Mediagazer: Britain's press needs more freedom, not more regulation (Jack Shafer)

11:35 AM ET, December 2, 2012

Top News:

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

UK's House Of Lords Summons Facebook And Google To Talk Convergence And Media Power — The UK's House of Lords has summoned senior figures from Facebook and Google in their ongoing investigation into media convergence, media power and how this should be regulated in the future.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Jack Shafer:

Britain's press needs more freedom, not more regulation — The Leveson inquiry completed its 17-month official investigation into the filth and the fury of the British press today, pulling into the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center opposite Westminster Abbey.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Guardian, Capital New York and Poynter

Sarah Lyall / New York Times:

British Press Lauds Cameron Over Leveson Stand — LONDON — It is hard to find much common ground among Britain's squabbling, competing newspapers. Not only do they naturally mistrust one another, but they also tend to divide along party lines, so that The Daily Telegraph, for instance …

Discussion: Guardian, Guardian, Virgin Media …, Prof Chris Daly's Blog and mediabistro.com

Patrick Wintour / Guardian:
Leveson report: JK Rowling left ‘duped and angry’ at PM's response

Discussion: The Daily Beast and Digital Spy

Andy McSmith / The Independent: Leveson's Wikipedia moment: how internet ‘research’ on The Independent's history left him red-faced

Bruce Feiler / New York Times:

Maria Popova Has Some Big Ideas — SHE is the mastermind of the one of the faster growing literary empires on the Internet, yet she is virtually unknown. She is the champion of old-fashioned ideas, yet she is only 28 years old. She is a fierce defender of books, yet she insists she will never write one herself.

Discussion: Gawker, @mathewi and Brain Pickings

John Jannarone / Wall Street Journal:

News Corp. Set to Name WSJ Editor as Publishing Company's CEO — News Corp . plans to name Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and editor in chief of Dow Jones, as chief executive of its publishing company as early as next week, according to people familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Reuters, Bloomberg, The Wrap, @felixsalmon and Deadline.com

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Data Points: Copy That Despite sharing buttons, people are more likely to cut and paste — Sharing buttons have been around a while, but cutting and pasting is by far the most popular way of sharing content, according to Tynt, a service that tracks when people cut and paste content from 600,000 publishers' sites.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Amy Chozick / New York Times:

Syria Rebels Find Skype Useful, but Dangers Lurk — In a demonstration of their growing sophistication and organization, Syrian rebels responded to a nationwide shutdown of the Internet by turning to satellite technology to coordinate within the country and to communicate with outside activists.

Discussion: BBC, CloudFlare blog, Renesys Blog, CNN, PandoDaily, The Verge, The Huffington Post, The Next Web, American Journalism Review, @dberlind and Renesys Blog

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Digital Subs Rising, The Economist Unbundles Tablet Editions From Print — Introduces Higher-Cost Print-Plus-Apps Package — Ever since Apple introduced the iPad in April 2010, magazine publishers have been trying to figure out how to make the most of their app editions.

Discussion: Talking Biz News

John Koetsier / VentureBeat:

The inside story on how Reddit was created: ‘I wanted to make the world suck less’ — In college, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian told a professor that he wanted to make the world suck less. A Total Disruption has just released a new video showing exactly how he accomplished that goal.

Andrew Orlowski / The Register:

Scoop! The inside story of the news website that saved the BBC — Fifteen years ago this month the BBC launched its News Online website. Developed internally with a skeleton team, the web service rapidly became the face of the BBC on the internet, and its biggest success story - winning four successive BAFTA awards.

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Time Inc. Launches Digital Video Unit — More changes are afoot at Time Inc. following the reshuffling CEO Laura Lang kicked off last summer. Today, in a company-wide memo, Lang announced the launch of a new digital video unit, a recognition that the company's brands need to tap new …

Discussion: NYConvergence.com and eMedia Vitals

Julian Assange / The Huffington Post:

Two Years of Cablegate as Bradley Manning Testifies for the First Time — Thursday, November 29th, Bradley Manning testified for the first time since his arrest two and a half years ago in Baghdad. Today also marks the two-year anniversary of the first front pages around the world from Cablegate …