends — Universal Music Gets U.S. Approval for EMI Acquisition

Discussion: Media Decoder and Music Ally

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

A tale of two Skys: ‘second screen’ split for News Corp in Europe — They may have the same name and the same largest shareholder - but the Sky pay-TV firms in the UK and Germany don't appear to share a common view on the “second screen” TV opportunity. — In the UK, BSkyB is excitedly injecting …

Discussion: Sky News