Mediagazer: Welcome to the Internet of Thingies: 61.5% of Web Traffic Is Not Human (Alexis C. Madrigal/The Atlantic Online)

10:55 PM ET, December 13, 2013

Top News:

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

New Hollywood Sequel: Aaron Kushner's L.A. Register — Why, I asked, Aaron Kushner, is he announcing the new L.A. Register as we're winding down toward the end of the year? Given that the big questions about it — when will it launch, how will it be staffed — are as yet unannounced, why put the news out now?

Mary Ann Milbourn / Orange County Register:

Register owner to launch daily L.A. newspaper — The co-owner and publisher of the Orange County Register announced Thursday that the company will move broadly into Los Angeles County early next year and publish a new, seven-day-a-week newspaper, the Los Angeles Register.

Discussion: New York Times, LA Observed, LA Observed, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, @ocregister, Los Angeles Business …, The Wrap, FishbowlNY, Hollywood Reporter, Poynter, @margotroosevelt and The Newspaper Guild

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

New York Times Withheld News Of Missing American's CIA Ties For Six Years — NEW YORK — The New York Times revealed Friday that it withheld reporting on missing American Robert Levinson's ties to the CIA for six years, one day after The Associated Press acknowledged withholding that detail for three years.

Discussion: Capital New York, Associated Press and ABC News

Ed O'Keefe / Post Politics:
Sen. Bill Nelson: I told AP not to run Robert Levinson story

Discussion: New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, Talking Points Memo, @lrozen, @mlcalderone, The Huffington Post, Poynter and The Definitive Source

Dylan Byers / Politico:
W.H.: CIA report ‘highly irresponsible’

Discussion: @jeneps, ABC News, The Daily Pulp and Riptide 2.0

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

Welcome to the Internet of Thingies: 61.5% of Web Traffic Is Not Human — And here's how to build your own little traffic bot, even though you shouldn't — It happened last year for the first time: bot traffic eclipsed human traffic, according to the bot-trackers at Incapsula.

Discussion: @brandcottage, @digiphile, @fareedzakaria, SocialTimes, Forbes, Business Insider, CNET, VentureBeat, TechCrunch and BBC

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Twitter Experiments with Push Notifications About TV Talk — Twitter's great, but if you're a regular human, you can't spend all of your time looking at it. So what if someone plops out something interesting, and you miss it? — Twitter has a plan for that.

Discussion: Fast Company, Alex Rainert and @mikeisaac

Peter Elkind / Fortune:

Bloomberg News reaffirms ban on writing about Mike Bloomberg — The news organization owned by Bloomberg LP has an unusual, self-imposed policy preventing itself from writing about its founder. — FORTUNE — When Michael Bloomberg retires as New York's mayor in January after 12 years in office …

Discussion: @dangillmor, Hit & Run, Talking Biz News and The Huffington Post

Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:

Charter plans to offer less than $135/share for Time Warner Cable early next week — Charter Said to Prepare Offer Letter for Time Warner Cable — Charter Communications Inc. (CHTR) is preparing an offer letter to acquire Time Warner Cable Inc. for less than $140 a share, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Discussion: AdAge, Variety, BGR, DealBook, Hollywood Reporter, Reuters, Radio & Television …, The Huffington Post, Deadline.com and The Verge

Bloomberg:

Verizon close to agreement to buy Intel's Internet-based pay-TV start-up OnCue — Verizon Said Near Agreement to Buy Intel's Start-Up TV Service — Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) is near an agreement to purchase Intel Corp. (INTC)'s Internet-based pay-TV start-up, according to people familiar with the deal.

Discussion: Variety, Electronista and Gigaom

Jason Del Rey / AllThingsD:

Report: Readers who own a Kindle spend $1,233/year on Amazon; those who don't spend $790 — The Amazon Kindle Numbers That Jeff Bezos Must Really Care About — We all know that Amazon's annual touting of its new Kindles as the best-selling Kindles ever has become laughable since the company …

Brian Stelter / CNNMoney.com:

Netflix finds plenty of binge watching, but little guilt — Netflix is embracing the art of the “binge” as it seeks to sell more subscriptions during the holidays. — A Harris Interactive survey commissioned by Netflix and released on Friday found that a majority of streaming television viewers …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal and Business Insider

Amanda Terkel / The Huffington Post:

Media Matters Declares Victory: ‘The War On Fox Is Over’ — WASHINGTON — Since its founding in 2004, the progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America has been a thorn in the side of Fox News. Its dozens of staffers monitor the network's leadership, hosts, guests and financial dealings incessantly …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Politico, National Review and TheBlaze.com

Kristen Hare / Poynter:

Texas A&M brings back journalism major — Texas A&M will bring its major in journalism back next fall, the school reported on its website Monday. The decision was announced after approval Monday from the faculty senate. According to the school: “It will be a small, rigorous program limited to 25 entering freshmen per year.”

Discussion: Inside Higher Ed

Marc Graser / Variety:

Microsoft to Launch First Original Shows on Xbox in Early 2014 — At Dealmakers breakfast, Tellem says Xbox isn't Netflix or Amazon but its ‘own animal’ — Developing original series for Microsoft has taken a little longer than veteran TV executive Nancy Tellem had hoped …

Discussion: Pocket-lint and Engadget

CBC Books / CBC News:

British Library uploads 1 million archival images for free use, wins internet — In an inspired gesture to encourage digital crowdsourcing, the British Library has uploaded one million scans from 17th to 19th century books to Flickr for public domain use. — The library's goal was for anyone to …

Discussion: @maryakem, The Verge and Digital scholarship blog