Mediagazer: Authors Guild warns of monopoly in Amazon's purchase of Goodreads (Jeff John Roberts/paidContent)

3:30 AM ET, March 30, 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: Betabeat, Business Insider, ZDNet, LA Observed, @dkiesow, PandoDaily, @chrisdmasters, @gcompadre, @michaelwolf, @alexckaufman, @percival and goodreads.com

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Authors Guild warns of monopoly in Amazon's purchase of Goodreads — Amazon's purchase of Goodreads, an influential and independent social network for book lovers, is drawing fire from the Authors Guild. — The literary world gasped on Thursday when Amazon announced it had acquired Goodreads …

Discussion: The Authors Guild, GalleyCat, Forbes, WebProNews and Bloomberg

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

BusinessWeek's billion-dollar boo-boo — A poor piece spreads bogus news about Amazon's Goodreads acquisition — Bloomberg BusinessWeek makes itself look silly today, running a speculative piece on how much Amazon paid for its latest acquisition, Goodreads. — Here's the headline:

Discussion: Businessweek

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: AllThingsD, Forbes and WebProNews

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:
“First do no harm”: My interview with Amazon and Goodreads on the future of Goodreads

Discussion: Publishing Perspectives, New York Times, Digits, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Publishers Lunch, Wired, Melville House Books, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Thad McIlroy, PandoDaily and Daily Dot

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

Jake New / Wired Campus:

Journal's Editorial Board Resigns in Protest of Publisher's Policy Toward Authors — [Updated (3/27/2013, 12:46 p.m.) with reaction from Taylor & Francis Group.] — The editor and the entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration have resigned in response to a conflict …

Discussion: Feral Librarian, Above the Law, bookforum.com and Boing Boing

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.

Discussion: BGR, App Advice and MacRumors

Michael Malone / Broadcasting & Cable:

Nexstar Signs Letter of Intent for CCA Stations — Parties agree on $275 million for station group — Nexstar has signed a letter of intent to acquire the Communications Corp. of America (CCA) stations for $275 million, according to sources with knowledge of the negotiations.

Douglas Martin / New York Times:

Bob Teague, WNBC Reporter Who Helped Integrate TV News, Is Dead at 84 — Bob Teague, who joined WNBC-TV in New York in 1963 as one of the city's first black television journalists and went on to work as a reporter, anchorman and producer for more than three decades, died on Thursday in New Brunswick, N.J. He was 84.

Discussion: TVSpy

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: HubSpot's Inbound …

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 …