Mediagazer: Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments (Suzanne LaBarre/Popular Science)

3:35 PM ET, September 24, 2013

Top News:

Suzanne LaBarre / Popular Science:

Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments — Starting today, PopularScience.com will no longer accept comments on new articles. Here's why. — Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off. — It wasn't a decision we made lightly.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, Folio, GigaOM, Poynter, @thegarance and The Verge

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Dan Colarusso named executive editor of Reuters Digital — Dan Colarusso is the new executive editor of Reuters Digital, making him the third person this year to hold that title at the news service. — His appointment, announced in an internal memo obtained by Capital …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, The Wrap, Politico, @niemanlab, @peterlauria3, @peterlauria3, @joepompeo and @antderosa

Eric Newton / Columbia Journalism Review:

Paying attention to the shield law's critics — Journalists shouldn't blindly support the shield law without taking in the whole picture — When a Senate committee this month approved the “Free Flow of Information Act of 2013,” applause was heard from scores of media shield law supporters …

Discussion: BuzzMachine, @heychrisbarr, Slate, Kirk LaPointe's … and @jeffjarvis

Rem Rieder / USA Today:

TV news should have on-air fact-checkers — You don't usually think of ESPN's Tony Kornheiser as a journalism ethics sage. A font of sports one-liners, sure. An adviser on ways to improve news outlets' accountability, not so much. But the co-host of Pardon the Interruption is on to something …

Discussion: @antderosa, @davidfolkenflik and TVSpy

Tony Maglio / The Wrap:

Aereo Expands to Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and San Antonio — Aereo, Inc. is adding four new cities to its nationwide expansion: Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana, and San Antonio, Texas. — The combined population of those four markets is eight million people.

Discussion: VentureBeat, multichannel.com/rss, Variety, Digital Journal and Broadcast

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Long-running UK music magazine experiments with micro-charges for digital access — NME to experiment with online charges — Magazine will charge 69p for access to ‘enhanced digital’ version of its cover feature but says there are no plans for a full paywall

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

No new TV viewers or newspaper subscribers are being born, BuzzFeed president says — Speaking at a NewsCred conference last week, BuzzFeed President Jon Steinberg talked about his theory that content, and the ways it is distributed, will be “completely decoupled, I would say, in the next five years.”

Discussion: @stuartdredge and @dianaruggontv

Gavriel Hollander / Press Gazette:

News Corp reveals phone-hacking legal costs of £238m — Rupert Murdoch's media empire has spent $382m (£238m) over the past two years on legal fees dealing with the aftermath of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. — In its annual report, released over the weekend …

Discussion: @colvinius, FishbowlNY, @jeffjarvis, The Huffington Post and Crikey

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Pinterest Appeals To Publishers With New Article Pins, Pushes To Become A Bookmarking & “Read It Later” Service — Only days after announcing the launch of ads, social networking site Pinterest is now making an appeal to publishers. The company is today rolling out an updated “article” …

Discussion: Fast Company, GigaOM, Guardian, @acbarette, Engadget, ReadWrite, The Verge and Mashable

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Hub of the Twitterverse: The Boston Globe has built a localized, tweet-powered news aggregator — In the Boston area, the passing of a Dunkin Donuts franchise is news. So are the finer points of Tom Brady's hair. But in this instance, we know the closing of the Mass Ave.

Discussion: paidContent, @geninnovate and @niemanlab

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

YouTube Announces A New Commenting System, Powered By Google+, With Threaded, Ranked And Private Conversations — YouTube today announced a new commenting system that will be powered by Google+. The system, which is launching on channel discussion tabs this week before rolling out to all videos …

Discussion: AllThingsD, CNET, The Verge, YouTube Blog and The Next Web

Paul Carr / PandoDaily:

To “save NSFWCORP”, founder publicly solicits investors on first day of loosened SEC rules — A change in fundraising law, but is there still time to save NSFWCORP from a forced pivot? — You've seen it, of course. “Brewster's Millions,” the movie — so popular that Hollywood remade …

Discussion: Mediashift, Felix Salmon, @saramorrison, @jason_pontin, @aronsolomon, @rafat, @jason_pontin, @paulcarr, @rafat, Washington Post, VentureBeat, @entropymedia, @aulia, @maura, @nbj914, @pankajontech, @rafat and @mathewi

Steven Musil / CNET:

Judge appears to back Google's defense of digital books project — Judge's comments suggest he finds merit in the Web giant's assertion that the project is exempt from copyright laws under the fair use provision. — A U.S. judge made comments Monday that suggest favor for Google's defense …

Discussion: PublishersWeekly.com, paidContent, Reuters, The Atlantic Wire, Forbes and Bloomberg

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

Troy Young Is Reinventing Hearst Digital With a Wrecking Ball — Digital President's Brusque Managing Style Brought In to Boost Web Presence of Cosmo, Esquire — Unlike his buttoned-up peers in the executive suite at Hearst, Troy Young doesn't keep an office, nor does he wear designer suits to work.

Discussion: @troyyoung, @elishahartwig and eMedia Vitals

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

With LiveAd, Ustream Customers Can Promote Their Video Content With Interactive Ads — Live video company Ustream has been quietly transforming itself, according to co-founder and CEO Brad Hunstable, who said the company has switched from being an ad-supported media business to a technology provider …

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Google Removes ‘BitTorrent’ From Piracy Search Filter — For two years Google has been filtering “piracy-related” terms from its ‘Autocomplete’ and ‘Instant’ services. — Google users searching for terms like “The Pirate Bay”, “RapidShare” and “isoHunt” will notice that no suggestions …

Discussion: Search Engine Land, @glynmoody, Techie News, Softpedia News and GigaOM

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:

Spotify Launches In Taiwan, Argentina, Greece and Turkey — Spotify has launched in Argentina, Greece, Turkey and Taiwan, bringing its streaming music platform to a total of 32 countries. — The heart of the Mandopop (Mandarin pop) industry, Taiwan marks the latest step in Spotify's Asia expansion …

Discussion: The Next Web, Hollywood Reporter, Wall Street Journal and Music Week