Mediagazer: With A Revenue Model In Sight, Crowdsourced News Service Blottr Raises $612K For Its Content … (Steve O'Hear/TechCrunch)

9:15 AM ET, February 21, 2013

Top News:

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) — A group of independent booksellers have filed a suit against Amazon and the major publishers for their use of DRM, which, the booksellers say, freezes them out of the ebook market:

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Melville House Books

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.

The New York Times Company:
The New York Times Company Announces Plan to Sell the Boston Globe and Related Properties

Discussion: Media Decoder, Boston Globe, Politico, Slate, paidContent, The Huffington Post, Guardian, The Wrap, AllThingsD, @jaredbkeller, @justinnxt, @jbenton, The New York Observer and Capital New York

Alex Ben Block / Hollywood Reporter:

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 Verge, Gizmodo and App Advice

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

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: @razlan79 and @vassiouti

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

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

Alexander Abad-Santos / The Atlantic Wire:

Soledad O'Brien Is Not a Part of Jeff Zucker's Vision for CNN — It looks like one of CNN's most liked stars won't fit at the burgeoning home of poop-cruise story torture and soft morning news — this is new president Jeff Zucker's CNN, and Soledad O'Brien is not it.

Cindy Adams / New York Post:
Soledad O'Brien heading out of CNN as Erin Burnett moves to her morning slot

Discussion: Radio & Television …, The Daily Caller, Los Angeles Times and Chickaboomer

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 …

Josh Sternberg / Digiday:
Publishers Opt Out of the Pageview Rat Race

Discussion: @newswhip, @johngapper, @jonfine, @rafat, @kevglobal, @myersnews, @mccarthyryanj, @chrisdaps, @rajunarisetti, @joshsternberg and Kirk LaPointe's …

Press Gazette:

Lord McAlpine drops defamation claims against Twitter users with fewer than 500 followers — Lord McAlpine has announced that he is dropping defamation claims against Twitter users with fewer than 500 followers who wrongly named him as a paedophile, instead asking for a charitable donation.

Discussion: Guardian, Telegraph, Sky News, Irish Independent, BBC and ITV News

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 …