Mediagazer: Time Spinoff Seen as Hunter or Prey With $3.9 Billion: Real M&A (Bloomberg)

9:55 AM ET, March 15, 2013

Top News:

Thomson Reuters employee indicted for aiding hackers: court filing — (Reuters) - A federal grand jury has indicted Matthew Keys, deputy social media editor at Reuters.com, for conspiring with members of the Anonymous hacking collective to break into the computers of his former employer …

Discussion: Politico, Vancouver Sun, NetNewsCheck Latest, L.A. NOW, NYT Bits, The Huffington Post, @ryanjreilly, @ryanjreilly, @rabite, @rabite, KTLA 5, @mikeisaac, @gaberivera, Big News Network.com, @gerryshih, The Daily Beast and Gawker

Politico:

Reuters' Matthew Keys indicted for conspiring with hacker group ‘Anonymous’ — Matthew Keys, a deputy social media editor at Thomson Reuters, has been charged in an indictment for allegedly conspiring with members of the hacker group “Anonymous” to hack into a Tribune Company website, the Justice Department announced today.

Stefan Becket / New York Magazine:
Indictment Probably Wasn't a Surprise for Reuters Social Media Editor

Discussion: L.A. NOW

Sam Biddle / Gizmodo:
Reuters Employee Exposed as Alleged Anonymous Agent (Updating)

Discussion: The United States Department …, Columbia Journalism Review, Adweek, The Week, Poynter, ZDNet, Electronista, Boing Boing, Twitchy, L.A. NOW, Mashable!, Daily Dot and VentureBeat

Don Kaplan / NY Daily News:

Time Warner Cable makes move to rename NY1 so viewers know it's an exclusive news channel — Market research has shown that viewers are not aware that NY1 is owned and only broadcast on Time Warner Cable, says TWC spokeswoman Amy Summers. The move to rename the channel will reinforce …

Discussion: The New York Observer and NY Daily News

Jim Romenesko:

Boston Phoenix is folding — Boston's alt-weekly, founded in 1966, is closing. I'm waiting for more information to post.

Discussion: @bostonphoenix, Boston Globe, 10,000 Words, Media Decoder, The New York Observer, talkingnewmedia.blogspot.co.uk, @longform, @monikabauerlein, bizjournals, @talkingnewmedia and @zseward

Justin Peters / Columbia Journalism Review:

Boston Phoenix, down in flames — On Thursday afternoon, Boston Phoenix publisher Stephen Mindich announced that the 47-year-old alt-weekly would cease publication effective immediately. The past few years “have been extremely difficult times for our Company,” Mindich said in a statement …

Discussion: Media Nation, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Huffington Post and New York Magazine

Digg Blog:

We're Building A Reader — Like many of you, we were dismayed to learn that Google will be shutting down its much-loved, if under-appreciated, Google Reader on July 1st. Through its many incarnations, Google Reader has remained a solid and reliable tool for those who want to ensure …

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Digg announces plan to build an RSS reader with 'the best of Google Reader's features,' including its API

Discussion: SlashGear, VentureBeat, Betabeat and The Atlantic Wire

Wall Street Journal:

Facebook Working on Incorporating the Hashtag — Facebook Inc. is getting ready to take on a symbol of rival Twitter: the hashtag. — Facebook is working on incorporating the hashtag, one of Twitter Inc.'s most iconic markers, into its service, said people familiar with the matter.

Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:

Web Video: Bigger and Less Profitable — People in the media business say that the future is online video. Just how many companies will be able to profit is the big question. — Online video-advertising rates continue to fall. Prices for ads on top-tier sites last year were down by 10% …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and The Huffington Post

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Sky News reporter arrested while filming live on air in China — Mark Stone and cameraman, Andy Portch, were held for not displaying passes as they filmed in Tiananmen Square — Sky News correspondent Mark Stone has been detained by Chinese police while filming in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Discussion: Sky News, Daily Mail, ABCNEWS, Radio Times and UK News and Opinion

Adweek:

Tunku Varadarajan Leaves Newsweek Global — Three months into its experiment as an all-digital publication, Newsweek Global is losing its editor, Tunku Varadarajan. — Varadarajan had been the editor of Newsweek International, a post he inherited from Fareed Zakaria …

Discussion: Capital New York

Felix Salmon / Reuters:

Did Google just kill RSS? — On Tuesday, Google paid $7 million to settle charges with a coalition of 38 states in relation to its privacy breaches. The 14-page agreement is pretty detailed, and includes promises from Google to spend a substantial amount of effort educating the public about the importance of securing wifi networks.

Discussion: The Verge, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Publishing Executive …, Fortune, paidContent and GigaOM

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:
Google Reader Still Drives Far More Traffic Than Google+

Discussion: Fast Company, Guardian, Business Insider, Mashable!, ZDNet, The Daily Beast, NYT Bits, ReadWrite, Marco.org, The Wall Blog, Guardian, TechCrunch and Dave Winer

Paul Bond / The Hollywood Reporter:

Billionaire Eli Broad Teams With Financier to Make L.A. Times Bid — The Los Angeles Times Building and 2nd and Spring streets downtown — The philanthropic Los Angeles businessman has joined with former Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner to make the Tribune Co.'s largest newspaper a nonprofit.

Discussion: Poynter and LA Observed

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Bobby Ghosh has been named the editor of Time International, Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Martha Nelson and Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel told staffers in an announcement Friday morning. “[T]his appointment has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he saved me from getting tear-gassed in Tahrir Square last year,” the memo reads.

Bloomberg:

Time Spinoff Seen as Hunter or Prey With $3.9 Billion: Real M&A — The spinoff of Time Inc. to create the world's largest publicly traded magazine publisher may be just the beginning of deals for the owner of People and Sports Illustrated. — With analysts estimating an enterprise value …

Discussion: The Corsair, Motley Fool and New York Times

Sean Ludwig / VentureBeat:

Thrillist CEO: 45% of revenue now comes from our iPhone app — NEW YORK CITY — Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer said today at the F.ounders conference that 45 percent of the company's revenue now comes from its JackThreads iPhone app, a stunning stat that shows a mobile-intensive strategy can sometimes pay off.

Janko Roettgers / paidContent:

Hulu's content chief Andy Forssell officially takes over as acting CEO — Hulu has officially announced that its SVP of content Andy Forssell is going to become its acting CEO when founding CEO Jason Kilar leaves the company at the end of the month. Kilar made the announcement himself Thursday afternoon on Hulu's blog, writing: