Mediagazer: Postmedia ramps up its paywall push (Steve Ladurantaye/Globe and Mail)

10:00 AM ET, October 26, 2012

Top News:

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 — 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.

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

Discussion: MacRumors, Forbes 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 …

Discussion: CJR, Washington Post, New York Times, DealBook, WorldViews, Business Insider, Telegraph, Forbes, New York Magazine, Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day, Quartz, The Next Web, @dangillmor, Quartz and @davidfolkenflik

Max Fisher / Washington Post:

China's censors move with unusual speed on Wen Jiabao revelation — Wen Jiabao attends a meeting in Beijing. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images) — It was about 5 in the morning in Beijing when the New York Times revealed, in a story posted to its website, that the family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao …

Discussion: Fast Company, Guardian and WorldViews

Claire Atkinson / New York Post:

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: The Huffington Post, The Daily Caller, SeekingAlpha.com and NewsBusters.org blogs

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Three questions for the New York Times Co — The New York Times Company's latest earnings, announced today, reiterated its story of long-term print decline, unstable advertising and a nucleus of hope based on digital subscriber growth. — On a call with investors, executives repeated …

Discussion: GigaOM, Bloomberg and AllThingsD

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:
NY Times Co. Explains Its ‘Shockingly Weak’ Ad Results

Discussion: The Daily Beast, Jack Shafer, The Buttry Diary, Guardian, FishbowlNY, Mashable!, paidContent and Poynter

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

Discussion: Business Week and New York Magazine

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 …

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: Betabeat and The Verge

David Kravets / Wired:

Buzzfeed's Sponsored Stories Stink in Infringement Smell Test — A $10,000 Hans Solo desk. Photo: Courtesy of Tom Spina Designs — Like many online media outlets, Buzzfeed is moving toward the so-called “sponsored stories” advertising model — a blending of advertising and editorial content placed smack dab in the content stream.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab

Merissa Marr / Wall Street Journal:

Sumner Redstone Puts Daughter Shari Back in the 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.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Radiolab apologizes for treating source rudely but defends podcast — A cohost of the public-radio show Radiolab says he “pushed too hard” in an interview, but the station that produces the show has pushed back against accusations that a segment it released as a podcast was unfair.

Discussion: Current.org and Minnesota Public Radio

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:

Marissa Mayer Makes First Yahoo Acquisition: Stamped — Yahoo has acquired the company behind one-year-old mobile recommendations app Stamped, its first since ex-Google exec Marissa Mayer became CEO of the company in July, Mashable has learned. — The acquisition was purely for talent …