Mediagazer: Spotify Raises $250 Million, Valued Above $4 Billion (Wall Street Journal)

8:25 PM ET, November 21, 2013

Top News:

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Barton Gellman Hits Back At Bob Woodward For ‘Insult’ About Snowden Coverage — NEW YORK — Barton Gellman fired back Thursday at Washington Post colleague Bob Woodward over Woodward's remarks that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden should have come to him first with documents …

Discussion: Mediaite, Business Insider, Hit & Run, @timkarr, @noahshachtman, @tonyromm and TheBlaze.com

Gay Alcorn / The Age: Spies, journalists and inconvenient truths

Hadas Gold / Politico:

Media protests White House photo ban — The White House Correspondents Association and several leading media outlets have sent a letter to the White House protesting its policy of banning photographers from covering the president at certain events. — “As surely as if they were placing …

Discussion: NationalJournal.com, Poynter, Mediaite, The Wire, NPPA, @steveholland1, @steveholland1 and TheBlaze.com

Hadas Gold / Politico:
White House press corps spars with deputy press secretary over photo access

Discussion: @chucktodd, @dylanbyers and The Huffington Post

Dylan Byers / Politico: Media urged to stop using WH photos

Tim Molloy / The Wrap:

Nate Silver on How to Build a Better News Site: Quality Over Clicks (Video) — ESPN President John Skipper says he hasn't given Nate Silver any traffic targets for his new blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. — In their first appearance together since Skipper hired Silver from the New York Times in July …

Discussion: The New York Observer

Dylan Byers / Politico: Leonhardt resists Nate Silver comparison

Sarah Kessler / Fast Company:

The Incredible Story Of Marion Stokes, Who Single-Handedly Taped 35 Years Of TV News — From 1977 to 2012, she recorded 140,000 VHS tapes worth of history. Now the Internet Archive has a plan to make them public and searchable. — In a storage unit somewhere in Philadelphia …

Discussion: Poynter, @internetarchive, @greenharr, @stokesps, @heyfeifer, @roxanneshirazi and Online NewsHour

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Third time's the charm: Will the new Potluck app be the best commenting section in news? — To understand what Potluck's new iOS app will mean, you have to understand where Josh Miller thinks he went wrong with the first two tries. — Though the products have different names …

Discussion: @joshm

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:
Hyped service Potluck reborn as group-chat app to talk about the news

Discussion: TechCrunch, @zpower and @fromedome

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Liz Spayd named editor-in-chief of ‘CJR’ — Liz Spayd has been named editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, Capital has learned. — The Washington Post alumna replaces Cyndi Stivers, who resigned in May to take a job as editor-in-chief of AOL.com.

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, Columbia University …, @joepompeo, @ryanchittum, Pressing Issues and FishbowlNY

Wall Street Journal:

Spotify Raises $250 Million, Valued Above $4 Billion — Swedish music-streaming company Spotify AB has secured nearly $250 million in new financing led by Silicon Valley firm Technology Crossover Ventures, valuing the company somewhere “north” of $4 billion dollars, according to multiple people familiar with the deal.

Discussion: The Wrap, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Electronista, The Verge, @synopsi, Digital Music News, @geoffreyfowler, Mashable, Gigaom and hypebot

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:

NBCU May Invest in AllThingsD Journalists — Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher Will Be Starting New Company Next Year … NBCUniversal is close to a deal to take a minority stake in a new company being started by technology journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, say people familiar with the situation.

Discussion: New York Times, @edmundlee and @felixsalmon

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The NYT prepares new digital products and a new, cheaper subscription model for 2014 — The newsonomics of The New York Times' Paywalls 2.0 — Listen to Mark Thompson and you hear echoes of early 2011. — “We have the theory. We've done the research. We've done the modeling,” the New York Times Co. CEO told me last week.

Discussion: @kyleykim, USA Today and Newsonomics

Andy Fixmer / Bloomberg:

Sony's Hirai Plans $250 Million in Entertainment Cuts — Sony Corp. (6758) will cut $250 million in costs at its entertainment units over two years, part of Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai's plan to boost profit and keep full ownership of the movie, TV and music businesses.

Discussion: Deadline.com and Variety

Daniel Miller / Los Angeles Times:
Sony Pictures outlines budget cuts, trims film slate

Discussion: Wall Street Journal

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Newspapers put together by one person ‘skimming online content’ - Montgomery outlines vision for Local World journalism — Chairman of the Local World group David Montgomery today sent staff a 2,000-plus word explanation of how he sees the future role of the journalist in his group.

