Mediagazer: Hashtags considered #harmful (Daniel Victor/Nieman Journalism Lab)

4:40 PM ET, March 26, 2013

Top News:

Hashtags considered #harmful — The noble hashtag is cursed by a problem Yogi Berra could appreciate: Too many people use it, so no one goes there. — Presumably, most Twitter users use hashtags intending to add their tweet to a river of similar information and to expose their own thoughts to a wider, interested audience.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, @jbenton, @caseymcdermott, @mykola, @marksluckie, @michaelroston, @aschweig, @smalera, @kev097, @jaredbkeller, @pwthornton, @chanders and @digiphile

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Pocket Introduces Publisher Tools And Analytics To Extend Content Life With Its 8.5M-Strong Audience — Pocket, the save-for-later service that evolved from ReadItLater, is introducing new publisher tools today, including a way to see how content saved to the platform is performing …

Discussion: Pocket Blog, Nieman Journalism Lab, paidContent, Poynter and The Next Web

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline.com:

It's Official: CBS Acquires Half Of TV Guide, Partners With Lionsgate — CBS Corp. just announced that is acquiring 50% of of TV Guide, the company that encompasses TVGN (formerly TV Guide Network) and TVGuide.com, adding a basic cable network to its TV portfolio, which includes broadcast networks …

Discussion: Benzinga

Rachael Daigle / AAN:

Alt-Weeklies Are Dead; Long Live Alt-Weeklies — Yes, the alternative weekly of yesterday is toast. At least it should be if the alt-weekly business is going to survive. — The year 2012 was big in the alternative newsweekly world. — It was the year the country's largest chain of alt-weeklies …

Discussion: Poynter and Beyond Search, Thanks:@altweeklies

Mackenzie Weinger / Politico:

USA Today announces ‘two big changes’ — USA Today is making “big changes” by putting the cover story in the newspaper “on hiatus” and keeping story jumps to a “bare minimum, if at all,” editor in chief Dave Callaway announced to staffers in a memo on Tuesday.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

CBS asks for tax break for Super Bowl week coverage — CBS broadcast its show “The Talk” from New Orleans in the week leading up to Super Bowl and is asking for a $700,000 tax credit, Tyler Bridges reports. “The Motion Picture Investor Tax Credit statute specifically excludes televised news …

Discussion: The Lens

Bloomberg:

Intel Said Nearing Media Company Deals for Pay-TV Service — Intel Corp. (INTC) is making progress in talks with Time Warner Inc. (TWX), NBC Universal and Viacom Inc. (VIAB) to obtain TV shows and films for a first-of-its kind online pay-TV service, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Discussion: CNET, Radio & Television …, Deadline.com and The Verge

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

BBC Study Confirms Tablets' Growing Role In TV Consumption, But Also That TV Remains Supreme — Companies like Google, Twitter and Nielsen — who respectively make money from digital advertising, want to make a lot more from digital ads, and get paid to provide data to justify ads online and offline …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk, Kirk LaPointe's … and European Journalism Centre

Aaron Sankin / The Huffington Post:

Major Changes At The San Francisco Chronicle Spark Outrage — SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Chronicle announced over the weekend that the paper would begin charging for a large portion of its online content by imposing a paywall. — Since it became one of the first major newspapers …

Discussion: The Snitch, SF Appeal, KQED Public Media …, SFist, KQED News Fix, Pacific Media Workers Guild, SFBay, FishbowlLA, Pacific Media Workers Guild and CNET

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

New York Times closes another loophole in its digital paywall — Look out, media cheapskates — the New York Times is losing patience with your skinflint ways. After imposing a metered paywall last year to restrict how many articles non-subscribers can read for free, the Times is clamping …

Discussion: Guardian, Media Week and TheMediaBriefing

Lorraine Murphy / Daily Dot:

How Anonymous gamed Twitter to shed light on a hidden massacre — Genocide in Burma (Myanmar) is, unfortunately, nothing new. The country is consistently featured in Worst Human Rights lists. But with the recent democratic reforms—including the freedom of former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi—there was hope.

Discussion: The Verge, VentureBeat, The Stream and Softpedia News

Adam Popescu / ReadWrite:

How Online Comments Are Becoming A Big Business — They almost seem like an afterthought, the comments attached to Internet content. These scribblings may seem like the anonymous musings of the masses, but many corporations are viewing them as a high-powered vehicle to drive lead generation …

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Hulu Isn't for Sale — Yet. But Buyers Are Asking ... Two years ago, Hulu's corporate owners put the video site up for sale — and then took it off the block. — New version of a similar story: Hulu's corporate owners still aren't sure what they want to do with the site.