Mediagazer: If Tumblr 'Couldn't Be Happier' With its Journalists, Why'd it Just Fire Them All? (Adam Weinstein/Gawker)

3:25 PM ET, April 10, 2013

Top News:

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Aereo Has TV Networks Circling the Wagons — When Chase Carey, Rupert Murdoch's top deputy at News Corporation, told broadcasters on Monday about his contingency plan to turn the Fox network into something available only on cable, he knew policy makers would be listening, too.

Discussion: Forbes, VentureBeat, Electronista, TVNewsCheck.com, FierceCable, Los Angeles Times, Policy Blog, @samgustin, The Verge, @dannysullivan, CyberJournalist.net and TIME

Steven Musil / CNET:
CBS joins Fox in considering subscription-only model

Discussion: New York Times and FishbowlNY

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times: Fox's threat to go cable-only won't mean much to most viewers

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:

Alec Baldwin Said to Be in Talks to Join NBC's Late-Night Lineup — A well-known name is the latest to surface in the populated field of late night television hosts: Alec Baldwin. — The Emmy-winning actor is in the mix for a spot in NBC's late-night lineup, one executive involved in the network's program planning said.

Discussion: Mediaite, Business Insider, Radio & Television …, Deadline.com, Splitsider, The Daily Caller, Vanity Fair, The Corsair, The Wrap, Inside TV, Forbes, Gothamist, Digital Spy and TVLine

Alan D. Mutter / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Why paywalls are scary — The case for paywalls would seem to be compelling: Staunch the decline in print circulation, get paid for producing valuable local content and tap into a fresh source of sorely needed revenue at a time advertising sales continue to shrink. — All good? Not necessarily.

Discussion: @jeffjarvis and @jayrosen_nyu

John Harris / Guardian:

Tim Waterstone: ‘If reading is going be all digital in 50 years, so be it’ — Thirty years ago, Tim Waterstone founded one of the UK's best-known booksellers, and is still in love with the idea of bookshops. So what is he doing starting a new ebooks venture?

Discussion: The Bookseller

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:
Waterstones founder to help launch new e-singles subscription site, Read Petite

Discussion: Retail Week

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

USPS won't end Saturday delivery — The U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday it will not end Saturday delivery, something it announced in February that it planned to do. — The USPS hoped curtailing delivery on those days would help it control costs. Unlike many other government bodies …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, CNNMoney.com, Home Media Magazine, USA Today, Associated Press, Washington Times, The Hill, Bloomberg, U.S., nbcnews.com and The Verge

Adam Weinstein / Gawker:

If Tumblr 'Couldn't Be Happier' With its Journalists, Why'd it Just Fire Them All? — In a move that's sure to inspire thousands of sad-face GIF reposts, social-blogging site Tumblr declared Storyboard, its ambitious year-old editorial initiative, an unqualified success Tuesday night …

Discussion: Mashable, Businessweek, The Huffington Post, Daily Dot and PandoDaily

Ken Yeung / The Next Web:
Tumblr Axes Its Editorial Team Behind Storyboard On The Way To Profitability

Discussion: Tumblr Staff Blog, paidContent, Betabeat, Poynter, One Man & His Blog, @nicknotned, good girls finish last, Business Insider, FishbowlNY, CNET, TechCrunch, @lindsayism, THE BAD DEAL, @adamweinstein, @mattboggie and @antderosa

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

Jeff Zucker is remaking CNN. Are viewers tuning in? — For a few minutes the other night, the hot topic on CNN was . . . bacon. The panel on a new prime-time show called “(Get to) The Point” came out boldly in favor of it. — “I had a double order this morning at breakfast …

Discussion: TVNewser, TheBlaze.com and Inside Cable News

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Circa's Matt Galligan on Building a Different Kind of News Reader (Video) — Earlier this week, I went for a visit to the San Francisco HQ of Circa, the startup that always seems to get lumped into the mobile news reader aggregation category with others such as Pulse, Zite and Flipboard.

Meghan Kelly / VentureBeat:

Roku's reach: 5M set-up boxes, 8B pieces of streaming content — Roku announced today that it has sold five million of its video and music streaming set top boxes, claiming that 25 percent of its users are using Roku as the primary way of viewing television.

Discussion: GigaOM, TechCrunch, The Official Roku Blog, Forbes and Engadget

Drew Olanoff / TechCrunch:

Medium Adds Collaboration Tools To Its Publishing Platform, Allowing People To Add Notes To Your Posts — Today, Ev Williams' latest startup, Medium, added some tools to bring people together while they're writing. The collaboration tools are similar to what you'd find in Google Docs …

Discussion: Medium

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

Study: Hyperlocal demand driven by mobile devices — Nesta published study is part of Destination Local programme into hyperlocal media — Copyright: By Walt Stoneburner on Flickr. Some rights reserved. — Demand for hyperlocal content is being driven by increased usage …

Discussion: Nesta

Ted Johnson / Variety:

NAB Chief: Next FCC Chair Shouldn't Have ‘Bias’ Toward Broadband — LAS VEGAS — When Julius Genachowski makes his final appearance as FCC chairman before the National Assn. of Broadcasters convention on Wednesday, more than likely he'll get the same type of reaction as he has in years past: Lukewarm.

Discussion: MediaTel

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

BBC staff have £750,000 worth of gadgets lost or stolen in three years — Laptops, tablet computers and mobile phones among the 785 electrical items lost by corporation staff since 2010 — BBC staff have lost 785 laptops, tablet computers and mobile phones in the past three years, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

David Lieberman / Deadline.com:

Movie Attendance Likely To Drop In 2013, And Beyond: Report — Bond analysis firm Fitch Ratings offers its bracing analysis of the movie exhibition industry a week ahead of theater owners' annual CinemaCon trade show in Las Vegas. The company forecasts a “modest” decline in 2013 ticket sales …

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

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Adobe Adopts Apple's Streaming Format for Internet TV Platform … Adobe Systems is using Apple's streaming-media protocol as the de facto standard in its Primetime video-publishing system — putting its own technology on the back burner. — The soup-to-nuts Adobe Primetime system provides …