Mediagazer: Oops! Taliban Reveal Identities of Their Mailing List Members (Muhammad Lila/ABCNEWS)

11:20 AM ET, November 17, 2012

Top News:

Muhammad Lila / ABCNEWS:

Oops! Taliban Reveal Identities of Their Mailing List Members — Somewhere out there, Mullah Omar must be shaking his head. — In a Dilbert-esque faux pax, a Taliban spokesperson sent out a routine email last week with one notable difference.He publicly CC'd the names of everyone on his mailing list.

Discussion: The Register, The Inquisitr, Ars Technica, Techdirt, FP Passport, CNET, Betabeat, The Next Web, Fast Company, Business Insider and Gizmodo

Dalton Caldwell:

Twitter is pivoting — Peter Chernin had this to say during his days as President of News Corp, owners of MySpace, in 2006: … This was the justification and mentality that MySpace employed as they blocked various fast-growing platform partners that they felt impinged in MySpace's core user experience.

Discussion: TechCrunch, @techsoc, @mathewi, Marco.org, GigaOM, AllThingsD and Digits

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Yahoo CEO Mayer Cuts End-of-Year “Week of Rest” for Employees, While Prepping Plans to Identify Bottom 20 Percent of Staff — Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is now starting to unveil the flip side of free lunches and smartphones, with two employee-focused moves that are a little more tough love in nature.

Discussion: PC Magazine, New York Magazine, Business Insider and CNET

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Hey, Tim Ferriss: Book banning isn't a marketing gimmick — Huckleberry Finn, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, To Kill a Mockingbird: Those are among the titles that schools and libraries have most commonly banned over the years. An Illinois school district banned a book this year because it included a reference to gay families.

Discussion: Fortune, The Official BitTorrent Blog and GalleyCat

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

With Amazon Publishing Stonewalled By Retailers, Tim Ferriss Taps BitTorrent To Market His New Book — Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and a stalemate between Amazon and big retailers, including Barnes & Noble, over the sale of books from the online giant's publishing imprint …

Discussion: Fast Company, mediabistro.com and Business Wire

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Earth Unplugged: BBC Worldwide launches its first ever original-content YouTube channel — Back in October, BBC Worldwide announced two new YouTube channels, including a nature channel, delivering new films from its BBC Earth Productions company. Well, the first channel is now live.

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Avid library ebook borrowers claim it doesn't affect their book buying — Publishers have grappled with how and whether to make ebooks available to libraries — fearing, in part, that a library ebook checkout means a lost sale. A new survey from digital library distributor OverDrive …

Michael Wolf / Forbes:

Three Ways Social TV Analytics Is About to Change the TV Business — While talk of social TV is not new, the industry is still stuggling to understand what exactly the intersection between social media and the TV business will mean. — For consumers, today it's a watercooler conversation …

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn — If you want to know just how broken the patent system is, just look at patent D670,713, filed by Apple and approved this week by the United States Patent Office. — This design patent, titled, “Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface …

Discussion: PC Magazine, Patent Progress, Mashable! and Techdirt

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

B&N shuts down the pioneering Fictionwise digital bookstores — When Fictionwise launched in 2000, it was a pioneer in a Kindle-less, Nook-less, iPad-less world. The site sold ebooks in a variety of formats like Palm, Rocket and Microsoft Reader. It let users download ebooks to their mobile phones — in 2001.

Discussion: PublishersWeekly.com, TechCrunch and TeleRead

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Netflix CEO: Amazon Losing Up to $1 Billion a Year on Streaming Video — Reed Hastings says that, one day, Amazon will provide real competition for Netflix. — But the Netflix CEO says Jeff Bezos will have to spend a lot of money before that happens: Hastings says Amazon is losing between $500 million …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Deadline.com, CNET, Engadget, Business Insider and Mashable!

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

Did Roger Ailes Consider Joining CNN? — Over the summer Roger Ailes was sitting on his terrace at his home along the Hudson River, reading a book on the Civil War, when he decided his fight wasn't finished. Last month Ailes, 72, who created Fox News 16 years ago, signed on for another four years as CEO.

Discussion: Gawker

Jay Rosen / Quote and Comment:
Is there anyone with the same power and visibility who flat out makes stuff up like Roger Ailes?

Discussion: TVNewser

Jim Romenesko:

Geneva Overholser to step down as USC Annenberg J-School director — Geneva Overholser, who has led the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism since 2008, is stepping down in June when her five-year term ends. A release says: “During the past four years …

Discussion: USC Annenberg School … and CJR

Reuters:

Tribune Co gets FCC approval, nears bankruptcy exit — Tribune Co, the owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and 23 television stations, said on Friday it received a key regulatory approval needed to end its nearly four-year stay in bankruptcy. — Tribune said it received approval …

Discussion: Cable Television News

Tribune Company: Tribune Wins Approval Of Federal Communications Commission

Neal Ungerleider / Fast Company:

Israeli Military To Citizens: Don't Facebook, Tweet, Instagram Rocket-Hit Locations — Location metadata stored on Twitter and other social media are feared by Israeli officials to be assisting Hamas' efforts and counter-attacks. — Israeli authorities are warning citizens not to post …

Discussion: Daily Dot, The Verge, The Daily Beast and yidwithlid.blogspot.co.il