Mediagazer: Kickstarter-funded Read Matter finding subs do better than singles (Kevin Anderson/Strange Attractor)

1:25 PM ET, March 22, 2013

Top News:

Ranking the Slowest-Loading News Sites and How They Can Speed Up — I present your winner (or loser?) for slowest loading feature article, the Chicago Tribune, at 16.68 seconds, almost 6 megabytes of data, and with more than 300 requests for resources to display the page in question.

Discussion: Poynter and eMedia Vitals

Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic Online:

American News Consumers Have Gained the World but Lost Their Backyards — The Internet affords cheap, easy access to priceless information. But local news coverage is a casualty of its rise. — Is the American news media in better shape than ever before?

Discussion: Street Fight and Fortune

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Filing Says Glenn Beck's Network TheBlaze Is Raising $40M — TheBlaze, a set of online ventures run by conservative pundit Glenn Beck, is raising $40 million in new funding, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. — The filing states that the company has raised $1.5 million so far.

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski steps down — Julius Genachowski, who has served as FCC Chairman since 2009, is stepping down. The FCC has announced on its website that Genachowski will be leaving his position “in the coming weeks;” an official meeting will be held later this morning.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Variety, Fast Company, Politico, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Electronista and Engadget

Economist:

Binding the press: A rotten deal — THE regulation of the British press is an area where this newspaper usually treads lightly. It is not just that The Economist has an interest in opposing irksome rules—albeit a less obvious one than the tabloids, many though not all of them owned by Rupert Murdoch …

Discussion: Guardian, New Statesman, Kirk LaPointe's …, lustigletter.blogspot.co.uk and Spectator

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Vevo boss says intelligent, data-centric services could revive music industry — International senior vice-president Nic Jones says music service users want opportunity to be curated by more than algorithms — Intelligent, data-centric services could herald the rebirth of the music industry …

Wall Street Journal:

Web Fan Base Tips Scale To Fallon — Jimmy Fallon's recent two-minute skit “Evolution of Mom Dancing,” featuring the late-night TV comic and Michelle Obama performing a series of funny dance moves, racked up more than 15 million views on YouTube. That is about five times the average nightly audience …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, @dfsaavedra, Bloomberg and Corporate Intelligence

Erik Wemple:

Huffington Post deletes anti-Wal-Mart comments — See those nasty comments about Wal-Mart above? They're not around anymore. — They originally came in response to a “story” that the Huffington Post yesterday published about the retailer. Quotation marks are critical here.

Kevin Anderson / Strange Attractor:

Kickstarter-funded Read Matter finding subs do better than singles — Bobbie Johnson by Jeremy Keith from Flickr, Some Rights Reserved — Building sustainable journalism is a topic near and dear to me as it is core to the work that I do now, and Hacks/Hackers London on Wednesday provided …

Rhonda Richford / Hollywood Reporter:

Twitter Faces Criminal Complaint Over Hate Speech Hashtags in France — Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is named in a $50 million suit claiming the microblogging service has made no effort to hand over user data as ordered by French courts. — PARIS - Twitter has been hit with a $50 million …

Janko Roettgers / paidContent:

D.me: Is this the new Delicious? — Looks like the folks over at Delicious may have a case of Digg envy: I stumbled across a seemingly new site called D.me today that serves up a continuous stream of stories in a design that looks a lot like the recently-relaunched Digg.com, with a bit of Pinterest mixed in for good measure.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Travel Site TripAdvisor Buys Tiny Post To Fill Out Its Mobile And Social Ambitions — TripAdvisor, the travel site built around destination guides and user reviews, today made another acquisition: it has bought Tiny Post, an iOS app that lets users take pictures, write captions over them …

Discussion: PR Newswire, App Advice, Associated Press and The Next Web