Mediagazer: Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment (Craig Timberg/Washington Post)

7:05 AM ET, June 19, 2013

Top News:

Tim Dickinson / Rolling Stone:

Michael Hastings, ‘Rolling Stone’ Contributor, Dead at 33 — The bold journalist died in a car accident in Los Angeles — Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned.

Eric W. Dolan / The Raw Story:

Journalist Michael Hastings dies in car crash — The journalist and author Michael Hastings died at the age of 33 on Tuesday morning. According to his employer BuzzFeed, Hastings was killed in a car crash in Los Angeles. — “We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone …

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Michael Hastings - journalists pay tribute to ‘fearless’ war correspondent — Reporter who was killed in a car accident on Tuesday had little time for ‘spinmeisters’ and an incredible instinct, say colleagues — Tributes have poured in for the award-winning journalist and war correspondent …

Discussion: BuzzFeed

Craig Timberg / Washington Post:

Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment — Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests the court makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it is forced to give the government.

Discussion: Forbes, Marketing Pilgrim, Reuters, Electronic Frontier Foundation, ReadWrite, The Daily Caller, Techdirt, Quartz, Salon, CNNMoney.com, @rajunarisetti, Mashable, Hillicon Valley, TechCrunch, GigaOM, VentureBeat, RT, Mercury News, The Next Web, Wired, Guardian, AllThingsD, Digits, Engadget, CNET, @samgustin, @eff, The Daily Beast, ZDNet, @trevortimm and NYT Bits

Salvador Rodriguez / Los Angeles Times:
Yahoo discloses how much government data requests it gets

Discussion: Business Insider, Engadget, Valleywag, Christian Science Monitor, TechRadar.com, Bloomberg, The Register, The Independent, ZDNet, CNN, CNNMoney.com, BBC, Reuters and Guardian

Adam Haigh / Bloomberg:

News Corp. Spinoff Falls in Sydney After Murdoch Split — News Corp. (NNC), the Wall Street Journal publisher spun off by Rupert Murdoch, fell in its Sydney debut as stock in the billionaire's newspaper assets started trading separately in a split from his entertainment businesses.

Discussion: Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, Business Spectator, TheAustralian and Wall Street Journal

Dominic Rushe / Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch splits empire but keeps faith in tomorrow's newspapers — Mogul to hive off entertainment and publishing assets but believes newspaper businesses will emerge stronger than ever — Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation will be split in half on Wednesday as the mogul hopes to build …

Discussion: Guardian and Big News Network.com

Josh Sternberg / Digiday:

How PBS Won at Digital — Millions of Americans can point to PBS as a third parent, as the network that helped raise them with programs like “Sesame Street” and “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.” — But PBS is not immune to the transition from analog to digital and needs to continually reinvent itself.

Janko Roettgers / paidContent:

Yet another YouTube funding: Bedrocket invests in Shira Lazar's What's Trending — Thought there was no money in producing original content for YouTube's audience? The folks at Bedrocket Entertainment beg to differ — and just invested in What's Trending.

Discussion: The Next Web and Variety

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

More on the Plane That Didn't Crash, and ‘Truthiness’ — A few weeks ago, I wrote about the plane that didn't crash - that is, about a Lives piece in The Times Magazine that has drawn significant criticism from aviation experts including Patrick ("Ask the Pilot") Smith and from James Fallows …

Mitch Stoltz / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Looking Deeper into MPAA's Copyright Agenda — It's time to rethink copyright law, say the U.S. Register of Copyrights and the chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. Hearings, speeches, and lots of quiet maneuvering have begun to shape “the next great copyright act.”

Andrew Wallenstein / Variety:

Netflix Announces Next Market: the Netherlands — Country likely to be the company's only overseas addition in 2013 — Netflix is going Dutch. — The Netherlands will be the next country to get the streaming service, the company announced late Tuesday.

Discussion: PR Newswire, paidContent, Home Media Magazine, TechCrunch, Softpedia News and The Next Web

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

AOL's Patch Limps Toward Profitability — After more than five years of reporting on school-board meetings and community bake sales, AOL Inc. (AOL)'s Patch is now at the center of another story: whether the company's bet on local news can be profitable. — Patch, with more than 900 sites …

Discussion: Street Fight

Tom Kludt / Talking Points Memo:

Nate Silver: Politico Co-Founders Lack ‘Curiosity For The World Outside Of The Bubble’ — Nate Silver has some thoughts about Politico. Plenty of them. — In an email sent Tuesday to TPM (posted below), Silver — who nailed the 2012 presidential election by correctly forecasting the outcome …

Discussion: @evgenymorozov and The Huffington Post