Mediagazer: Quarter of Kindle ebook sales in US are for indie publishers (Liz Bury/Guardian)

7:10 PM ET, December 5, 2013

Top News:

Jason Karaian / Reuters:

Twitter's new board member isn't the only one who rarely tweets — When Twitter announced the appointment of Marjorie Scardino as a board member, it did it, naturally, with a tweet. — But when the millions of people who follow Twitter's corporate account clicked through to Scardino's account …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, @vindugoel, Guardian, Mashable, VatorNews, Business Insider and Jezebel

John McDuling / Quartz:

Twitter's first female director is also the first “old media” executive on the board — Twitter's appointment of respected executive Marjorie Scardino to its director ranks helps rectify its gender imbalance. But not only is Scardino Twitter's first female director, she's also the first person with genuine …

Discussion: Bloomberg, NYT Bits, Quartz, TechCrunch, AllThingsD, Wired, Washington Post, @mathewi, @jmcduling, Digits, ReadWrite and @hamishmckenzie

John McDermott / Digiday:

The Information founder Jessica Lessin discusses subscription models, ads, and aggregation — Why New Tech Site The Information Spurns Ads for Subscriptions — The Information, former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin's new tech news site, debuted today with a seemingly …

Discussion: @niemanlab, @vouchey, Talking Biz News and Business Insider

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:
Five things Jessica Lessin needs to keep in mind about paywalls as she launches The Information

Discussion: Businessweek, Silicon Valley Watcher and Valleywag

Felix Gillette / Businessweek:

Politico's Capital New York Expansion in Hands of CEO Jim VandeHei — Since its launch in 2007, Politico, the D.C. upstart covering national politics in print and on the Web, has hosted presidential debates, won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, established a distinctive …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Poynter, @rubycramer, @pwgavin, @jayrosen_nyu, @rafat, @bw and @mlcalderone

Allan Sloan / Fortune:

More revelations about the Time Inc. spinoff — Allan Sloan takes a look at the recently released Time Inc. SEC filing — FORTUNE — There are some dishes, like homemade beef stew, that get increasingly flavorful the more times you cook them. Some documents are like that, too …

Discussion: @editorialiste, @edmundlee and @peacockc

Mark Landler / New York Times:

Biden Faults China on Foreign Press Crackdown — BEIJING — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. sharply criticized the Chinese government's crackdown on the foreign press, telling an audience of American business people Thursday that the United States had “profound disagreements” with its “treatment of U.S. journalists.”

Discussion: Poynter, Guardian, @mlcalderone, Washington Post, Forbes, @andrewjacobsnyt, @ericfish85, @kathrynschulz, @peterlattman, @mrlv426, The Verge, New York Magazine, @joycelaunyt, @dabeard, @scottbix, @comradewong, @greatfirechina and Business Insider

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Layoffs at AOL: 20 slips, mostly on homepage side — Layoffs hit AOL yesterday, Capital has learned. — The majority of impacted employees worked on the editorial side of the AOL.com homepage, according to sources with knowledge of the cuts, who put the total number of pink slips around 20.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Capital New York

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Video on Demand Pushes TV Viewing Up — No one watches TV anymore. — You don't, and no one you know does, and it's just a matter of time before the TV Industrial Complex folds in on itself and disappears. — Except ... it turns out that people are. Still. Watching. TV.

Discussion: @marklittlenews, Fast Company, @iwantmedia and Business Insider

Arif Durrani / Media Week:

Financial Times ready for global transformation under Hughes — As the FT prepares to launch a single global edition, its deputy chief executive and global commercial chief tells Arif Durrani why the newspaper is as relevant as ever. — Hughes: ‘I am more enthusiastic now than I ever have been about the world of media’

Tim Wu / The New Republic:

Binge-viewing was just the beginning. Netflix has a plan to rewire our entire culture — Binge-viewing was just the beginning. Netflix has a plan to rewire our entire culture — Given all the faces you see glued to computers, tablets, and cell phones, you might think that people watch much less television than they used to.

Discussion: Gigaom, @jamesgleick and @columbialaw

Evie Nagy / Fast Company:

Hearst's Troy Young Spills: This Is How You Make Money In Digital Media — The publishing industry in the digital age is a lawless frontier of fluctuating business models, content strategy experimentation, and conflict between time-tested practices and new expectations from consumers.

Discussion: @karlheiselman

Mark Lawson / Guardian:

Survey: Britons among biggest consumers of TV in Europe but avoid news and current affairs — Why are British people turning off the TV news? — A new survey reveals that although Britons watch plenty of television, we are one of the lightest consumers of news and current affairs in Europe

Discussion: @jackshafer and @jennykleeman

Janet Reitman / Rolling Stone:

Snowden and Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets — How two alienated, angry geeks broke the story of the year — Early one morning last December, Glenn Greenwald opened his laptop, scanned through his e-mail, and made a decision that almost cost him the story of his life.

Discussion: @anonyops, @normative, @johnmierau, @froomkin, @miafarrow, @barryeisler, @sulliview, @timkarr, TheHill and The Huffington Post

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Aereo to launch in Baltimore, still a dozen cities short of goal — Aereo, the online TV service that streams and records over-the-air shows in some parts of the US, said Thursday that it will launch in Baltimore on Dec. 16. — The company aimed to expand from its New York home base …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable and FierceCable

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

How Intel TV failed — pay attention, Google and Apple — analysis Intel aspired to revolutionize cable and satellite with Web TV. Just because it failed doesn't mean Apple, Google, and the rest will too — but they're no closer to a happy ending. — Intel was set to revolutionize television.

Josh Feldman / Mediaite:

Jeremy Scahill: Obama WH Doesn't Want Journalists, It Wants Fawning ‘State Media’ Like MSNBC — Jeremy Scahill, a national security journalist joining a new independent media venture with Glenn Greenwald, talked about the British parliamentary hearing over the Guardian's NSA scoops on Democracy Now!

Discussion: PublishersWeekly.com and Democracy Now

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

After Financing Hiccup, Maxim Sale Set to Close Friday — After a hiccup, the Maxim sale appears to be set to close Friday, and publishing vet Bob Guccione Jr. says he's set to take the reins as CEO. — Alpha Media sold the bawdy lad magazine to retired UPS exec Calvin Darden over the summer.

Discussion: bizjournals

Anthony Harrup / Wall Street Journal:

Mexico's America Movil, Televisa in Eye of Regulator — IFT Sends Notices to Companies Considered Sector-Dominant — MEXICO CITY—Mexico's telecommunications regulatory body has begun notifying companies that could be declared dominant in their sectors and face specific regulatory actions …

Discussion: Bloomberg and Reuters

Christina Chaey / Fast Company:

With Medium 1.0, Ev Williams Tackles The Platform's Identity Crisis — “What is Medium?” — I'm far from the first to ask Ev Williams this question. Since he launched the blogging site with fellow Twitter cofounder Biz Stone a little more than a year ago, many others have wondered …

Discussion: Folio, Talking New Media, PandoDaily, @jeffjohnroberts, @jayrosen_nyu, The Verge and TechCrunch

Liz Bury / Guardian:

Quarter of Kindle ebook sales in US are for indie publishers — Figures from world's biggest bookseller trumpeted as sign of how self-publishing and smaller labels are changing the industry — As many as a quarter of the top 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com are from indie publishers …

Discussion: Daily Mail and Melville House Books

Dante D'Orazio / The Verge:

New York Times brings print edition to tablets and computers with Today's Paper web app — The daily print edition of The New York Times now has a home of its own on digital devices. A new web app called Today's Paper, released today for tablets and computers, offers solely the articles …