Mediagazer: AOL's Patch Limps Toward Profitability (Edmund Lee/Bloomberg)

5:25 PM ET, June 18, 2013

Top News:

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

Discussion: VentureBeat, Forbes, RT, Mercury News, Wired, Guardian, CNET, The Daily Beast, The Next Web, ZDNet, Digits, Engadget, @samgustin, @trevortimm, @eff, The Verge and ReadWrite

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

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

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
British Defense Officials Send Out Media Notice To Censor Further Leaks From Edward Snowden

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Isaac Chotiner / New Republic:

“What Part of ‘Politico’ Do You Not Understand?” — A conversation about the dark art of driving the conversation — The dominant mode of Washington journalism tends to both reflect and entrench the values of its era. The eminent writers and editors of the immediate postwar age …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Gawker, Mediaite, FishbowlDC, The Huffington Post, @bcappelbaum, @jayrosen_nyu and Poynter

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

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Photographer sues BuzzFeed for $3.6M over viral sharing model — A photographer says BuzzFeed should pay copyright damages not only for an unauthorized photo that appeared on its site — but for the dozens of other sites on which the photo appeared. — An Idaho photographer, Kai Eiselein …

Discussion: The Awl, Guardian, Poynter, WebProNews and FishbowlNY

Tim Kenneally / The Wrap:

Angelina Jolie Hacking Scandal: Stunt Double Says News Corp. Tampered With Her Phone — Eunice Huthart alleges her voicemail was intercepted by British newspaper News of the World — The phone-hacking scandal that's plagued News Corp. over the last few years has spread to bizarre new territory …

Discussion: BBC, Guardian, Deadline.com, PressGazette, Reuters, The Huffington Post and Courthouse News Service

@bbcbreaking: First civil phone #hacking claim in US is issued against News Corporation and News International, by former stunt double for Angelina Jolie

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

Study: Facebook third most popular news source in Arab world — Broadcasters Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya named top outlets for accessing news across the region, followed by Facebook — Copyright: Image by owenwbrown on Flickr. Some rights reserved — Facebook is the third most popular outlet …

Discussion: Yahoo! News

Shibley Telhami / Salon: Al Jazeera: The most-feared news network

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Next: Yahoo Also Eyeing Automated Video App Maker Qwiki in $50 Million Deal — According to sources close to the company, Yahoo is considering paying up to $50 million for Qwiki, the New York startup that makes an Apple iPhone app that allow users to turn photos, music and videos into short movies automatically.

Discussion: memeburn, Forbes, Business Insider, CNET, App Advice, Mashable and WebProNews

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

Sam Biddle / Valleywag:

Tumblr's Media Director Quits — Tumblr brought Mark Coatney aboard from Newsweek to bolster the site's editorial side—"to show how [Tumblr] can be key to connecting journalists and readers." Three years (and a Yahoo acquisition) later, and another early employee is gone. That's two in only a few weeks.

Discussion: Still Not Going To Do …, CNET, Business Insider, Betabeat and SlashGear

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Gallup: Only 23% of Americans trust newspapers, TV news — The bad news: Just 23 percent of Americans told Gallup they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, the same percentage who said they trust TV news. The good news: Both are still more popular than big business, organized labor, HMOs and Congress.

Discussion: MediaPost, Kirk LaPointe's …, Gallup and 24/7 Wall St.

Chris Ariens / FishbowlLA:

FishbowlLA Going on Hiatus — Mediabistro's FishbowlLA is taking five. In the meantime, FBLA co-editor Richard Horgan has moved over to FishbowlNY to cover the Hollywood trades, awards season and a broad range of national media stories. — Launched in 2005, the site has seen its fair share …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and 10,000 Words

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Future of 3-D TV Murky as ESPN Ends Channel — A few years ago, 3-D was hailed as the next big thing in television, the logical successor to high definition. But viewers in the United States did not buy the hype, and now the eye-popping format is seen as an expensive flop.

Discussion: Change of Subject, PSFK and Subtraction.com

Allan Sloan / Fortune:

Zell's legacy lives on: IRS goes after Tribune — By the time the final papers are shuffled, the IRS and local tax authorities are likely seek more than half a billion dollars from Tribune in regard to the sales of the Chicago Cubs and Newsday under former CEO Sam Zell.

Discussion: Poynter and DealBook

Erik Wemple:

Sharyl Attkisson: ‘I think I know’ source of computer breaches — CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson appears to be launching a media tour over her hacked computers. Yesterday she appeared on “CBS This Morning” with revelations that her computers would strangely turn on and off in the night …

Discussion: Mediaite