Discussion: Jon Slattery

Sam Kirkland / Poynter:

With ‘newsletter for mobile,’ Dalton Caldwell wants to make your native app obsolete — “Imagine if you had to download a different email client for every email newsletter you subscribe to.” That's the analogy offered by Dalton Caldwell, CEO of app.net, for the state of push notifications on mobile devices today.

Discussion: 10,000 Words, TechCrunch, The Verge, App.net, Journalism.co.uk, The Next Web, hypebot and @poynter

Brooks Barnes / New York Times:

With New Streaming Deal, Amazon Keeps Pressure on Netflix — LOS ANGELES — The Web streaming battles continue: Amazon, a competitor to Netflix, announced a deal on Thursday morning to add releases from one of Hollywood's most attention-grabbing independent film companies to its Prime service.

Discussion: Puget Sound Business Journal, Deadline.com and Variety

Evie Nagy / Fast Company:

Pitchfork To Launch $19.96 Print Publication, “The Pitchfork Review” — When Pitchfork launched in 1996, Internet music criticism (or Internet anything) was virtually non-existent, and Pitchfork.com grew into arguably the most influential brand in online music coverage.

Discussion: Folio, New York Times, hypebot, @toddowyoung and WebProNews

Corynne McSherry / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

WordPress.com Stands Up For Its Users, Goes to Court to Challenge DMCA Abuse — The abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's notice-and-takedown process to silence lawful speech is well-documented and all too common. Far less common, though, is a service provider that is willing …

Discussion: WordPress.com News, Techdirt, @idoubtit, @niemanlab, @maira and @krelnik

Ken Bensinger / Los Angeles Times:

Sale of Riverside Press-Enterprise to Aaron Kushner closes, finally — Riverside Press-Enterprise publisher Ron Redfern, left, Freedom Communications Chief Executive Aaron Kushner and Robert Decherd, former chairman of A.H. Belo, speak to Press-Enterprise employees about the proposed purchase of the paper for $27.25 million.

Discussion: LA Observed, PE.com Blogs and PE.com Blogs

Jonathan Chait / New York Magazine:

Can K Street Buy Mike Allen? — The populist critique of official Washington, which I more or less agree with, revolves around a somewhat fuzzy, impressionistic collection of archetypes. What the critics imagine is an insular subculture inside the Beltway in which a shared conventional wisdom …

Discussion: BillMoyers.com, @jonathanchait, @carr2n, PRNewser, @ron_fournier, @ryanchittum, The Dish, Washington Post, @mikeelk, Mother Jones and @ddayen

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

HBO Go Lands On Google Chromecast — Google has just announced that HBO Go is now available on Chromecast. — This means that Chromecast owners with an HBO Go subscription can now stream HBO's content from their Android or iOS device, as well as the HBO Go web app.

Discussion: Google Chrome Blog, Businessweek, 9to5Mac, VentureBeat and Pocket-lint

Guardian:

Google's Eric Schmidt predicts end of censorship within a decade — Excecutive chairman says solution lies in internet connectivity and encrypting everyone — Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has a bold prediction: censorship around the world could end in a decade …

Discussion: @mathewi and Kirk LaPointe's …

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Moby Not Just Giving Away His New Album For Free On BitTorrent, He's Okay With You Profiting From It — The musician Moby has long been an outspoken critic of the old recording industry. He's been a big fan of giving away works for free (and noting that he's made quite a bit of money …

Paul Sandle / Reuters:

Technicolor expects to out-run market growth for TV set-top boxes — (Reuters) - Technicolor is bullish about its TV set-top box business for next year, and expects to outstrip growth in the market in Europe, Asia and North America, its chief executive said on Thursday.

Evening Standard:

James Murdoch in Vice Media move — James Murdoch is being lined up as a director of Vice Media in what would be his second significant boardroom job since the phone-hacking scandal forced him to resign a string of roles. — He is believed to have been a driving force behind the decision …

Discussion: New York Times, The Independent, Gawker and UK - The Huffington Post

Farhad Manjoo / Wall Street Journal:

Why ‘Native Ads’ Muddy the Water for Web Surfers — As advertisers push for more “native ads,” the spread of the paid messages that cleverly blend in with online “content” will further muddy the Web's already murky distinctions between ads and non-ads.