Mediagazer: Amazon launches its AutoRip feature in the UK and Europe (Stuart Dredge/Music Ally)

4:35 AM ET, June 27, 2013

Top News:

Glenn Greenwald / Guardian:

The personal side of taking on the NSA: emerging smears — Distractions about my past and personal life have emerged - an inevitable side effect for those who challenge the US government — When I made the choice to report aggressively on top-secret NSA programs, I knew that I would inevitably …

Discussion: NY Daily News, Gawker, Capital New York, New York Magazine, @jeremyscahill, Techdirt, @blakehounshell, Mediaite, @dankennedy_nu, @feldmaniac, @fmanjoo, Politico and pressgazette.co.uk

Alex Berenson / New York Times:

Snowden, Through the Eyes of a Spy Novelist — FOR a spy novelist like me, the Edward J. Snowden story has everything. A man driven by ego and idealism — can anyone ever distinguish the two? — leaves his job and his beautiful girlfriend behind. He must tell the world the Panopticon has arrived.

Discussion: msnbc.com

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
Secrecy Is the Problem — Some people say that Edward Snowden …

Discussion: Politico

Harrison Weber / The Next Web:
WikiLeaks and Assange lawyer decides not to represent Snowden, claims his “whereabouts are unknown”

Discussion: WikiLeaks, BBC, Softpedia News, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Associated Press

Erik Wemple:

Bloomberg News reporter had 18 ledes ready for Supreme Court rulings — Persistent mistakes by news organizations on big, national stories have spawned a growing consensus in journalism circles. Better to be right than first, goes the thinking. People won't remember who was first to report …

Discussion: BuzzFeed, Politico, Mediaite, Poynter, Poynter, Poynter, Forbes, Gawker, @stefanjbecket, Talking Biz News and The Huffington Post

Roger Yu / USA Today:

Twitter CEO sees role for editors: Weed through tweets — WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo urged newsroom editors in the U.S. to embrace the service and news media's increasingly important role in synthesizing and analyzing millions of tweets that are produced daily.

Eliza Kern / GigaOM:

Twitter is testing ways to replay live events, but can it separate signal from noise? — Twitter knows that it has a problem: a replay problem. — The social network that's now used by about one in five Americans is at its best during a live news event. There's no substitute …

Discussion: TechCrunch, The Verge, Washington Post, Gizmodo, US News and Nieman Journalism Lab

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

CNN Lays Off Some Staff In DC — CNN has quietly laid off a handful of staffers in its Washington DC bureau. — We hear that most of the departures were senior level producers and staff, many on specific beats like the White House, national security and the Department of Justice, and who had been with the channel for a long time.

Discussion: FishbowlDC, Inside Cable News, Politico, All Things CNN and FishbowlNY

CNN:
Crossfire Returns — Newt Gingrich, S.E. Cupp, Stephanie Cutter …

Discussion: TVNewser, Mediaite, Politico, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, Variety, The Wrap, @dylanbyers, @sgallman and FishbowlDC

Tim Westergren / Pandora Blog:

Pandora and Royalties — (Warning: This is long, but I'd really like to fully articulate Pandora's perspective on royalties, which is simply impossible to do in just a few sentences.) — Over 13 years ago when I started this company, we set out with a singular mission …

Discussion: The Next Web, CNET, SlashGear and Gizmodo

Tom Cheredar / VentureBeat:
Cue the fight music: Pandora responds to Pink Floyd's op-ed on lower royalty rates

Discussion: the understatement, Radio & Television …, Forbes, Plagiarism Today, GigaOM and The Verge

The Wrap:

Newsday Shuts Down Westchester, N.Y., Branch (Exclusive) — Cablevision, which owns Newsday, shut down its year-old Westchester site effective immediately, an insider with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap. No statement from Cablevision yet, but its official Twitter account, @NewsdayNY, and Facebook is already gone.

Discussion: lohud.com, Poynter and FishbowlNY

Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:

Amazon launches its AutoRip feature in the UK and Europe — Amazon's AutoRip service launched in the US in January, providing customers with digitised versions of the CD albums they'd bought from its website, and later adding vinyl too. Now AutoRip is crossing the Atlantic, launching in France …

Discussion: PC Pro, BBC, Guardian, Connected Digital World, Irish Independent, The Next Web, Pocket-lint, The Verge and Engadget

Aaron Mesh / Willamette Week:

Black and White and Red All Over — Owners of the Oregonian gamble on the newspaper's digital future. — The death of The Oregonian as you know it came at 9:58 am on June 20. — That's when reporters, editors, photographers and designers who put out the 163-year-old daily newspaper were told to …

Discussion: New Orleans Times-Picayune, TVSpy and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:

Stop pretending it's all a party: The social contract of working at a startup — Perhaps it's because I've worked my whole career in media and startups. But I'm having a hard time getting super lathered up about Bloomberg's takedown of what it is like to work at Fab.

Discussion: GigaOM, ZDNet and betashop

Matthew Kauffman / The Scoop:

You Want Those Public Records? That'll Be $16 Million Please. — When reporters at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution sought access to public records about tax-lien sales that were costing residents of Fulton County millions of dollars, officials said the newspaper could have the data - for a fee.