Mediagazer: Washington Post buys hospice company (Rick Edmonds/Poynter)

1:40 PM ET, October 1, 2012

Top News:

Washington Post Co. buys hospice firm Celtic Healthcare — The Washington Post Co. said Monday that it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Celtic Healthcare, a provider of skilled home health-care and hospice services in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic regions.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, The New York Observer, @scottrcrawford, @jcstearns, @jeffsonderman and @jeffjarvis

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Washington Post buys hospice company — Talk about a dying industry. The Washington Post Co. risked becoming the punch line of an obvious joke this morning with the announcement that it has acquired a majority stake in a hospice company. — Hospice? Not as strange as it sounds if you know the company's ways.

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

More Mobile News Consumers Choosing Web Over Apps — Mobile apps were supposed to be the reset button for the news industry. The last fifteen years have shown how hard it is to get consumers to pay for content on websites or pay attention to ads there. In the app environment, all that was going to be different.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Broadcasting & Cable, FishbowlNY, Journalism.org, Poynter, Change of Subject, CNBC, eMedia Vitals, MediaPost and PC Magazine

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Penn State student journalist suspended for fabrication, plagiarism — Penn State's student newspaper has suspended a writer who fabricated and plagiarized quotes by Sue Paterno in a story about the opening of a center on campus named for her. Paterno is the widow of former coach Joe Paterno …

David Carr / New York Times:

Tired Cries of Bias Don't Help Romney — In the last few days, conservatives have become agitated about Mitt Romney's drop-off in the polls. So did they think the stumble was because of the ill-fated “47 percent” slip of the lip, or the hasty effort to gain a political edge after the death …

Discussion: Capital New York, Washington Post, Reuters, TVNewser, Los Angeles Times, Media Decoder, National Review, @jayrosen_nyu, The Week, Guardian, Chickaboomer, @carr2n, The Caucus, Politico, Politico and Pressing Issues

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:

Al-Jazeera's political independence questioned amid Qatar intervention — Al-Jazeera's editorial independence has been called into question after its director of news stepped in to ensure a speech made by Qatar's emir to the UN led its English channel's coverage of the debate on Syrian intervention.

Discussion: TVNewser, @syrianews and @pragmatic_d

Gordon Rayner / Telegraph:

Counter-terrorism officer appears in court over ‘leaks to News of the World’ — One of Scotland Yard's most senior counter-terrorism officers appeared in court charged with misconduct in public office after allegedly offering to provide information to the News of the World.

Discussion: Guardian

Josh Halliday / Guardian: Counter-terrorism officer charged with breaching Official Secrets Act

Kevin Roderick / LA Observed:

Nikki Finke's Deadline calls a time out — Amid talk that the ownership of Deadline.com is on the verge of buying Variety, Nikki Finke announced on Deadline.com that her staff will be too busy next week on some unstated business to post breaking news nuggets.

Discussion: Deadline.com and FishbowlLA

Bill Rigby / Reuters:

Microsoft launching news operation, new MSN — (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is launching its own news operation as part of its new-look MSN website when Windows 8 launches later this month. The world's largest software company is making a “big, multi-million dollar investment” to create a …

Alex Howard / O'Reilly Radar:

Four key trends changing digital journalism and society — It's not just a focus on data that connects the most recent class of Knight News Challenge winners. They all are part of a distributed civic media community that works on open source code, collects and improves data, and collaborates across media organizations.

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Clinton aide Reines apologized to Hastings — Philippe Reines, the aide to Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, has apologized to BuzzFeed reporter Michael Hastings for a heated, expletive-laden email exchange last week over the State Dept.'s handling of the fallout from events in Libya, POLITICO has learned.

Discussion: New York Magazine and The Huffington Post

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Family criticizes Fox for airing suicide live — Fox News broadcast Jodon Romero's suicide Friday at the end of a car chase. His sister Nature Romero tells NBC affiliate KPNX in Phoenix, “That shouldn't have been the way that any of us had to learn about my brother's death.”

Discussion: ABC15 Arizona and Detroit Free Press

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Patriot-News, Post-Standard employees to find out today whether they'll be laid off — Employees at the (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News and the (Syracuse, N.Y.) Post-Standard will find out Monday whether they'll be kept on at new companies that will publish print newspapers three days per week.

Discussion: The Patriot-News