Mediagazer: Malone eyes Virgin Media in challenge to Murdoch (Kate Holton/Reuters)

1:50 PM ET, February 5, 2013

Top News:

Murdoch Coveting Papers Must Wait as Rift Stalls Media Rules — A move to make it easier for companies to own U.S. daily newspapers and nearby broadcast stations has stalled amid partisan tension that could prevent deals between companies such as Tribune Co. and News Corp. (NWSA)

Discussion: Politico, New York Magazine and @mlcalderone

Press Gazette:

Guardian journalists agree to possible strike action in protest at job cuts — Journalists at Guardian News and Media have voted in favour of possible strike action in protest at feared compulsory redundancies. — The move means they now have the legal authority to walk out on strike …

Discussion: Guardian, NUJ, @andrew_pugh1, @andrew_pugh1, @andrew_pugh1, @psmith and The Huffington Post

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Chris Hughes hopes TNR will profit by 2015, floats retail spaces — New Republic owner and publisher Chris Hughes said today that he hopes to make the magazine profitable by 2015 — no small feat for a magazine that featured very little advertising when it relaunched last month.

Discussion: @lydiadepillis

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, The Week and The Verge

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Better together: Colorado nonprofit news site I-News and Rocky Mountain PBS join forces — The three-year-old I-News leaves the ranks of small nonprofit news startups and finds a broader audience by merging with Colorado's largest public TV station. — Nonprofit news sites have a knack for pairing up.

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Can a Twitter user really prohibit you from republishing tweets? — Tim Cushing explains what happened when Teri Buhl, an “investigative journalist covering finance/Wall Street,” declared in her Twitter bio that “No tweets are publishable.” — A couple people who noticed the disclaimer questioned it.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM and Techdirt

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Turner Broadcasting Names Giorgio Stock President of EMEA Region — The former Walt Disney consumer products, publishing and retail executive says he sees opportunity to expand brands and franchises across platforms. — Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting said Tuesday that it has hired …

Discussion: Turner Newsroom, Variety and Digital TV Europe

Kate Holton / Reuters:

Malone eyes Virgin Media in challenge to Murdoch — (Reuters) - John Malone's Liberty Global has opened talks with Britain's Virgin Media over a takeover that would increase the U.S. cable group's dominance in Europe and step up a challenge to media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Discussion: Home Media Magazine, The Wrap, ZDNet, Telegraph, Forbes, DealBook, BBC, Bloomberg, Hollywood Reporter, Agence France Presse, Virgin Media, Sky News, Wall Street Journal, broadcastnow.co.uk, Cable UK Blogs and standard.co.uk

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

iTunes launches Breakout Books section to highlight self-published titles — Amazon intensely promotes self-published Kindle books, and now Apple is taking steps toward doing the same thing. The company has launched a new section of the iBookstore, “Breakout Books,” a …

Discussion: Media Decoder and MacRumors

Hamish McKenzie / PandoDaily:

Aaron Swartz and how to identify a martyr — In the penultimate speech of the evening at last night's memorial for Aaron Swartz in Washington DC, Berin Szoka, the president of the group TechFreedom, offered some words that were uncomfortable for some. Speaking of the Internet activist's alleged crime …

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

Discussion: Betabeat, Wired and Pocket-lint

Rebecca Shapiro / The Huffington Post:

Sunday Times Refuses Photographs From Syria — The Sunday Times has asked freelancers to stop sending photographs and copy from Syria, the Press Gazette reported on Tuesday. — According to photojournalist Rick Findler, the Sunday Times's foreign desk reportedly thanked him for his work …

Discussion: Press Gazette, @cathjam and @maryfitzger

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

OC Register, investing heavily in print, also readies paywall — The Orange County Register is preparing to launch a metered paywall this year, News & Tech reports. New Register owner Aaron Kushner has made no secret of his plans to charge for online access to the paper …

Discussion: News & Tech

Richard Verrier / Los Angeles Times:

Drive-in theaters get help for digital conversion — “Gangster Squad” is seen playing at the Rubidoux Drive-In Theater in Riverside last month. Hollywood will stop producing 35-mm prints sometime this year, and drive-in theaters must switch to digital projection systems or risk going dark.

Discussion: DCinemaToday and The Verge

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: Poynter, The Buttry Diary and NetNewsCheck Latest

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.