Mediagazer: Ranking the Slowest-Loading News Sites and How They Can Speed Up (Phillip Smith/MediaShift Idea Lab)

11:10 AM 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.

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, lustigletter.blogspot.co.uk, Spectator and New Statesman

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, Corporate Intelligence and Bloomberg

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 …

Reuters:

HBO CEO mulls teaming with broadband partners for HBO GO — (Reuters) - HBO could widen access to its HBO GO online streaming service by teaming up with broadband Internet providers for customers who do not subscribe to a cable TV service, according to HBO's Chief Executive Richard Plepler.

Discussion: AllThingsD, Deadline.com, VentureBeat, Business Insider, AppleInsider, WebProNews, 9to5Mac, Mashable!, Laughing Squid, Consumerist, Home Media Magazine, Fast Company, Engadget, BGR, ParisLemon and The Chutry Experiment

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: Politico, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Engadget and VentureBeat

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Columbia chose an eminent outsider over a popular internal choice to lead its journalism school — When Columbia University President Lee Bollinger appointed Steve Coll dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism earlier this week, he brought in one of the world's most eminent journalists …

David Cameron / The Review Review:

The New Yorker Rejects Itself: A Quasi-Scientific Analysis of Slush Piles — It began as the kind of logical argument that seems airtight to anyone who has never studied logic. If the New Yorker is the most desirable literary magazine in the world, and if the New Yorker can have any short story …

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review

Brian Merchant / Motherboard:

For Over a Year, BP Has Worked Hard to ‘Clean Up’ Its Wikipedia Pages — A BP oil platform, from its Wikipedia page. — According to a statistic I just submitted for review on Wikipedia, Wikipedia provides the average American with 88% of their knowledge.

Discussion: The Bulletin, Betabeat and CNET

Matthew Weaver / Guardian:

How Brown Moses exposed Syrian arms trafficking from his front room — Leicester-based blogger's monitoring of weapons used in conflict has been taken up by media and human rights groups — Eliot Higgins has no need for a flak jacket, nor does he carry himself with the bravado of a war reporter.