Mediagazer: Google: government censorship requests jumped 20% in last six months (Jeff John Roberts/GigaOM)

12:15 PM ET, April 25, 2013

Top News:

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

NY Times Overhauls Its Strategy With Tiered Pricing, Live Events and...Games? — Two years ago, the conventional wisdom in the newspaper business said people wouldn't pay for online news. — By a year ago at this time, the consensus had shifted, largely thanks to the success of The New York Times's …

Discussion: The New York Times Company, FishbowlNY, Media & Entertainment, Guardian, NetNewsCheck Latest, Poynter, Capital New York, The Wrap, The Huffington Post and Mashable

Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

The New York Times paywall has hit a growth wall — The New York Times just announced weak first-quarter results as advertising revenue slipped, but if you're trying to gauge the future health of America's preeminent newspaper, this is the key figure: 676,000 digital subscribers as of March 31 …

Discussion: VentureBeat, paidContent and New York Magazine

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

New York Times Co.'s Sales Miss Estimates as Ad Revenue Dives — New York Times Co. (NYT), the newspaper publisher controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, reported first-quarter sales that missed analysts' estimates as it continued to lose advertising dollars.

Discussion: The New York Times Company and New York Times

Jeff John Roberts / GigaOM:

Google: government censorship requests jumped 20% in last six months — Google has published its latest Transparency Report and the results are not encouraging for free speech advocates: governments around the world are asking to remove more content than ever before.

Discussion: TechCrunch, CNET, The Next Web and The Official Google Blog

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

SpinMedia Adds Vibe Magazine to Its Digital Portfolio, Minus the Magazine — Last year, Steve Hansen bought Spin magazine, killed the print edition, and kept the website. — Now he's singing the same song with a new title: Hansen's SpinMedia is buying Vibe, the 20-year-old hip-hop and R&B magazine …

Doug Stanglin / USA Today:

Student wrongly tied to Boston bombing found dead — Reddit apologized for the ‘dangerous speculation’ on the site that pointed fingers at the student. — A body pulled from the water in a Rhode Island park has been identified as a Brown University student who was mistakenly linked …

Discussion: Poynter, Fox News, The Independent, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, The New Yorker and Guardian

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

New York Times Rumored To Be Courting Atlantic's Editor — NEW YORK — New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson recently met with Atlantic Editor-in-Chief James Bennet and discussed the possibility of him returning to the paper he worked at for 15 years, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Dale Kasler / Sacramento Bee:

McClatchy Co. posts loss in first quarter — The McClatchy Co. today reported a first-quarter loss because of a continued decline in advertising and some one-time costs. — Sacramento-based McClatchy, which owns The Bee, said it lost $12.7 million, or 15 cents a share …

Discussion: PR Newswire and Poynter

Anthony Kosner / The Content Strategist:

What Publishers Can Learn from Google's Patented News Article Rankings — Google is the publisher's angel — and its devil. The search engine claims to connect “1 billion unique users a week to news content,” from 50,000 sources in 30 languages. (By comparison, a large publisher …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

WPP CEO Sorrell: Google Will Overtake News Corp As Our Largest Media Investment This Year Or Next — Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP, today laid out a stark picture of how significant a role digital is playing for the advertising giant. Speaking at the FT Digital Media Conference in London today …

Discussion: Guardian

Aurindom Mukherjee / Reuters:

Time Warner Cable revenue misses as data services disappoint — (Reuters) - Time Warner Cable Inc, the second-largest U.S. cable operator, reported first-quarter revenue below analysts' estimates as it added fewer-than-expected subscribers for its high-speed data services.

Discussion: Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Hollywood Reporter and RTTNews

Andrew Wallenstein / Variety:

A La Carte TV Will Never Be … The prospect of consumers getting the ability to choose which cable channels they want has proven to be a remarkably resilient fantasy. — Maybe that's because TV executives can't seem to resist giving the proposition just enough attention to make it seem possible.

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

CNBC names new international head — KC Sullivan has been appointed president and managing director of CNBC International, effective May 8 — Sullivan will report to CNBC's global president and CEO, Mark Hoffman. He replaces Satpal Brainch, who is moving to become executive vice president …