Mediagazer: Digg's traffic rebounds after relaunch, but users remain on the sidelines (Adrianne Jeffries/The Verge)

7:40 AM ET, February 5, 2013

Top News:

Doree Shafrir / BuzzFeed:

What's The Real Story Behind The New York Times Buyouts? — No one outside the building really knows — but maybe because no one really cares anymore. — Late Friday afternoon, inside The New York Times building at 40th Street and 8th Avenue, around 100 staffers gathered on the second floor …

Discussion: Melville House Books, @pkafka, @mlcalderone, @edmundlee, JIMROMENESKO.COM, @mathewi, @joshsternberg, @learmonth, @megan, @hamiltonnolan, @alexckaufman, @poniewozik, @moorehn and @brianstelter

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

A goodbye to teary newsroom scenes? Why Friday's wake at the ‘Times’ was undercovered — The New York Times building. wallyg via flickr — My former colleague Doree Shafrir has a smart post on BuzzFeed about The Way The New York Times is Covered Now. — Case in point …

Discussion: @poniewozik

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Media reporters are missing the story of NYT buyouts, BuzzFeed editor argues — “There's been no real glimpse inside the newsroom, no sense of what the rank and file are feeling, no temperature-taking,” Doree Shafrir writes in a critique of coverage of the New York Times buyouts.

Discussion: New York Times

Dylan Byers / Politico: Boring old media

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

Twitter Makes Big Acquisition, Buys Social TV Analytics Company Bluefin Labs — Twitter has acquired Bluefin Labs, a social TV analytics company that was founded in 2008, sources say. — Although we don't know the exact acquisition price, we were told this is Twitter's biggest acquisition to date.

Discussion: The Wall Blog, Media Week, ZDNet, C21Media, ReadWrite, Betabeat, GigaOM, The Verge, Bluefin Labs, VentureBeat, CNET, the Econsultancy blog, Lost Remote, Daring Fireball, AdAge, Marketing Land and Marketing Pilgrim

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Why Twitter Is Buying Bluefin — And Why Bluefin Is Selling

Discussion: Business Insider

Rebecca Greenfield / The Atlantic Wire:

The Economics of Netflix's $100 Million New Show — With Netflix's foray into original, high quality programming today, the streaming TV network wants to turn into the HBO of Internet TV, but can the network afford it? Putting together a big production with famous actors like House …

Discussion: /Film

Tim Wu / New Yorker: “House of Cards” and the Decline of Cable

Mathew Ingram / paidContent:

Digital First Media is working on paywalls, even though it really doesn't want to — Plenty of newspapers have been jumping headlong into the paywall business recently, and many of them claim that the introduction of subscription plans has been the best thing that ever happened to them.

John Paxton / Digital First:
The Subscription Project - Or A Paywall By Any Other Name

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Michael Wolff / Guardian:

Can Jeff Zucker turn CNN's saccharine output into the sweet smell of success? — CNN's new president is shaking up the network, but to win the ratings he needs, he'll have to find a cable news sensibility — The obvious problem with CNN, depressing its ratings for the better part of a decade …

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:

AOL In Talks To Buy Gdgt, The Consumer Electronics Review Site Started By Former Engadget Founders — I'm hearing that gdgt (pronounced 'gadget'), the consumer electronics review site founded by Engadget co-founder Peter Rojas and former Engadget editor-in-chief Ryan Block, is in late-stage acquisition talks with AOL.

Discussion: Fast Company

Mat Honan / Wired:

Why Vine's Going to Grow Into Something Huge — The very best things we make are the things that allow us to make even better things: tools that create connections and empower creativity. The latest of these is Vine, Twitter's remarkable new video sharing app. — Vine lets people shoot and share six-second looped videos.

Discussion: CNET

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

The Super Bowl Gave the Web the Night Off — Yes, you could stream the Super Bowl on the Web yesterday. But most of you didn't. And while a lot of you were tweeting or Facebooking during the game, a lot of you stayed away from the Web during the game, period.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Next Web, 901am and Home Media Magazine

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:
Super Bowl Gets Highest-Ever Ratings, Plus 24 Million Tweets

Will Leitch / SportsonEarth:
Power Failure

Discussion: NY Daily News, TVNewser, Deadspin, CBS News, Adweek and WNYC

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman:

Why Aaron died — Last week, I awoke to find Aaron with me. He was sitting next to my bed, grinning his cheeekist grin, holding my hand. — For a few minutes, I savored a sweet uncertainty: Were the last few weeks all a nightmare, and Aaron was still with me?

Discussion: @nickbilton, @stevenlevy, The Atlantic Wire, TechCrunch, @dangillmor and @jayrosen_nyu

Adrianne Jeffries / The Verge:

Digg's traffic rebounds after relaunch, but users remain on the sidelines — A look at the aggregator six months after its rebirth — Once a popular website begins to decline, it can be very difficult to revive — just look at Myspace. But over the summer, a group of New Yorkers …

Discussion: Fast Company

Hamish McKenzie / PandoDaily:

The Verge and The Huffington Post attempt the impossible: making comments smarter — At the start of December, a reader of The Verge from Stamford, Connecticut, did something kind of dorky but also kind of awesome. Inspired by Nilay Patel's video interview with Senator Al Franken, the reader …

Alexander C. Kaufman / The Wrap:

Washington Post Names Kevin Merida Managing Editor (Updated) — The Washington Post has named Kevin Merida its managing editor in charge of news and features, effective immediately. — He joins managing editor John Temple, who oversees digital and newsroom operations.

Discussion: Poynter, Washington Post, NetNewsCheck Latest, @davidfolkenflik, The Huffington Post and Politico

Darryl Fears / @bydarrylfears: Kevin Merida is now the Washington Post's managing editor, breaking a barrier as the first African American to hold the job. @meridak

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

Gannett Profit Tops Analysts' Estimates on Election Advertising — Gannett Co. (GCI), which publishes 82 U.S. daily newspapers and owns 23 television stations, reported fourth-quarter earnings that topped analysts' estimates, fueled by U.S. presidential election advertising.

Discussion: Gannett Blog