Mediagazer: Coming to a Battleground State Near You: MittZine (Jeremy W. Peters/The Caucus)

3:40 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: Mediaite, mediabistro.com, LA Observed, MediaPost, TVNewser, Broadcasting & Cable, The Huffington Post, The Daily Caller, The Raw Story, New York Magazine, NewsBusters.org blogs, SeekingAlpha.com and Deal Journal

Jeanine Poggi / AdAge:
Current TV to Consider Offers From Potential Buyers

Discussion: Chickaboomer and SeekingAlpha.com

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: Guardian, Fast Company, CNET and WorldViews

Rachel Lu / FP Passport:
Weibo reaction to Wen Jiabao's corruption

Discussion: PandoDaily

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, WebProNews, Search Engine Land, The Verge and Betabeat

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, Deadline.com, Guardian and BBC

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

Discussion: GigaOM, Bloomberg and Forbes

Merissa Marr / Wall Street Journal:

Redstone Daughter in Succession Mix — From his Beverly Hills compound, Sumner Redstone has been hard at work on a new memoir titled “How to Live Forever.” But lately, the 89-year-old media mogul has also been putting some thought to what happens once he's gone.

Discussion: Deadline.com and Los Angeles Times

Tim Windsor / Zero Percent Idle:

How one geek just outdid the entire publishing industry — Most of my friends and colleagues in journalism or the magazine world have never heard of Marco Arment. A few more may have actually used his offline article reader, Instapaper. But I'd be willing to bet that almost none of them realize that …

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

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

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Apple's iRadio: The Case Against Pandora Panic — Pandora shares fell off a cliff yesterday, after Bloomberg published a story about Apple's plan to introduce a streaming music service early next year. — Then Pandora bounced back a bit. But it's still down 12 percent.

Discussion: MarketBeat

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

Discussion: MarketBeat, Pocket-lint, TechCrunch, MacRumors and SeekingAlpha.com

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

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 …

Jeremy W. Peters / The Caucus:

Coming to a Battleground State Near You: MittZine — It's called a MittZine. A magazine about, you guessed it, Mitt Romney. And all 12 glossy pages of it will start appearing soon as an insert in newspapers in battleground states. — There are heartwarming tales from Mr. Romney's past.

Discussion: Pressing Issues

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

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Sony Reader launches virtual book club — Sony, which has struggled to gain a measurable share of the U.S. ebook market, is launching a virtual book club called the Sony Readers Book Club. Each month the company will choose a book “to feature in a virtual Book Club gathering …

Discussion: Pocket-lint

Jake Harper / Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group:

Censored? Information goes missing from political ad files — The Federal Communication Commission's online political ad database is supposed to make information about heavy political hitters more accessible, but a lack of clarity in the rules has resulted in some stations effectively censoring what the public is permitted to see.

Discussion: CJR, The Huffington Post and Cable Television News