Mediagazer: Louis C.K.'s new HBO special is on sale for $5, DRM-free, through his website (Laura Hazard Owen/GigaOM)

2:45 PM ET, October 9, 2013

Top News:

All Is Fair in Love and Twitter — Right in the center of South Park, a large, grassy oval near San Francisco's financial district, there is a rinky-dink playground with slides, ladders and firefighter poles, all dented and dinged, connected by gritty brown pylons.

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Al Gore Tried To Buy Twitter And Merge It With Current. What If He'd Succeeded? — Don't you just love all the stuff that comes out when a hot tech company declares it's going public? I'm thinking in particular about a tidbit from Nick Bilton's piece in the Times magazine about the intrigue and betrayals in Twitter's early years.

Discussion: @jeffbercovici, Telegraph, Business Insider, Mashable and GigaOM

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Financial Times to move to single global print edition — The Financial Times is to institute path-breaking changes to the production of its printed newspaper that appear to be the penultimate step towards becoming a digital-only publication. — A lengthy memo sent yesterday afternoon …

Discussion: AdAge, @blakehounshell, @b50, Talking Biz News, @yavuzbaydar, @dicktofel, TheMediaBriefing.com and Strange Attractor

Rachel Bartlett / Journalism.co.uk:

Lionel Barber: FT.com to focus on ‘smart aggregation of content’ — In a memo to staff, published by the Financial Times today, editor Lionel Barber outlined ‘the next steps’ in its approach to digital-first' — The editor of the Financial Times has shared “the next steps” …

Discussion: Financial Times, USA Today, Telegraph, @mirkolorenz and @mathewi

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Twitter Gets Its Strongest TV Tie-Up So Far, With an Ambitious Comcast Deal — Twitter has been trying to buddy up with the TV industry for the past few years. Now it has its it biggest payoff yet: A far-reaching deal with Comcast that aims to turn the social network into a TV-watching service.

Discussion: Comcast, New York Times, AdAge, Forbes, Broadcasting & Cable, TechCrunch, The Wrap, GigaOM, blog.twitter.com, Wired, Reuters, @digitalshields, BuzzFeed, @dangillmor, @lucas_shaw, The Next Web, @peterlauria3, @pkafka and Engadget

Darren Boyle / Press Gazette:

Rusbridger defends Snowden leaks claiming ‘any terrorist who can tie his shoelaces’ is aware of surveillance — Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger dismissed criticism of his paper's Edward Snowden surveillance revelations claiming that any terrorist who can tie his shoe laces knows that the internet is being monitored.

Discussion: Guardian and Hillicon Valley

Nick Hopkins / Guardian:
MI5 chief's criticism of Snowden and the Guardian is hardly unexpected

Discussion: Telegraph, Press Gazette, Daily Mail, Channel 4, ITV News, Fox News, @ggreenwald, The Week UK, UPI, Techdirt, International Business Times, Sky News, The Independent, @arusbridger and BBC

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

BuzzFeed president: ‘We feel strongly that traditional media have given up on young people’ — Jon Steinberg tells MIPCOM audience that his site is ‘bringing more hard news on a relative basis than a lot of the traditional television networks’ — News site BuzzFeed attracted 85m unique visitors in August …

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's … and @nedregotten

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Journalists of the Jersey Shore: How a novice reporter built a news network from scratch — The first post went up sometime just before 2:34 p.m. on September 12. — Post by Jersey Shore Hurricane News. — Just a few minutes later, the first of 375 comments went up on the next post …

Discussion: @rdmersey and @jbenton

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

UK press on collision course with Parliament over regulation plan which would ‘fatally undermine freedom of expression’ — The newspaper and magazine industry is on a collision course with the Government after condemning proposals on press regulation which could “fatally undermine freedom of expression”.

Discussion: @domponsford, BBC and The Huffington Post

Guardian:
Lord Justice Leveson faces standoff with MPs over press regulation

Discussion: Press Gazette, @joshhalliday and Big News Network.com

Peter Sterne / Capital New York:

A young woman ‘languishing’ at CBS gets a quick career assist from Mika Brzezinski — On Tuesday night, “Morning Joe” cohost Mika Brzezinski—looking elegant in a ruffled black dress and a black coat with a ruffled fringe to match—stood in a pair of Louboutins before a long line of young women …

Discussion: @nishachittal, @mikiebarb, @petersterne, @morningmika, @reidpillifant, @janestreet and The Huffington Post

Ed Pilkington / Guardian:

Chelsea Manning rejects ‘pacifist’ label in first statement since sentencing — Exclusive: In first public remarks since guilty verdict, WikiLeaks source expresses intense upset at public presentation of her — Chelsea Manning, the WikiLeaks source formerly known as Bradley Manning …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, TIME and WJLA-TV

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Score one for AOL, winning online rights to ESPN clips — A syndication deal puts ESPN content — not games but clips like SportsCenter segments and game highlights — on AOL and its other sites like Huffington Post, with ESPN selling ads and sharing the revenue. — Follow @@joan_e

Discussion: Adweek, Variety, Broadcasting & Cable, Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

The Week Gets Its Third Publisher in Three Years — The Week, the offline/online news aggregator, has a new publisher. — Tim Koorbusch, who had been running U.S. sales for Say Media for the last year, has replaced Michael Wolfe, who joined the company at the beginning of 2012.

Discussion: Publishing Executive …

Politico:

No healthcare questions at Obama presser — President Barack Obama sustained an hour-long press conference today without a single question about his signature healthcare law and the glitches that continue to plague the insurance exchanges — a point that frustrated several conservatives.