Mediagazer: Political and Market Forces Hobble Israel's Pack of Ink-Stained Watchdogs (Isabel Kershner/New York Times)

8:20 AM ET, October 6, 2012

Top News:

Beth Hawkins / Minn Post:

Reporter who wrote about life as undocumented immigrant arrested in Minnesota — New York Times reporter Jose Vargas was arrested Friday morning by Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport Police and charged with driving without a valid driver's license, a misdemeanor.

Discussion: Poynter and The Raw Story, Thanks:@romenesko

Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:

Blockbuster Hits Rewind on Plan to Return as Netflix Killer — Billionaire Charlie Ergen is giving up on his plan to turn the once-mighty Blockbuster LLC video- store chain into a Netflix (NFLX) Inc. competitor and gadget retailer. — When Ergen's Dish Network Corp. (DISH) …

Discussion: CNET, PC Magazine, Radio & Television …, fierceonlinevideo.com, The Verge, Los Angeles Times, Engadget and AdAge

Isabel Kershner / New York Times:

Political and Market Forces Hobble Israel's Pack of Ink-Stained Watchdogs — JERUSALEM — The mainstream newspaper Maariv is on the verge of closing, apparently having lost a fierce 64-year contest against the populist Hebrew tabloid Yediot Aharonot. On Thursday, Haaretz …

Discussion: Guardian

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

How Will Reuters and Fortune Handle Jack Welch's Conspiracy Tweeting? — Former GE CEO Jack Welch gets paid for his opinions by a couple of news organizations. But none of those opinions has ever caused quite such a stir as the one he issued on Twitter Friday morning, accusing the Labor Department of falsifying unemployment numbers.

Discussion: Jack Shafer, Talking Points Memo, Wonkblog, The Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Mediaite and The Atlantic Wire

Josh Stearns / MediaShift:

The Case for Unity Among Non-Profit, Community, and Public Media — The radically shifting landscape of media and technology has sparked a renaissance in non-profit and public media in the United States. As a perfect storm of economic and technological changes shakes the foundation of commercial media …

Thanks:@jcstearns

Addy Dugdale / Fast Company:

EMI And ReDigi Duke It Out In Court Over The Resale of MP3s — A New York judge will today hear the opening arguments in the lawsuit between EMI and ReDigi. The music giant is suing the upstart startup, which makes its money flogging people's unwanted MP3s to loving homes, for copyright infringement.

Discussion: BBC

Wall Street Journal:

Time Warner's Jeff Bewkes Has An Unlikely Lunch Partner: Roger Ailes — Here's a piece of breaking news that will give some people at CNN nightmares: earlier this year their ultimate boss Time Warner Chairman Jeff Bewkes, had lunch with Fox News Chief Roger Ailes. Just imagine what those two discussed.

Discussion: TVNewser

Greg Sandoval / CNET:

Is Spotify's business model broken? — Financial numbers for privately held Spotify have allegedly surfaced and if accurate, the music service is in a world of hurt. — Spotify CEO Daniel Ek — PrivCo., a company that sells data on non-publicly traded companies says it has obtained …

Discussion: PrivCo, The Next Web, PandoDaily, @benparr, Business Insider, Betabeat, Mashable!, hypebot and AdExchanger

Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:

Universal Said to Have Chosen U.S. Chief for EMI — The Universal Music Group has chosen its first major executive appointment since taking control of EMI, and it is a blow to Universal's biggest rival, Sony. — Steve Barnett, one of two chairmen of Columbia, which is owned by Sony …

Victoria Cavaliere / NY Daily News:

Family of missing journalist Austin Tice make plea to Syrian government through Arabic-language TV — “Knowing Austin is alive is comforting to our family, although it is difficult to see him in the circumstances recently depicted,” his family said in a statement released to Russia Today's Arabic service.

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

St. Louis Public Radio, St. Louis Beacon to explore ‘combining talents and resources’ — St. Louis Public Radio and nonprofit news site the St. Louis Beacon signed a letter of intent to explore “options for strengthening regional news reporting by using their individual assets in combination,” the organizations say in a press release.