Mediagazer: Our national pastime: Press criticism (Jack Shafer)

11:05 PM ET, April 11, 2013

Top News:

Twitter's New Music App Launches Friday — Next up on the jukebox — Twitter Music. — The microblogging service plans to launch its new, standalone music application on Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter. — The app suggests artists and tracks to users based on a number …

Discussion: The Next Web

Matt McGee / Marketing Land:

Twitter Acquires We Are Hunted, Should Open New Marketing Doors For Artists — The music discovery service We Are Hunted has announced that it's joining Twitter. The news hit almost at the same moment that American Idol host Ryan Seacrest tweeted about “playing with @twitter's new music app.”

Discussion: CNET and TechCrunch

Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:

Yep, LinkedIn Acquires Newsreader Startup Pulse for $90 Million — LinkedIn announced on Thursday it has acquired mobile news aggregation startup Pulse, as Kara Swisher reported last month that it would, signaling another step by the massive professional network toward becoming an online content powerhouse.

Discussion: Official LinkedIn Blog, LinkedIn media information …, GigaOM, CNET, The Next Web, MobileSyrup.com, The Verge, Reuters, SlashGear, VentureBeat, ZDNet, Mashable, AppleInsider and GalleyCat

Janko Roettgers / paidContent:

Netflix users watched four billion hours of video in Q1 — Looks like House of Cards is starting to have an impact: Netflix members watched more than four billion hours of video during the first three months of 2013, according to the company's CEO Reed Hastings, who took to Facebook to publish the milestone Thursday.

Discussion: Variety, AllThingsD, Home Media Magazine, Deadline.com and The Huffington Post

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Ebooks made up 23 percent of US publisher sales in 2012, says the AAP — Ebooks accounted for nearly a quarter of the U.S. trade book business in 2012, according to statistics released Thursday by the Association of American Publishers. The ebook industry appears to be maturing, however …

Discussion: Digital Book World, PublishersWeekly.com and Media & Entertainment

Jim Romenesko:

Missing the good old days when Pulitzer finalists were leaked — I responded: “I think the demise of the old E&P, which was obsessed with the prizes, has a lot to do with it.” Joe Strupp used to do a great job getting judges to leak the finalists to Editor & Publisher.

Nitasha Tiku / Betabeat:

String of Executive Departures Leaves a Leadership Vacuum at the Top of Tumblr — Late Tuesday night, while most of New York City was “afk” enjoying the balmy weather, Tumblr CEO David Karp snuck a post onto the staff blog paying tribute to Storyboard—a team of journalists and editors assigned to …

Discussion: Digiday, Marketing Pilgrim, @justinnxt, AppNewser, Mashable and Mashable

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

‘The Bible’ on Fox News Channel? It almost happened — News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, right, wanted the miniseries “The Bible” for the Fox News Channel. (The Bible/Lightworkers Media and Hearst Entertainment/Rupert Murdoch/Associated Press / April 10, 2013)

Discussion: TVNewser

Jack Shafer:

Our national pastime: Press criticism — In early 1946, Albert Camus emptied into New Yorker press critic A.J. Liebling's ear his plan for a new newspaper. — “It would be a critical newspaper, to be published one hour after the first editions of the other papers, twice a day …

Eric Mark Do / MediaShift:

Toronto Star Tests Monthly E-Book Subscriptions — The Toronto Star is testing the e-book market with a dedicated subscription model. Launched in November 2012, Star Dispatches is the brainchild of the Toronto Star's marketing department. The Star already has more than 20 titles …

Discussion: @jeffsonderman

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

AOL Confirms Ned Brody Has Resigned As Head Of AOL Networks, CEO Armstrong Takes Over In The Interim [Memo] — Some turmoil in the management ranks at AOL, with Yahoo, apparently, hoping to profit as part of its ongoing hiring spree. AOL (which owns TechCrunch) has confirmed to us that Ned Brody …

Discussion: AllThingsD, Wall Street Journal, AdAge, Business Insider, FishbowlNY, MinOnline and SlashGear

Kelly Faircloth / Betabeat:

Yup, Looks Like It's Mostly Overworked Bloggers Who Use Google Reader — As part of its quest to build the perfect Google Reader replacement, Digg is surveying 17,000 people about how they used the service. With 8,000 responses already in, Digg has released some insight into what they've found.

Discussion: Digg Blog, Marketing Land and BetaNews

Bloomberg:

Time Warner Said to Be Frontrunner in Bid for Calik's ATV — Time Warner Inc. (TWX), the owner of HBO and Warner Bros. film studio, is in talks to buy Turkey's ATV television network from Calik Holdings AS, three people with knowledge of the situation said.

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of recycling journalism — There's an important number in his week's first-of-its-kind Newspaper Association of America report — The American Newspaper Media Industry Revenue Profile 2012 — on the evolution of revenue sources. That number: 8 percent.

Discussion: paidContent

Caitlin Dewey / WorldViews:

What time machine? Iranian news agency quietly deletes a report that Iran had built one. — Iran's semiofficial Fars News Agency seems to have retreated from its earlier, mind-boggling story saying that an Iranian scientist had invented the world's first time machine.

Discussion: Wired, The Huffington Post, SlashGear, Gawker and Foreign Policy