Mediagazer: Big Media Loves Promoted Trends, Twitter's Big-Dollar Digital Billboards (Peter Kafka/AllThingsD)

11:15 PM ET, April 9, 2013

Top News:

How did Mother Jones obtain McConnell tape? — Mitch McConnell's political operation today grew in the estimation of the Erik Wemple Blog, thanks to Mother Jones magazine. The lefty outlet scored a secret audio recording of a Feb. 2 strategy session by the team seeking to reelect McConnell …

Discussion: Mediaite, The Fix, Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, Slate, Public Policy Polling, The Plum Line, @jackshafer and The Wrap

Dylan Byers / Politico:
McConnell campaign taps FBI to investigate Mother Jones tape

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:
Mother Jones' David Corn Lands Another Secret Tape Scoop

Discussion: Mother Jones and msnbc.com

The Huffington Post:
Mother Jones Responds To FBI Investigation Into Article

Discussion: Post Politics and The Week

Jim Romenesko:

Pamela Paul is named New York Times Book Review editor — Sam Tanenhaus is stepping down as New York Times Book Review editor to become writer at large. Children's book editor Pamela Paul replaces him. “Her versatility as an editor and writer has strengthened the Book Review and many other sections …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The New York Observer, PublishersWeekly.com and Publishers Lunch

Felix Salmon:

The disruptive potential of native advertising — Andrew Rice delivers 6,000 words on BuzzFeed in the latest NY Mag, which means he has the space to tell a number of different stories. The one I'm interested in is the way that BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wants native advertising to disrupt banner advertising.

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …, @jeffjarvis, bookforum.com and paidContent

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

CourseSmart E-Textbooks Track Students' Progress for Teachers — SAN ANTONIO — Several Texas A&M professors know something that generations of teachers could only hope to guess: whether students are reading their textbooks. — They know when students are skipping pages …

Discussion: Betabeat, Ars Technica and Gawker

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

Fox's threat to go cable-only won't mean much to most viewers — News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey may take “The Simpsons” to cable. (Chase Carey / Bloomberg; “The Simpsons” / Fox) — News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey made big headlines Monday for suggesting …

Discussion: Forbes

Greg Sandoval / The Verge:
Nuclear option: would Fox really leave the free airwaves to undercut Aereo?

Discussion: New York Times and Variety

Mathew Ingram / paidContent:

The Empire acquires the rebel alliance: Mendeley users revolt against Elsevier takeover — Mendeley, an open collaboration platform for scientific research, has promised that it won't become less open after being acquired by journal publisher Elsevier, but some prominent users aren't waiting around.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Confirmed: Elsevier Has Bought Mendeley For $69M-$100M To Expand Its Open, Social Education Data Efforts

Discussion: paidContent, Financial Times, Joho the Blog, Elsevier Connect, Guardian, Businesses for sale, The Drum, VentureVillage, ZDNet, EdSurge and Bloomberg

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Sony Re-Ups Movie, Music Boss Michael Lynton — Lots of people think Sony is looking to sell off its entertainment properties. But here's an argument against that notion: The company has re-signed Michael Lynton as head of its movie studio and music business.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable

Ken Yeung / The Next Web:

Tumblr axes editorial team behind Storyboard on the way to profitability — On Tuesday, Tumblr announced that it was laying off its entire editorial team responsible for its Storyboard service. A year after the company created the team of journalists and editors to help cover it as a …

Discussion: Tumblr Staff Blog, Betabeat, AllThingsD, @lindsayism, THE BAD DEAL, @adamweinstein, @mattboggie and @antderosa

Margalit Fox / New York Times:

McCandlish Phillips, Longtime Times Reporter With Flair, Dies at 85 — McCandlish Phillips, a reporter considered one of the finest stylists on The New York Times, who wrote one of the most famous articles in the newspaper's history — exposing the Orthodox Jewish background …

Discussion: City Room and Christianity Today

Parmy Olson / Forbes:

This Simple App Could Put E-Books On Millions Of Phones In The Third World — It sounds counterintuitive, but in certain developing nations it's easier to get hold of a cell phone than a good book. — More than one in three adults cannot read in sub-Saharan Africa, yet almost every home …

Discussion: paidContent, VentureBeat and BWW Books Stories

Rafat Ali / Skift:

Turns out Google didn't sell social followers back to Arthur Frommer — A small mystery emerged this evening and got solved quickly as well: turns out when Google sold back the Frommer's brand name to founder Arthur Frommer, the social accounts and its followers weren't part of that deal.

Discussion: paidContent

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

Intel Cooks Up Future of TV — a Potential Mess for Cable — An Unconventional Campaign for an Unconventional Platform — Visualize the TV service you've always wanted: a gorgeous interface that does away with clunky (and often ad-strewn) programming grids; a simple remote that isn't a crushing array …

Discussion: Business Insider

Hamish McKenzie / PandoDaily:

Magzter is a digital magazines giant that has come from nowhere (well, okay, Asia) to sign Hearst and Newsweek — Okay, you probably know of Apple's iOS Newsstand, and you might have heard that Google is planning to launch its own newsstand for Android - but have you heard of Magzter?

Thanks:@drewkerr

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Big Media Loves Promoted Trends, Twitter's Big-Dollar Digital Billboards — Twitter has been building up its ad business for three years, but early on it figured out that it had a hit with “Promoted Trends.” That's the ad unit that lets a brand occupy the top spot on Twitter's “Trends” …

Discussion: CyberJournalist.net and Betabeat

Kira Witkin / Editors Weblog:

Author-specific paywalls let publications cash in on journalists' personal brands — News is no longer anonymous — and readers don't want it to be. In an era where a Google search can instantly connect you to hundreds of articles on the same topic, all reeling off the same facts …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab