Mediagazer: Xbox One Is Still Stuck in Cable's Orbit (Marc Graser/Variety)

9:25 AM ET, November 30, 2013

Top News:

Margalit Fox / New York Times:

Peter Kaplan, Who Brought a Cutting Edge to The New York Observer, Dies at 59 — Peter W. Kaplan, who in his 15 years as editor was credited with making The New York Observer both pertinent and impertinent as it gleefully chronicled the every move and shake of the city's movers and shakers, died on Friday in Manhattan.

Doree Shafrir / BuzzFeed:

Peter Kaplan And His Writers — The former New York Observer editor died Friday at age 59. “The barefoot contessa wore rubber thongs.” — Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Conde Nast Publications — Everyone's story about being hired by Peter Kaplan is quirky and telling in its own way …

Discussion: @petersterne

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

Suddenly, Upworthy Clones Are Everywhere And Millions Of People Are Reading Them — On March 26, 2012, a new media startup called Upworthy launched. Now it has 50 million monthly unique readers. — Almost all of its readers come from Facebook. The headlines, which Upworthy's editors toil over …

Discussion: PandoDaily, @bankoff, @zimbalist, @noahmittman, @henrikbennetsen and Gigaom

Katherine Miller / BuzzFeed: The Right Wing Has Its Own Upworthy And You Won't Believe How Well It's Doing

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

This online journalism startup raised $1.7M in crowdfunding and you've never heard of it — We've been writing a lot lately about online journalism startups like Matter — which was acquired by Medium and just dropped its paywall — and NSFW Corp., the Vegas-based venture that just merged with Pando Daily.

Ernst-Jan Pfauth / The Next Web: How we turned a world record in journalism crowdfunding into an actual publication

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

Tech.eu launches to report on European tech industry — The new digital publication seeks to cover ‘unreported’ stories from across the continent and sector — Read more — Other top stories — Also on Journalism.co.uk...

Discussion: Tech.eu

Marc Graser / Variety:

Xbox One Is Still Stuck in Cable's Orbit — Microsoft's new console can't deliver without a little help from pay TV — The “one” in the name Xbox One is a little misleading when it comes to watching live TV through Microsoft's new videogame console. — Though the device is being touted …

Sara Morrison / Poynter:

Guardian's record store lounge a prelude to launch of a U.S. culture section — At first glance, the Guardian's new #GuardianGreenRoom space in New York's just-opened Rough Trade record store looks like an intriguing - if foolish — marriage of two business models that the Internet has irrevocably doomed.

Edward Wong / New York Times:

Bloomberg Code Keeps Articles From Chinese Eyes — In early 2011, during a period of heightened tension between the Chinese government and foreign journalists, Bloomberg News created coding to give editors the ability to categorize stories under a new class, called 204.

Glenn Greenwald / UT Documents:

Wall Street Journal's Alistair MacDonald “reports” an outright lie — The Wall Street Journal's Toronto-based reporter, Alistair MacDonald, last night published what can only be described as an outright lie. Here's what he claimed: … And this: … Not only is it patently false …

Discussion: @macdonaldajm, Editor's Blog, @caulkthewagon, @macdonaldajm, @macdonaldajm, @ggreenwald, @rondeibert, @wicary, @monahol, National Review, @dangillmor, New York Times, Guardian and Online NewsHour

John Wihbey / Nieman Journalism Lab:

What's New in Digital Scholarship: Gendered sourcing on Twitter and the allure of following the crowd — Editor's note: There's a lot of interesting academic research going on in digital media — but who has time to sift through all those journals and papers? — Our friends at Journalist's Resource, that's who.

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

GoldieBlox, the Beastie Boys, and fair use — The toymaker backs down amid a murky legal case — I wrote on Monday that GoldieBlox's parody of the Beastie Boys song “Girls” was a a “clear case” of copyright infringement. — As Felix Salmon pointed out , that overstated the legal argument quite a bit …

Discussion: Death and Taxes

Jack Shafer:

If Katie Couric is the answer, what's the question? — Web publishing — never a diffident business — has been calling attention to itself all week long. Yahoo chief executive officer Marissa Mayer, whose forte as boss has been the shimmering acquisition (Summly, Tumblr, Xobni, Rockmelt …

Discussion: @emptywheel, @antderosa and @nickkristof