Mediagazer: Belo Revenue up 3% in First Quarter (Michael Malone/Broadcasting & Cable)

1:25 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, Poynter, NetNewsCheck Latest, Capital New York, The Wrap, Kirk LaPointe's … 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, The Huffington Post and New York Magazine

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Times Company sees sale of ‘Boston Globe’ in second half of 2013 — The New York Times Co. expects to have a buyer for its New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe, sometime in the second half of the year, a company executive said on today's first-quarter earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

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

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 …

Discussion: AdAge, New York Times, FishbowlNY and mediabistro.com

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 it to remove more content than ever before.

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

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.

Discussion: FishbowlDC and Slate

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:
When straight-keeper in chief Jill Abramson gets the tabloid treatment

Discussion: Politico, Media News, The Huffington Post, Poynter, @tonymedia and @dylanbyers

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

Michael Malone / Broadcasting & Cable:

Belo Revenue up 3% in First Quarter — Broadcaster forecasts total revenue to decrease in Q2 — Belo reported total revenue of $160.3 million in the first quarter, 2.8% higher than the first quarter of 2012. Core spot revenue was up about 2%, with a 7% increase in national spot revenue and 1% decrease in local spot revenue.

Discussion: Radio & Television …

BBC:

Leveson report: Newspapers reject press regulation plans — A number of newspapers are to publish a proposal for self-regulation backed by royal charter, after rejecting plans drawn up by the main political parties. — The government and Labour Party agreed to a royal charter last month …

Discussion: Guardian, Telegraph, politics.co.uk and BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

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 and The New Yorker

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 …