Mediagazer: New FCC chair was industry lobbyist, but might not be industry shill (Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica)

8:30 AM ET, November 7, 2013

Top News:

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

THE COST OF WINNING: Tim Armstrong, Patch, And The Struggle To Save AOL — On an overcast Friday afternoon last August, a hundred or so employees of AOL's local news subsidiary, Patch, crammed into a cafeteria at the company's headquarters in Manhattan. Another several hundred connected to the room via conference call.

Discussion: @nichcarlson, @tomkrazit, @ivanthek, @thestalwart and @rgpelayo

DISH Network:

Blockbuster to End Domestic Retail, DVD By Mail Services — Blockbuster to close remaining U.S. company-owned stores, DVD By Mail services by early-January 2014 Franchised and licensed stores in the U.S. and abroad to remain open for business ENGLEWOOD, Colo.—(BUSINESS WIRE) …

Discussion: Bloomberg, Businessweek, New York Times, FilmDrunk, VatorNews, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times, Forbes, Online NewsHour, Corporate Intelligence, bizjournals, /Film, Betabeat, Broadcasting & Cable and @adamthierer

Hadas Gold / Politico:

Rand Paul moves to Breitbart — Just one day after The Washington Times ended Sen. Rand Paul's column over plagiarism charges, the Kentucky Republican's musings have found a new home at Breitbart.com. — With no mention of the plagiarism controversy currently surrounding the senator …

Discussion: The Week, Talking Points Memo and The Raw Story

Politico:
Rand Paul meets with Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes

Discussion: The Week, @tommcilroy and CNN

Ed Pilkington / Guardian:

Tim Berners-Lee: encryption cracking by spy agencies ‘appalling and foolish’ — Inventor of world wide web calls for debate about ‘dysfunctional and unaccountable’ oversight of NSA and GCHQ — Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist who created the world wide web, has called for a …

Discussion: CNET, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, BBC, @michaelwhite, Salon, @guardian, National Updates, @avilarenata, Softpedia News and @genn4dy

Tim Molloy / The Wrap:

Earnings: CBS Meets Q3 Expectations After Time Warner Cable Fight — CBS Corp. emerged from its third-quarter fight with Time Warner Cable matching Wall Street's earnings expectations. — CBS CEO Les Moonves told investors in a conference call that the success reflected the network's emphasis on content.

Discussion: Radio & Television …, Wall Street Journal, Variety, @samgustin, @emilysteel, Capital New York, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Deadline.com, PR Newswire and @jboorstin

John Plunkett / Guardian:

BBC's loss-making Lonely Planet deal under fire — Trust criticises BBC Worldwide over acquisition and later sale of travel guide business resulting in £80m deficit — The BBC Trust has published a highly critical report of the corporation's loss-making purchase of Lonely Planet …

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

New FCC chair was industry lobbyist, but might not be industry shill — Wheeler appoints consumer advocate to key post, says competition is good. — Tom Wheeler was sworn in as chairman of the Federal Communications this week after being nominated by President Obama and unanimously approved by the US Senate.

Discussion: Light Reading and Variety

Erik Wemple:

The Philadelphia Inquirer is melting down — The brawl over the Philadelphia Inquirer isn't good for the Philadelphia Inquirer. It is, however, an amazing story, one that just got a touch more contentious this afternoon. — Bill Ross, the outspoken executive director of Philadelphia's Newspaper Guild …

Discussion: Philly.com

Paul Bibby / Sydney Morning Herald:

2Day FM faces tough penalties after losing court battle over royal prank call — Radio station 2Day FM has failed in an attempt to stymie an investigation by the communications watchdog into the royal prank call incident. — The decision paves the way for a finding that the station broke …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, TheAustralian, HeraldSun and mUmBRELLA

Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke / The New York Observer:

Tweet 16: News Outlets' Twitter Tone Skews Young — OMG!!! Why do big media companies sound like teenagers on Twitter — “OMG @OneDirection's new song leaked!” might sound like something a giddy tween would tweet, but it was actually tweeted by the Daily News's official account.

Discussion: @petersterne and ZDNet

Biz Carson / Wired:

Uncensored Instagrams From North Korea Buck Brutal Trend of Secrecy — WIRED.com © 2013 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this Site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 3/21/12) and Privacy Policy (effective 3/21/12). Your California Privacy Rights.

Discussion: TheAustralian

Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:

FBI monitored anti-war website in error for six years, documents show — Monitoring began after antiwar.com editor passed along to the bureau a threat he received against his own website — The FBI monitored a prominent anti-war website for years, in part because agents mistakenly believed …

Discussion: @rawsiefilnredom, @bernardkeane, @outrightusa, Techdirt and Hit & Run

Jason Deans / Guardian:

Publishers lodge appeal over ruling against judicial review of royal charter — Industry takes case to court of appeal after high court rejected its application for an emergency injunction over new press regulator — Newspaper and magazine publishers have lodged an appeal …

Rem Rieder / USA Today:

Rieder: ‘Business Insider’ goes long on journalism — Quirky website Business Insider plans a foray into the time-consuming but rewarding art. — CONNECT — One of the most intriguing aspects of the evolution of digital journalism is watching sites that spend much of their energy chasing …

Associated Press:

Greek police oust workers occupying headquarters of defunct state broadcaster — ATHENS, Greece — In a pre-dawn swoop Thursday, Greek riot police ended a nearly five-month protest by sacked workers broadcasting from what was once the headquarters of the defunct ERT state broadcaster, removing a few dozen people occupying the complex.

Discussion: Guardian, Globe and Mail, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Reuters, BBC and ekathimerini.com

David Lieberman / Deadline.com:

Jeff Bewkes: HBO's Streaming Deal With Comcast Won't Promote Cord Cutting — Time Warner startled a lot of people recently when it allowed the No. 1 cable operator to include HBO Go in a new $40 a month broadband service. Wouldn't some consumers cancel their pay TV service if they found …

Discussion: The Verge and Gigaom

Darren Boyle / Press Gazette:

British Library national newspaper archive in Colindale closing on Friday after 82 years — The national newspaper collection is moving on Friday from its home in Colindale to a new purpose built building in Yorkshire. — The new building will have a special low-oxygen storage area that will prevent fire.

Discussion: @colvinius and Guardian

Josh Ong / The Next Web:

Twitter announces IPO pricing of $26 per share with a valuation of $18.3 billion — Twitter announced on Wednesday that it will price its IPO at $26 per share when it begins trading on Thursday. The company plans to sell 70 million shares out of a total of 545 million outstanding shares.

Discussion: New York Times, @twitter, Forbes, MoneyBeat, The Technology Chronicles, Softpedia News, @samgustin and @corytv

Sam Petulla / The Content Strategist:

Looking Past ‘The Prism Of Fear’: News Corp's Data Leader On the End of the Pageview Era — Remember when pageviews were the dominate metric of the Internet? Today, with publishers rapidly de-prioritizing page views, it's starting to feel like an artifact of bygone days of the web, when “Mobile” was just a city down south.

Discussion: @raju

Ben Cardew / Guardian:

Pitchfork Weekly - a digital magazine paying homage to the past — The new Android and iOS app is a weekly digital magazine of the music website that's part of a trend of emulating print rivals — Music press lovers: are you feeling nostalgic for the days of inky fingers …

Discussion: Folio, Pitchfork, Publishing Executive … and hypebot