Mediagazer: Rap Genius launches ‘News Genius’ to explain current events (Carl Franzen/The Verge)

1:25 PM ET, May 1, 2013

Top News:

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Time Inc. Revenues, Subscription Dollars Down — Later this year Time Warner is supposed to jettison Time Inc., its iconic publishing arm. Today's earnings results illustrate why. And they also make it tough to imagine Time Inc.'s appeal to public investors.

Discussion: Radio & Television … and FishbowlNY

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

Time Warner CEO downplays idea of offering HBO Go as stand-alone — A scene from HBO's “Game of Thrones.” (HBO) — Don't count on being able to subscribe to Time Warner's HBO as a stand-alone service anytime soon. — Speaking to analysts on an earnings call for its first-quarter results …

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:
Time Warner Beats Profit Estimates on Higher Sales to Cable

Discussion: The Wrap, Reuters, Associated Press, CNNMoney.com and Seeking Alpha

Robinson Meyer / The Atlantic Online:

The Company That's Buying Up All the Key Pieces of the Online News Ecosystem — Betaworks has its tentacles in nearly every part of how stories are made, read, and measured. — In the past couple years, an ecology of sorts has come into being among online news sites.

Discussion: @berkowitzrtrs, @lexilewtan, @mededitor, @richgor, @axb21, @stilgherrian and Kirk LaPointe's …

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Former Times-Picayune editors will lead Baton Rouge Advocate, which has a new owner — Former New Orleans Times-Picayune managing editors Dan Shea and Peter Kovacs will serve as General Manager and Editor, respectively, of the Baton Rouge Advocate, which announced it had been purchased …

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, WWL, Blog of New Orleans, Gambit and WWL-TV

The Advocate:

Georges buys The Advocate — John Georges, who took over a small family company and transformed it into a billion-dollar business, completed a deal Tuesday to buy The Advocate, the largest daily newspaper in Louisiana. The Advocate, which dates back 171 years and serves readers from Lafayette …

Brian Fung / The Atlantic Online:

Retwact: A Tool for Fixing Twitter's Misinformation Problem — Can an enterprising developer striking out on his own solve one of the social network's biggest flaws? — Even worse than the pornbots and trolls, one of Twitter's enduring drawbacks is that there's no reliable way to issue corrections with the service.

Discussion: The Next Web and eMedia Vitals

Maureen Farrell / CNNMoney.com:

Peter Thiel: Twitter will outlast the New York Times — Tech visionaries Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen disagree on the promise of Twitter, but both see a relatively long lifespan for the social media firm. At least in Internet years. — In a debate with Andreessen …

Discussion: Betabeat

Carl Franzen / The Verge:

Rap Genius launches ‘News Genius’ to explain current events — Rap Genius, the popular site that lets users explain rap lyrics by annotating specific words and lines with their own descriptions and links to supporting facts, is looking to expand its reach to cover more current events and breaking news.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Betabeat, TechCrunch and Valleywag

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

The Atlantic launches a new ebook division; will sell e-singles and curated collections — The Atlantic is launching an ebooks division that will publish e-singles and curated collections of content from the magazine's archives. The first e-single is only available through Amazon's Kindle Singles store …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Erik Wemple:

Father of New York Post ‘Bag Man’ seeks legal counsel — El Houssein Barhoum is the father of one of the young men depicted on the April 18 cover of the New York Post. “Bag Men,” read the headline, with this explanation: “Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.”

Discussion: Yahoo! News, FishbowlNY, Gawker and New York Magazine

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Following pilot, Hachette will make all of its ebooks available to libraries nationwide — Hachette announced Wednesday that it will make all of its ebooks, including new titles, available to libraries nationwide. New ebooks will be priced at three times the cost of the print version, but a library only has to buy a copy once.

Discussion: New York Times, Associated Press and Digital Book World

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk:

Washington Post trials ThingLink Mobile — The Washington Post is the first news outlet to use a pre-release version of the ThingLink Mobile app, creating interactive images of the White House Correspondents' Dinner — The Washington Post is the first news outlet to use ThingLink Mobile, a new iOS app due to launch next month.

Discussion: Mediashift

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Allbritton Communications, Politico Parent Company, Exploring Sale Of TV Stations — NEW YORK — Robert Allbritton, chairman of Politico parent company Allbritton Communications, notified staff Wednesday that the company is considering the sale of its two Washington, D.C.-area channels …

Discussion: Poynter, Politico, Broadcasting & Cable, FishbowlDC, Erik Wemple, bizjournals, @stevebuttry, TVSpy, @rajunarisetti and @bydanielvictor

Bryan Bishop / The Verge:

Netflix losing almost 1,800 titles from its streaming library — Netflix may have more original programming coming in the months ahead, but the company is also going to be losing quite a few titles as well. According to InstantWatcher, a site that catalogs the comings and goings …

Discussion: Slate, Mashable, Fortune, CNET, New York Post, Gothamist, TVWeek.com, Deadline.com, PC Magazine, Softpedia News, The Age, TechRadar.com, Polygon, Examiner, Contactmusic.com, The Commentator, The Atlantic Wire, UPI, Indiewire Blogs …, Electronista, Daily Mail, @carr2n, WebProNews and /Film

Kurt Opsahl / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Craigslist Owns What You Did Last Summer — Did you post an ad on craigslist between July 26, 2012 and August 8, 2012? If so, bad news for you. Turns out that craigslist, and not you, owns that ad. In other words, if you try to repost it to another site, you could actually be infringing craigslist's copyright.

Discussion: Bloomberg, Techdirt, CNET, Plagiarism Today, GigaOM and TechCrunch

Andrew Wallenstein / Variety:

Emmys Double Down on Second Screen … TV's increasing efforts to target viewers across platforms is connecting with one important audience: the TV Academy. For this year's edition of Primetime Emmys, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is doubling down on its commitment to show love for interactive programming.

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Barry Diller's IAC Posts Higher First-Quarter Financials — The Internet company's media operations tripled their revenue after the consolidation of News_Beast, but brought in a wider operating loss. — Barry Diller's IAC late Tuesday reported higher first-quarter financials as its media assets posted mixed results.

Discussion: Forbes, New York Post, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg

Seth Rosenblatt / CNET:

YouTube goes to Washington — YouTube extends a friendly smile and some enhanced features to Congress as it quietly encroaches on C-Span's turf. — Google's popular video channel and its public policy group have teamed up to provide members of Congress with feature-enhanced video channels today.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Google Public Policy Blog, WebProNews and Hillicon Valley

Erik Gruenwedel / Home Media Magazine:

Study: 45 Million People Watch TV, Original Programs Online Monthly — About 45 million Americans, or 19% of the domestic 238.5 million adult population, watches repurposed TV shows and original video programs online on a monthly basis, according to new data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) from research firm GfK.

Discussion: Variety, FierceCable, Tubefilter, PYMNTS.com and bizjournals