Mediagazer: Netflix House of Cards gamble pays off as series becomes most-watched on streaming service (Gerald Lynch/Tech Digest)

10:25 AM ET, February 13, 2013

Top News:

Comcast CEO 'Bullish About NBCUniversal's Future,' NBC Turnaround — Comcast is “bullish about NBCUniversal's future,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Wednesday in explaining why the cable giant decided to take full control of the entertainment company earlier than originally planned.

Sam Thielman / Adweek:
How Comcast Scared Up All That GE Cash

Discussion: Media Decoder, Bloomberg, Associated Press, DealBook, Comcast Corporation, Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post and USA Today

Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:
Comcast Will Buy Rest of GE's NBC Stake for $16.7 Billion

Discussion: VentureBeat, Fast Company, DealBook, @bobbymacreports, Reuters and paidContent

Steve Schaefer / Forbes:
Comcast Beats Estimates, Boosts Dividend And Buys The Rest Of NBC From GE

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, TVNewser, Guardian, Media Decoder, Media & Entertainment, CNET, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wrap, Radio & Television … and Hillicon Valley

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Jonah Lehrer falls into familiar pattern, fails to face his reckoning — In recent years, though certainly not recently, many conference attendees have heard Jonah Lehrer speak about how our brains and our personal interactions affect our behaviours in interesting and surprising ways.

Discussion: Forbes, The Week and The Huffington Post

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Jonah Lehrer earns $20,000 honorarium for talking about plagiarism at Knight lunch — At a talk this afternoon in Miami, Jonah Lehrer acknowledged his plagiarism and fabrications and talked about how he hopes to redeem his reputation. Lehrer read prepared remarks and answered questions …

William Turvill / Press Gazette:

The accused: At least 55 UK journalists arrested since April 2011 — At least 55 journalists have now been arrested in the last two years as a result of police investigations stemming from the phone-hacking scandal. On 13 February, a further six former News of the World journalists …

Guardian:
Phone hacking: two current Sun staff among six new arrests

Discussion: Bloomberg, @andrew_pugh1, @iainoverton and Softpedia News

Sinead O'Carroll / TheJournal.ie:
Six journalists arrested in fresh phone hacking probe

Discussion: CNN, The Huffington Post, BBC, @kevin_maguire, @skymartinbrunt, UK News and Opinion and @dannyshawbbc

TechCrunch:

AOL Confirms gdgt Acquisition, Quests For tch Domination — AOL (owners of TechCrunch) today is taking one more step to build out its content empire: it has officially confirmed the acquisition of technology reviews site gdgt — first reported by TechCrunch nearly two weeks ago.

Discussion: gdgt blog, VentureBeat, AllThingsD, Fast Company, Forbes, Mashable!, The Next Web and Talking Biz News

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Financial Times Turns 125 — The Financial Times marks its 125th anniversary today, and, befitting the challenges facing newspapers today, the celebration will have practical elements. — An ad campaign with the somber tagline “Still guiding the way for global business” is breaking in print and online.

Discussion: Guardian, Journalism.co.uk and NetNewsCheck Latest

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Jim Roberts, Reuters' newest hire, on the digital side of the NYT, paywall math, and next steps — Judging by his pace on Twitter, little has changed for Jim Roberts over the last three weeks. The links to news near and far, on topics both timely and unearthed, are coming as rapid as ever.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke / The New York Observer:
Jim Roberts Goes to Reuters

Julia Angwin:

Why I'm unfriending you on Facebook — I have 666 friends on Facebook. By next week, I hope to have none. — I am going to spend this week “unfriending” all of my Facebook friends because I have come to believe that Facebook cannot provide me the level of privacy that I need.

Discussion: Washington Wire, @jguynn, @stevenlevy, PandoDaily, @juliaangwin, @felixgillette, @penenberg, @jessepesta and @qhardy

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

What Nextdoor is doing right with hyperlocal and Patch is doing wrong — Serving hyperlocal community-level or neighborhood-level markets with news and information is a tough business — just ask NBC, which recently closed the doors on its EveryBlock unit, or AOL, which is still fighting …

Discussion: Street Fight, AllThingsD, NetNewsCheck Latest, NYT Bits, SocialTimes, PandoDaily and TechCrunch

Gerald Lynch / Tech Digest:

Netflix House of Cards gamble pays off as series becomes most-watched on streaming service — Video streaming supremos Netflix have announced that House of Cards, the Netflix exclusive that they themselves commissioned, has become the most-watched piece of content on the service ever.

Discussion: AllThingsD, AdAge, WebProNews, GigaOM, Mashable!, CNET and Pocket-lint

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Jimmy Savile: 31 victims of alleged abuse sue BBC and star's estate — At least another 60 compensation claims over disgraced presenter expected to follow — More than 30 victims of alleged sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile have lodged civil claims for compensation against the BBC and the estate of the disgraced Jim'll Fix It presenter.

Discussion: The Independent, BBC and Yorkshire Post

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Startup Plympton acquires DailyLit to deliver serial fiction in a digital age — Plympton, the startup launched last year by former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8 Lee and novelist Yael Goldstein Love, is acquiring DailyLit, a site that delivers books in installments by email and RSS, for an undisclosed sum.

Discussion: TechCrunch and Plympton