Mediagazer: Amazon pulls Bill Bryson interview ebook reprint over copyright claim (Steve Keenan/World Travel Market)

1:15 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: GigaOM, Wired, The Monkey Cage, The New York Observer, The Huffington Post, Kirk LaPointe's …, Washington Post, FishbowlNY and Subtraction.com

Will Bunch / Philly.com:

Civic-minded billionaires like Omidyar and Bezos will save journalism, and that's not so bad — Like it or not, this is the future of American journalism — It I had a dime for every story that I've read over the last decade about how to save American journalism, I'd probably have as much money as this guy.

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

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: @abeaujon

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

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

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, @matthewteller, @strwbilly and @stevenkeenan

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: Guardian and Techdirt

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

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: AllThingsD and YouTube News

Ricardo Bilton / VentureBeat:

The rise of ‘dark search’ is great for publishers, bad for keyword stuffers — At Google, the keyword is inching towards its inevitable, overdue demise. But then again, maybe its death is already here. Over the past few months publishers have seem a dramatic rise in the amount of traffic …

Bloomberg:

Ziggo Turns Down Liberty Global's Takeover Bid as Too Low — Ziggo NV (ZIGGO), the Dutch cable-television provider, rejected a takeover proposal from shareholder Liberty Global Plc in a setback for billionaire John Malone's European expansion plan. — Calling Liberty Global's preliminary offer …

Discussion: Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Hollywood Reporter and DealBook

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, The Mac Observer, Macgasm, Silicon Valley Business …, Books News & Features, Fortune and AppleInsider

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

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Digital subscriptions to the Times and Sunday Times top 150,000 — News UK reveals that the two titles have a total of 350,000 subscribers to print and online editions — News UK has revealed that the number of digital subscribers to the Times and Sunday Times has topped 150,000.