Mediagazer: Former Siberian Official Given Probation for Journalist's Killing (Anna Dolgov/The Moscow Times)

8:40 AM ET, January 16, 2014

Top News:

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

He Was Fired: Here's Marissa Mayer's De Castro Buh-Bye Memo to Yahoo Staff — Here it is, the internal memo to Yahoo staff about the sudden — though it was not sudden, by any means — leave-taking today of its COO, Henrique De Castro, courtesy of one of my 10,563 sources left at Yahoo!

Discussion: Capital New York, Softpedia News, AdAge, @alexia, VentureBeat, Business Insider, @danprimack, @moorehn and @ashleymayer

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro, Mayer's No. 2, to depart after failing to move lagging ad business — “Dead Man Walking” Walks: COO Henrique De Castro Out at Yahoo — As has long been rumored, Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro is departing Yahoo. — I had reported last week that he was in big trouble …

Discussion: Forbes, TechCrunch, Adweek, Los Angeles Times, Media Wire Daily, GeekWire, CNET, Wall Street Journal, Valleywag, Fortune, Business Insider, The Wrap and Quartz

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

The Independent seeks buyer — The Independent is up for sale. The paper's founder, and current chairman of its publishing company, Andreas Whittam Smith, has been authorised to seek out a buyer. — The owners, Alexander Lebedev and his son, Evgeny, have been indicating …

Discussion: @samirashackle, Management Today, @adambienkov, @raju, @bounder, @scottygb and The Drum

Tim Wu / The New Yorker Blog:

FCC's Wheeler can preserve net neutrality by taking back its authority over broadband — Closing Time for the Open Internet — Since 1970 or so, carriers like A. T. & T. and Verizon have been barred from blocking or degrading whatever is transported over their lines.

Discussion: Gigaom, The Switch, @somebadideas, The Huffington Post, Crikey, Forbes, Globe and Mail, The New Republic, Free Press Blog, TheHill, Ars Technica, @superwuster, NYT Bits, @mathewi, Salon, Home Media Magazine, ABC and Official FCC Blog

Josh Stearns / Free Press Blog:
Net Neutrality and the Future of Journalism

Discussion: Gigaom and Consumerist

Helienne Lindvall / Guardian:

Will Beats Music trump Spotify with its artist charm offensive? — Dr Dre and Trent Reznor are launching a US streaming service - but artists are likely to lose out again due to labels' royalty deals — The music streaming market is becoming a crowded place, but that hasn't stopped Beats Music getting in on the game.

Discussion: Pocket-lint

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Spotify introduces unlimited free music on the web just days before Beats Music launch

Discussion: Spotify Blog, TechCrunch, @vanessa_lgd, @gighub_, Gizmodo and The Next Web

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Top editors at Washington Post, Politico talk after Wemple scrutinizes Mike Allen's Playbook — Washington Post and Politico Talk About a Rift — Top editors at The Washington Post and Politico tried on Wednesday to mend a rift between the two news organizations.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @buzzfeedandrew, @romenesko, @ravisomaiya, @ericboehlert, @erik_hayden, Poynter, The Dish and Politico

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

AOL hands over control of Patch to investment fund Hale Global, keeps small stake — AOL Finds a Home — Off Its Books — For Patch — Patch isn't dead, and AOL isn't officially done with it. But Tim Armstrong's big bet on local news has come to an end: The AOL CEO is handing over Patch …

Discussion: New York Times, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Forbes, Poynter, Business Wire, Capital New York, @pkafka, @poynter, AdExchanger, @edmundlee, CNET, Reuters and Wall Street Journal

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:
THE END OF AN ERROR: AOL Just Disposed Of Controlling Interest In Patch

Discussion: @jeffjarvis

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

Capital New York to Introduce Monthly Print Magazine — Capital New York, the Politico sibling that covers politics and media in New York, is rolling out a small monthly print magazine starting this month, according to parent company Allbritton Communications.

Discussion: @joepompeo

Anna Dolgov / The Moscow Times:

Former Siberian Official Given Probation for Journalist's Killing — A court in the Irkutsk region has sentenced a former local official to a 22-month probation for killing a journalist who had published critical reports about corruption in the local government.

The Week:

John Humphrys: BBC is too big and should be slimmed down — Veteran broadcaster joins calls for change despite warning from BBC chief to stop attacking corporation — JOHN HUMPHRYS believes the BBC is too big and suffers from a surfeit of executives who tie people up in meetings.

Discussion: Guardian, Daily Mail, The Times, thedrum.com and broadcastnow.co.uk

Publishers Weekly:

Simon & Schuster Expands Library E-Book Program — After jumping into the library e-book market last April with a limited pilot, Simon & Schuster is expanding its program to more libraries, and adding OverDrive to its list of vendors. The publisher and OverDrive today announced …

Discussion: Digital Book World

Axegrinder:

WAN-IFRA press freedom mission to UK: What no mention of the 61 UK journalists arrested since 2011? — The World Association of Newspapers' first press freedom mission to the UK is in the midst of a round of top-level meetings today to discuss the Royal Charter on press regulation …

Discussion: Press Gazette

Brian Braiker / Digiday:

A Tale of Two Daily Mails — Online readers of the Charleston Daily Mail received a bit of a surprise this week when they went to the West Virginia paper's homepage. The paper's address, dailymail.com, took readers to a letter announcing that the Daily Mail had changed its Web address to the somewhat clunkier charlestondailymail.com.

Discussion: @michaelroston

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Academic Research Platform Sciencescape Raises $2.5M, Partners With Educational Publisher Elsevier — Canadian startup Sciencescape has just closed a $2.5 million round of funding, and is considering extending it into a $3 million round since it was oversubscribed, co-founder Sam Molyneux revealed …

Susan Currie Sivek / Mediashift:

Digital Technology Remodels Women's Magazines — Women's magazines are full of fashion, beauty and relationship tips. However, studying them has also taught one researcher a lot about their future, and about the future of the magazine industry as a whole.

Discussion: @brookeerinduffy and @pbsmediashift

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

How a free email newsletter turned a computer programmer into a Newsweek columnist — Being on Twitter can sometimes feel a little like being in a high school cafeteria. — There's chatter all around you, and there's always a joke you're not in on. On Twitter, everyone's always mad about something …

Discussion: The New York Observer, @nitashatiku, @mattbuchanan, Business Insider and Fast Company

Tim Goodman / Hollywood Reporter:

How Kevin Reilly Is Changing Up Fox's Game, and What That May Mean for the TV Industry — As the broadcast net moves away from pilot season, its decisions are really and truly about quality. — Fox's Kevin Reilly — Whenever change comes to the resistant television industry, it comes slow.

Discussion: @bastardmachine, @miavonglitz and Forbes

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

News Corp. freezes pensions in cost-control measure — News Corp. employees were told Wednesday that their pensions are being frozen, Capital has learned. — The change in the company's retirement-plan contribution scheme applies to certain employees at the New York Post …

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The New York Times' R&D Lab is building a quantified-self, semantic-analysis tool to track web browsing — Let's say you work in a modern digital newsroom. Your colleagues are looking at interesting stuff online all day long — reading stimulating news stories, searching down rabbit holes you've never thought of.

Discussion: Co.Labs

The Wrap:

TheWrap Beats Deadline Hollywood and Variety's Web Traffic in December — TheWrap is pleased to announce that it has achieved its highest traffic month in the history of the site, surpassing both industry trades Variety and Deadline. — According to comScore, TheWrap scored 3.4 million unique visitors …

Richard Horgan / FishbowlNY: Scintillating TheWrap Stats Also Remind: comScore Counts It Differently [Updated]