Mediagazer: Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sentenced to a year in jail for tax fraud (Rob Williams/The Independent)

1:05 PM ET, October 26, 2012

Top News:

Al Gore's struggling Current TV on the block — Current TV, the ratings-challenged cable network started by former Vice President Al Gore, has put itself up for sale, The Post has learned. — “Current has been approached many times by media companies interested in acquiring our company,” CEO Joel Hyatt told The Post.

Discussion: mediabistro.com, LA Observed, TVNewser, Broadcasting & Cable, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Raw Story, The Daily Caller, NewsBusters.org blogs, SeekingAlpha.com and Deal Journal

Keith Bradsher / New York Times:

China Blocks Web Access to Times After Article — HONG KONG — The Chinese government swiftly blocked access early Friday morning to the Chinese-language Web site of The New York Times from computers in mainland China and gradually halted most access to the English-language site …

Max Fisher / Washington Post:
China's censors move with unusual speed on Wen Jiabao revelation

Discussion: Fast Company, Guardian, FP Passport, Globe and Mail and WorldViews

Bloomberg:

Apple's Online Radio Service to Challenge Pandora in 2013 — Apple's Online Radio Said to Challenge Pandora — Apple Inc. (AAPL) and major music labels have intensified negotiations to start an advertising-supported Internet radio service by early next year, according to people with knowledge of the talks.

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD: Apple's iRadio: The Case Against Pandora Panic

Greg Sandoval / CNET:
Apple's proposed Web radio service is no certainty

Discussion: MacRumors, SeekingAlpha.com and Forbes

Jack Shafer:

The New York Times, the BBC and the Savile sex scandal — Before he has even had time to measure his office windows for draperies, incoming New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson is in the media crosshairs. No less a figure than Times's public editor, Margaret Sullivan …

Discussion: Guardian, HBR.org, Guardian and Deadline.com

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:
Three questions for the New York Times Co

Discussion: GigaOM, Bloomberg and Forbes

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:
New York Times Co. Falls After Reporting Surprise Loss

Discussion: Business Week

Christopher Mims / Quartz:

Eric Schmidt is headed to Paris to head off French proposal to charge Google for linking — France's new government has been making noise about forcing Google to pay for the privilege of linking to French news sites. Google responded by threatening to remove all French news sites from its index …

Discussion: Forbes, Betabeat, Search Engine Land and The Verge

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Comcast: NBCUniversal Broke Even on London Olympics, Expects Profits From Future Games — The entertainment company recorded a $120 million profit from the Summer Games in the third quarter. — Cable giant Comcast Corp. on Friday reported a $120 million third-quarter profit on the London Olympics …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Bloomberg and Broadcasting & Cable

Steve Ladurantaye / Globe and Mail:

Postmedia ramps up its paywall push — Canada's largest chain of metropolitan newspapers will close the gates in the new year and ask readers to pay to read their online content. — Postmedia Network Inc. said it would put up paywalls at all of its titles early in the new year …

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas:

Boycott on Google News leads to 5% loss in web traffic: Brazilian newspapers — According to the National Association of Newspapers in Brazil (or ANJ in Portuguese), members that followed the association's recommendation to abandon Google News have seen a decrease in web traffic of only 5 percent.

Discussion: TechCrunch

Erik Maza / WWD:

Charles Townsend Offers Outlook for Condé Nast — TOWNSEND TALKS: On Thursday, Cindi Leive quizzed Condé Nast chief executive officer Charles Townsend at the Paley Center for Media in New York City. Townsend, a famously blunt executive, doesn't sit for interviews often …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Ken Yeung / The Next Web:

Microsoft launches Bing Elections to curate news, results, and social media insights — There are numerous places on the web where you can find election results, but there's not just one place to get the complete and balanced picture. Today, Microsoft is announcing it has put together …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Bing, Fast Company, Search Engine Land and Mashable!

Rob Williams / The Independent:

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sentenced to a year in jail for tax fraud — After years of court cases, legal argument and allegations the law finally caught up Silvio Berlusconi today when he was finally convicted in a criminal court and sentenced to one year in prison …

Discussion: @bbcbreaking, Reuters, WorldViews, BBC, Bloomberg, World Now, Quartz, Forbes, Telegraph and Wall Street Journal

John Biggs / TechCrunch:

Video Game Journalist Out Of A Job For Calling Out Dead-Eyed, Dorito-Hoarding Journalists — In the great, wide world of journalism, games journalism is a weird animal. Those who “practice” - and practice it well - face a barrage of PR perks, free trips, and angry houses.

Discussion: Forbes, Penny Arcade Report and PlayStation LifeStyle

Bruce Einhorn / Business Week:

E-Books Finally Get Traction in Japan — The Japanese are avid readers; the country's publishing industry generated $22.5 billion in revenue last year, according to the Japan Book Publishers Association. A decade ago, long before the Kindle revolutionized the publishing world in the U.S. …

Michael Schneider / TVGuide.com:

Fall TV Analysis: The No. 1 TV Network Is Now The DVR — There's a new No. 1 network in primetime, and no, it's not NBC. Or CBS. Or any of the traditional networks. If the digital video recorder were a network — with you, the viewer, as chief programmer — it would rank …