Mediagazer: The World's Most Controversial Viral Site Posted A Great Defense Of Itself (Jay Yarow/Business Insider)

9:30 AM ET, December 6, 2013

Top News:

A Settlement Between Fox News and a Former Top Executive? Perhaps — The Fox News Channel has long been described as insular and buttoned up, a reputation that has been reaffirmed in recent days over the question of whether it has reached a settlement with Brian Lewis …

Discussion: @tomgara

Hannah Karp / Wall Street Journal:

Spotify to Introduce Free Mobile Music Service — Free Version of Streaming Service Was Previously Only Available on Desktop and Laptops — Spotify AB is planning a free, ad-supported version of its streaming-music service on mobile devices, according to people familiar with the matter …

Discussion: Gigaom, TechCrunch, Telegraph, Business Insider, BGR, hypebot, Guardian, SocialTimes, Mashable, VatorNews, Gizmodo, @stuartkhall, The Next Web, App Advice, The Verge, SlashGear, Pocket-lint, Engadget, The Drum and Gizmodo UK

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

The World's Most Controversial Viral Site Posted A Great Defense Of Itself — Upworthy, a site dedicated to viral content, has become the newest punching bag for reporters from new media, and old media. — It's rare to see those two agree, but they do about Upworthy.

Upworthy Insider:

What Actually Makes Things Go Viral Will Blow Your Mind. (Hint: It's Not Headlines Like This.) — By now it's fairly well known that we care a lot about headlines here at Upworthy. We write at least 25 of them for each post. We test them rigorously. Sometimes, we even make up a word to catch your eye.

Discussion: PandoDaily, @pkafka, @clarajeffery, @newswhip, @malexjohnson and @davidbauer, Thanks:@joshluger

Wall Street Journal:

FCC Unlikely to Bless a Comcast-TWC Deal: Regulator — Commissioner Says Current Administration Taking Tough Antitrust Stance … Any effort by Comcast Corp. to acquire Time Warner Cable Inc. would face significant hurdles in Washington, according to a Federal Communications Commission official …

Discussion: @maureenmfarrell

Wall Street Journal: Pursuit of Time Warner Cable Takes a Toll on Its Bonds

Matthew Lynch / Capital New York:

Gawker's Zimmerman gets his own corner — Gawker's editors are cooking up a plan to give Neetzan Zimmerman, Gawker's in-house savant of viral material, his own subvertical on the site. And when he does, his editor, John Cook, knows what he would like to name it.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Gail Shister / TVNewser:

Brian Stelter: CNN's offer was ‘Irresistible’ — “I would not leave the Times for a television job” doesn't occupy the same pantheon as “Read my lips, no new taxes” or “I never had sex with that woman,” but it still presents a bit of sticky wicket for Brian Stelter, who debuts Sunday as host of CNN's ‘Reliable Sources.’

Discussion: FishbowlNY and SocialTimes

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: Marketing Pilgrim, AllThingsD, @vindugoel, Los Angeles Times, VatorNews, Guardian, Jezebel, VentureBeat, Business Insider, Mashable, WebProNews and Gigaom

John McDuling / Quartz:
Twitter's first female director is also the first “old media” executive on the board

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

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

Rolling Stone Plans a Standalone Website to Cover Country Music — Magazine is Opening an Office in Nashville — Rolling Stone plans to introduce a new website called Rolling Stone Country in the second quarter of 2014. — The new standalone site's aim is to cover the country music scene …

Thanks:@msebastian

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

The Sun attracts 117,000 paying subscribers to its Sun+ digital service — News UK's tabloid erected a paywall in August and analysts reckon it needs at least 250,000 subscribers to break even — The Sun has attracted 117,000 paying subscribers to its £2-a-week digital service Sun+ since erecting …

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Interview with Facebook News Feed Manager Over Content Changes — In 2011, Google changed the way it ranked websites, in an effort to punish spammers and “content farms” that showed up high in search results but delivered crummy pages. — Google's “Panda” changes had giant ripple effects throughout …

Tom Grubisich / Street Fight:

Buttry Sees Progress for Digital First's ‘New Model’ for Community News — Steve Buttry, the digital transformation editor at Digital First Media, began his career in community newspapers more than 40 years ago in Columbus, Ohio - as a teenage carrier. In the years since, he's been a reporter …

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Former Times legal chief suspended by tribunal after paper deceived High Court to expose Nightjack police blogger — Former legal manager of The Times Alastair Brett has been suspended as a solicitor for six months over the paper's handling of the Nightjack case.

Shaunacy Ferro / Co.Design:

New MIT Media Lab Tool Lets Anyone Visualize Unwieldy Government Data — In the four years since the U.S. government created data.gov, the first national repository for open data, more than 400,000 datasets have become available online from 175 agencies like the USDA, the Department of Energy and the EPA.

Michael Rondon / Folio:

Digital Ad Dollars Spike, But Still a Small Part of Total Revenue in B-to-B — B-to-b media revenue grew 4.4 percent through the first half of 2013. — B-to-b media continued its gradual recovery, posting revenue gains for the seventh-consecutive half-year period.

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.

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

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: Democracy Now and PublishersWeekly.com

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Partnering with comiXology, eBay launches marketplace for digital comics — eBay Pushes Into Curating And Selling Digital Goods, Launches Dedicated Marketplace For Digital Comics — eBay has long been known as the de facto marketplace for buying and selling physical goods.

Discussion: TeleRead