Mediagazer: Maker Studios Founder Danny Zappin Buys Website NewMediaRockstars (Todd Spangler/Variety)

3:27 PM ET, October 17, 2013

Top News:

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

The extraordinary promise of the new Greenwald-Omidyar venture (UPDATED) — Adversarial muckrakers + civic-minded billionaire = a whole new world — Make no mistake, news that Glenn Greenwald is leaving The Guardian to start a new publication funded by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar is giant news …

Discussion: The Monkey Cage, GigaOM, Wired, @joshuafoust, @20committee, The Huffington Post, The New York Observer, Kirk LaPointe's …, Washington Post, Forbes, TheBlaze.com, Subtraction.com, FishbowlNY, The Drum and Pressthink

Will Bunch / Philly.com:
Civic-minded billionaires like Omidyar and Bezos will save journalism, and that's not so bad

Discussion: Guardian, BBC, @adrianchen, Press Gazette, @joseiswriting, Mashable, Media Law Prof Blog and CNET

Business Wire:

Mike Hopkins Named CEO of Hulu — LOS ANGELES—(BUSINESS WIRE)—The Hulu Board of Directors today named Mike Hopkins the Company's new CEO. Hopkins, a Hulu Board Director since 2011, has served as President of Distribution for Fox Networks Group, a division of 21st Century Fox, since 2008.

Discussion: @walkert and @cnbcnow

Andrew Wallenstein / Variety:

It's Official: Mike Hopkins Named CEO of Hulu — Interim CEO Andy Forssell exits — Hulu has announced Fox Networks distribution chief as CEO of Hulu. — Interim CEO Andy Forssell will be leaving the company. — “After an extensive search, Mike was simply the best candidate for the job.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck.com and Engadget

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Union warns ‘Philadelphia Inquirer’ employees to be ‘careful what you say’ — Stormy weather at ‘The Philadelphia Inquirer.’ — The union that represents hundreds of employees at the embattled Philadelphia Inquirer has a warning for them. — “It has become painfully clear that your work emails …

Discussion: The Huffington Post and @abeaujon

Rem Rieder / USA Today:
Philly newspaper stars in ugly melodrama

Discussion: Philly.com, Philly.com, Philadelphia Magazine, Philadelphia Magazine and Philebrity.com

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

IsoHunt to Shut Down After Settlement With Hollywood Studios — The BitTorrent indexer has agreed to pay $110 million to resolve a copyright infringement case. — The Motion Picture Association of America has announced that it has reached a settlement with the operators of IsoHunt …

Discussion: GigaOM, Ars Technica, Deadline.com, Variety, Techdirt and The Next Web

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Maker Studios Founder Danny Zappin Buys Website NewMediaRockstars — Danny Zappin, former CEO and co-founder of YouTube multichannel network Maker Studios, has acquired Internet video news website NewMediaRockstars, seeking to build it into what he envisions as an Entertainment Weekly for online entertainment.

Discussion: The Wrap, FishbowlNY, AllThingsD and YouTube News

Brian Lowry / Variety:

News' Need to Pump Web Traffic Presents Speedbump for Network TV Coverage — For years, the interests of TV networks and newspapers were pretty closely aligned - today, however, the old rules are shifting — For years, the interests of TV networks and newspapers were pretty closely aligned, or seemed to be.

Discussion: @davidpoland

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Cameron's triple panics are responsible for the press regulation stalemate — The political attempt to appease regional publishers by tinkering with the cross-party royal charter on press regulation has failed to change their minds. — It looks as though the companies that own Britain's 1,200 regional …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Guardian and Techdirt

Tom Cheredar / VentureBeat:

NewsCred launches NewsRoom, a freelance-based news wire service — Nov. 12 - 13, 2013 — While the majority of demands for syndicated content comes from well-established publications like the New York Times, there is need for content that's a bit more niche — either in subject matter or the depth of reporting.

Discussion: Fast Company, Forbes and Mashable

Steve Keenan / World Travel Market:

Amazon pulls Bill Bryson interview ebook reprint over copyright claim — Blogger beware - the battle over Bill Bryson's words — In 1994, freelance travel writer Mike Gerrard interviewed illustrious author Bill Bryson for a magazine called Passport. The article duly appeared.

Discussion: Financial Post, @101holidays, @strwbilly, @matthewteller and @stevenkeenan

Joe Coscarelli / New York Magazine:

How Robert Costa Became the Golden Boy of the Government Shutdown — As the dust settles from the government shutdown and debt-ceiling standoff, and while John Boehner and Ted Cruz figure out what's next from out the wreckage, at least one man on the right is giddy.

Discussion: Politico, @jaketapper, @jonathanchait, @danfostertype, @jayrosen_nyu and @billwasik

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

Apple Gets Its E-Book Antitrust Monitor — The federal judge who found Apple guilty of colluding with five of the six largest publishers in the U.S. in an e-book price-fixing scheme has chosen the external antitrust compliance monitors charged with making sure the company doesn't overstep the law again.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Books News & Features, Macgasm, The Mac Observer, Silicon Valley Business …, Fortune and AppleInsider

Andrew Albanese / Publishers Weekly:

Macmillan to Offer Entire E-book Backlist to Libraries — Less than a year after launching a pilot with its Minotaur Press imprint, Macmillan officials today confirmed that it will expand its library e-book offerings to include its entire e-book backlist, more than 11,000 titles.

Discussion: GigaOM and Publishers Lunch

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

More code, more coders: Knight invests $4 million to expand Knight-Mozilla partnership — The Knight Foundation is reinvesting in Knight-Mozilla OpenNews to help grow the community of journalism-centered hackers and find ways to better integrate them into media companies.

Discussion: Online News Association, Poynter and Knight Foundation

Sami Aboudi / Reuters:

Abu Dhabi-based Sky News Arabia says has lost contact with crew in Syria — (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi-based Sky News Arabia said on Thursday it had lost contact with three crew members on assignment in northern Syria, considered the world's most dangerous place for journalists, and appealed for help to locate them.

Discussion: Guardian, Sky News, and breaking and Associated Press

Kyle Alspach / Boston Business Journal:

Brightcove gets AOL video unit as customer for Zencoder — Brightcove on Thursday announced that its Zencoder video encoding service is now being used by The AOL On Network, which houses all of AOL's video offerings. — Zencoder will power transcoding for all 15 content channels of The AOL On Network …

Discussion: Streaming Media and The Convergence