Mediagazer: Is this story less than the Summly of its parts? (Jack Shafer)

8:00 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, @smalera, @chanders, @jaredbkeller, @caseymcdermott, @jbenton, @digiphile, @pwthornton, @michaelroston, @aschweig, @kev097, @mykola and @marksluckie

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.

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

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

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline.com:

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

Discussion: Variety, New York Times and Benzinga

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

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

Here's Why Marissa Mayer Is About To Spend ~$200 Million On A YouTube Wannabe — Last week, Amir Efrati and Sam Shechner of the WSJ reported that Yahoo is close to acquiring a controlling stake in the YouTube-of-Europe, Dailymotion, at a valuation somewhere around $300 million.

Jack Shafer:

Is this story less than the Summly of its parts? — Like children at bedtime, news consumers love nothing more than to be told the same story again and again. Oh sure, they need the names of the principals to change, the location to vary, and the supporting cast of characters to shift.

Discussion: philosophically, Gawker and paidContent

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, Poynter, The Next Web and GigaOM

Guardian:

The Sun joins Telegraph in charging website users — News International says offering free content is ‘just untenable’, while Telegraph announces erection of metered paywall — Britain's biggest selling daily newspaper, The Sun, is to start charging for its online content in the second half …

Discussion: The Next Web

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

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