Mediagazer: New CEO's plan for About.com: same business model, more flash (Jeff John Roberts/paidContent)

9:05 AM ET, April 3, 2013

Top News:

A Leave of Presence — Thank you. Forty-six years ago on April 3, 1967, I became the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Some of you have read my reviews and columns and even written to me since that time. Others were introduced to my film criticism through the television show …

Mark Caro / Chicago Tribune:

Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert cuts workload after cancer recurrence — Roger Ebert announced late Tuesday night that he is stepping back from some duties as the Chicago Sun-Times' film critic after a recurrence of cancer. — Calling the move a “leave of presence,” Ebert wrote on his online journal …

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Daily Mail

Associated Press:

‘Illegal immigrant’ no more — The AP Stylebook today is making some changes in how we describe people living in a country illegally. Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll explains the thinking behind the decision: The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term …

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post:
AP's Dropping Of ‘Illegal Immigrant’ Could Have Wide Ramifications For Media

Discussion: msnbc.com

Jamal Osman / The Daily Beast:

Fake Somali Pirates Scam Western Journalists — Time magazine, Danish filmmakers among the outlets apparently fooled by Kenyan actors pretending to be Somali pirates. … The story begins in the slums of Eastleigh, a sprawling suburb of Nairobi in Kenya and home to a huge Somali community.

Discussion: Channel 4, @jeffjohnroberts, @robcrilly, @jamalmosman, @anonomia, @emerbeamer and @_shamkk

Michael J. de la Merced / DealBook:

S.E.C. Sets Rules for Disclosures Using Social Media — Updated Chief executives can now feel free to post, blog or tweet — as long as they inform investors about their social media strategy first. — The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday outlined new disclosure rules …

Discussion: Forbes, SocialTimes, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, Sydney Morning Herald, BBC, Corporate Intelligence and Variety

Michael Wolff / Guardian:

This tipping-point for paywalls does not fix newspapers' larger crisis — Not even the smartest metered model can make up for paltry digital ad revenues and a failure to recruit younger readers — To the surprise of many digital evangelizers and old-media doubters, newspaper paywalls turn out to work.

Stuart Kemp / Hollywood Reporter:

U.K. Retail Giant Tesco, BBC Worldwide Ink Content Deal For Ad-Supported Film, TV Service — Shows such as “Blackpool” starring David Morrissey and comedy “Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps” will be offered on Clubcard TV, the retailer's loyalty card holders' service.

Discussion: Broadband TV News, The Next Web and The Drum

Leslie Meredith / TechNewsDaily:

Instagram and Vine Shake Up News Industry — News as we know it is poised to change, and it's in the hands of smartphone users. — On March 31, the New York Times ran a photo of New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez taken by sports photographer Nick Laham — on his iPhone and edited in Instagram.

Reuters:

Google to sell second-gen Nexus 7 tablet from July: sources — (Reuters) - Google Inc will launch a new version of its Nexus 7 tablet powered by Qualcomm Inc's Snapdragon processor around July, two sources told Reuters, as the software giant pushes deeper into the cut-price mobile hardware market.

Discussion: TechCrunch, CNET, 9to5Google, Unwired View, Droid Life, ZDNet, HEXUS.net Latest Content, Electronista, The Verge, Engadget, Pocket-lint, The Next Web, Ubergizmo and Mashable

Robert Darnton / New York Review of Books:

The National Digital Public Library Is Launched! — The Digital Public Library of America, to be launched on April 18, is a project to make the holdings of America's research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge.

Discussion: paidContent and Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Editors Weblog:

Australian startup Newsmodo allows freelancers to name price for their reporting — After more than a decade-long career, Australian broadcast journalist Rakhal Ebeli realized his responsibilities had changed. He was no longer only chasing his own stories but also collecting those of others.

Sarah Kessler / Fast Company:

A Personalized News App At Its Simplest: No Articles, Just Data — INSTEAD OF TRACKING HEADLINES, NUMBEEZ TRACKS NUMBERS. HERE'S WHY THAT MIGHT NOT BE AS ABSURD AS IT SOUNDS. — When Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to build a “personalized newspaper,” he's talking about photos, conversations between friends, music and news articles.

Ken Layne / The Awl:

The Rise and Fall of the L.A. Examiner, a Blog That Was a Newspaper That Never Existed — My office was the living room closet in a huge one-bedroom in a 1920s East Hollywood apartment court, across the street from the big blue Scientology headquarters in the old Cedars of Lebanon Hospital.

Discussion: New York Times and LA Observed

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Music Video Company VEVO Learns Dutch, Launches In The Netherlands — VEVO just became available in a whole new market, as its streaming music video service was launched in The Netherlands today. The launch will make more than 75,000 music videos available to Dutch viewers …

Discussion: VEVO.com and Music Week

Stuart Pfeifer / Los Angeles Times:

Kathy Thomson named chief operating officer of Tribune publishing — Tribune Co. has promoted Kathy Thomson, president and chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Times, to the newly created position of chief operating officer of Tribune's publishing division.

Discussion: Associated Press and Deadline.com

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

New CEO's plan for About.com: same business model, more flash — About.com announced on Tuesday that Neil Vogel, founder of the best-of-the-internet “Webby Awards,” will be the company's new CEO. His immediate tasks will be to increase the site's brand recognition and to persuade people …

Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:

Swartz death inspires expanded effort to liberate paywalled court docs — Aaron Swartz is remembered most for his campaign to liberate articles from the academic database JSTOR. That effort led to his indictment on federal hacking charges, which his family blamed for his January suicide.

Discussion: RECAP The Law, Techdirt and Boing Boing

Inga Saffron / The New Republic:

After the Newspaper Building — What must surely rank among the most touching demonstrations of the emotional bond between a newspaper and its readers occurred in Washington during the summer of 1973. The Nixon tapes had just been released, and dozens of people flocked to the Washington Post building …