Mediagazer: AOL's Grand Human-Heavy Local News Experiment Is Coming To An End (Nicholas Carlson/Business Insider)

10:25 AM ET, February 21, 2013

Top News:

Nielsen Agrees to Expand Definition of TV Viewing — After a meeting in New York Tuesday, the ratings company will roll out a system to measure broadband, Xbox and, in time, iPads, with more changes to come. — The Nielsen Co. is expanding its definition of television and will introduce …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Verge, Gizmodo and App Advice

Leslie Kaufman / Media Decoder:

Independent Booksellers Sue Amazon and Publishers Over E-Books — Three independent brick-and-mortar bookstores have filed a lawsuit against Amazon and the big six publishers, claiming that they have violated antitrust laws by collaborating to keep small sellers out of the e-book market.

Discussion: paidContent, PublishersWeekly.com, GeekWire and bookforum.com

Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
Indie booksellers sue Amazon and big publishers over DRM (but have no idea what “DRM” and “open source” mean)

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Melville House Books

Ian Burrell / The Independent:

BBC Trust chairman says executives misled him over Jimmy Savile scandal — Long-awaited report into handling of Newsnight debacle to be released on Friday — Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, has voiced his sense of betrayal at the BBC executives who led him to put his faith …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter

William Turvill / Press Gazette:
Double RTS win for Savile documentary-maker: ‘Recognition of the role media can plan in exposing wrongdoing’

Discussion: Guardian, Telegraph, ITV News and Guardian

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Big Music Says Google Isn't Cracking Down on Pirate Sites, After All — Six months ago, in the wake of the SOPA/PIPA debate, Google offered a peace offering to the Big Media companies: It said it would try to make pirate sites harder to find in its search results.

Discussion: Variety, Music Ally and The Verge

Bloomberg:

New York Times Co. Puts Boston Globe Up for Sale — New York Times Co. is formally exploring a sale of the Boston Globe, its only remaining business outside the core New York Times media brand. The publisher is working with Evercore Partners Inc. as an adviser for a sale, Times Co. said today in a statement.

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

AOL's Grand Human-Heavy Local News Experiment Is Coming To An End — AOL seems to be radically changing its plans for Patch, it's network of local news sites. — We've heard from insiders that the division is pivoting away from a human editor centric model, toward one where local sites …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Sylvia Poggioli / NPR:

Greece's Economic Crisis Reveals Fault Lines In The Media … Three years of spiraling economic crisis in Greece have devastated every sector of the economy. The Greek media are among the hardest hit. Many newspapers and TV outlets have closed or are on the verge, and some 4,000 journalists have lost their jobs.

Discussion: @vassiouti and @razlan79

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk:

DMS13: Economist considers audio-only subscription — The Economist's Nick Blunden also said the title has found readers are prepared to pay more for a print and digital bundle than for a print-only subscription or digital-only access — Copyright: Image by TalAtlas on Flickr. Creative commons licence.

Discussion: TheMediaBriefing, @rajunarisetti, @jeffjarvis and @rajunarisetti

Felix Salmon:

Content economics, part 1: advertising — Back in December, Peter Kafka summed up the most important question with regards to the future of online advertising. Do advertising dollars ultimately end up where people spend their time, he asked, echoing Kleiner Perkins' Mary Meeker says, or …

Discussion: Digiday

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:

With A Revenue Model In Sight, Crowdsourced News Service Blottr Raises $612K For Its Content Syndication Platform NewsPoint — Blottr, the crowd-sourced (or citizen journalism) news service, has raised an additional £400,000 (~$612k) to help scale NewsPoint, its syndication platform …

Thanks:@sohear

Declan McCullagh / CNET:

White House warns of dangers posed by WikiLeaks, LulzSec, other ‘hacktivists’ — New Obama administration strategy says organizations such as WikiLeaks and hacking group LulzSec may conduct “economic espionage against U.S. companies.” — The White House warned today of the threat posed by WikiLeaks …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, @digiphile and AllThingsD

Don Reisinger / CNET:

YouTube viewership now incorporated into Billboard charts — YouTube viewership now sits alongside digital downloads, physical sales, and streaming, among other metrics, to determine the top songs in the land. — Billboard's charts, the gold standard for assessing the most popular music, has added a new metric.