Mediagazer: Flipboard upgrades, Guardian signs on (Sara Morrison/Columbia Journalism Review)

3:35 PM ET, March 29, 2013

Top News:

Kyle Stock / Businessweek:

Rampant Speculation: How Much Did Amazon Pay for Goodreads? — Valuing a social network is part art, part science, and part nonsense, but the spectrum has narrowed a bit in the past couple of years as sites like Pinterest and Twitter closed financing rounds and companies like LinkedIn hit public markets.

Discussion: LA Observed, @gcompadre, @chrisdmasters, @percival, @michaelwolf, @alexckaufman, @dkiesow and goodreads.com

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

“First do no harm”: My interview with Amazon and Goodreads on the future of Goodreads — Amazon announced Thursday afternoon that it has acquired the popular book-related social networking site Goodreads for an undisclosed sum. I spoke with Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler and Amazon's VP …

Discussion: Forbes, AllThingsD, New York Times, Amazon.com, The Huffington Post, Wired, Melville House Books, Tools of Change for Publishing, Publishing Perspectives, Publishers Lunch, TechCrunch, PublishersWeekly.com, PandoDaily, Daily Dot and Fast Company

Tim Carmody / The Verge:

Goodreads is no Instagram: Amazon paid about $150 million — Estimates of the company's billion-dollar purchase price were sadly misguided — Terms of Amazon's acquisition of Goodreads haven't been disclosed, but that won't stop people from speculating. Bloomberg Businessweek put forward …

Discussion: Forbes

Drew Olanoff / TechCrunch:
Amazon Acquires Social Reading Site Goodreads, Which Gives The Company A Social Advantage Over Apple

Discussion: PublishersWeekly.com, The Next Web, Consumerist, paidContent, Softpedia News, CNET, Gizmodo, Betabeat, The Wrap, Pocket-lint, AllThingsD and @rafat

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

NPR to End ‘Talk of the Nation’ — BOSTON — NPR is ending the 21-year-old call-in radio show “Talk of the Nation” and encouraging local stations to replace it with an expanded version of “Here and Now,” an afternoon newscast that is produced here. — The plan, announced Friday …

Discussion: NPR, LA Observed, Poynter, Yahoo! News, NPR, Politico, KQED News Fix, The Huffington Post, Talking Biz News and The Wrap

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

BuzzFeed launching longform ‘BuzzReads’ section — BuzzFeed's longform content will now have a place to linger: A new section called “BuzzReads” launches today. “It's BuzzFeed for people who are afraid of BuzzFeed,” the site's longform editor, Steve Kandell, told Poynter in a phone call Thursday night.

Sara Morrison / Columbia Journalism Review:

Flipboard upgrades, Guardian signs on — The Guardian gives social sharing another try — Flipboard, the app that calls itself “your social magazine,” introduced version 2.0 on Tuesday. Where the first generation created magazines out of social media feeds, this one allows its users to play a more active role.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, HubSpot's Inbound … and Folio

Tim Carmody / The Verge:

President of HBO Sports says HBO Go will stream live events by the end of this year — But HBO spokesman denies that HBO Go will feature live boxing — At Harvard Law School's Sports Law Symposium today, HBO Sports president Ken Hershman said that live sports would be on HBO Go by the end of this year …

Discussion: VentureBeat, From Inside the Box and WebProNews

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

News Corp. Confirms Launch of New Cable Outlet, FXX … Does an extra X garner more $? — News Corp. is gambling that it will. The entertainment conglomerate confirmed Thursday that it would launch a second general-entertaiment cable network as a companion to its FX network and its FXM outlet …

Discussion: Screen Rant, The Inquisitr, seattlepi.com, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Broadcasting & Cable, Wall Street Journal, Adweek and The Huffington Post

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Ex-Daily Beaster Felsenthal heads to Time.com — Ed Felsenthal, an ex-Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor and No. 2 to Tina Brown at the Daily Beast, is joining Time as the new managing editor of Time.com, Media Ink has learned. — Felsenthal left Newsweek/Daily Beast at the end of 2011 …

Discussion: Folio and FishbowlNY

Greg Sandoval / The Verge:

Biting the hand that feeds you: why are record labels fighting Pandora? — Labels want streaming and web radio to grow the pie, but want their share too — A few years ago, leaders from the major record companies planted the seeds from which they hoped would spring the next generation of music distributors.

Christopher Heine / Adweek:

Business Insider's Slideshows Are Now Ads, Too — Business Insider has become known all-too-well for making its site sticky with a constant procession of topical or newsy slideshows. — Well, the New York-based digital publisher this week started to monetize the idea with a sponsored gallery ad unit …

Discussion: MediaShift

Jon Chesto / Boston Business Journal:

Boston Globe publisher Chris Mayer plans changes even as paper is up for sale — If Chris Mayer is sweating the fact that The Boston Globe is going to have a new owner soon, he isn't showing it. The Globe's publisher tells me his team is moving ahead with plans for changes in 2013 …