Mediagazer: Facebook tracks hot topics with Twitter-esque Trending area of the News Feed (Ellis Hamburger/The Verge)

12:40 PM ET, January 16, 2014

Top News:

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

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

The Independent's future in jeopardy as sales fall to alarming level — It is hard to imagine anyone buying The Independent and therefore places the paper's future existence in jeopardy. The fact that its owner has failed to find a buyer after months of seeking one suggest that its newsprint days are coming to an end.

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Independent owners decline to comment on report that title is again up for sale — The publishers of The Independent declined to comment this morning on a report that the title is again up for sale - nearly four years after it was sold by Independent News and Media to Alexander Lebedev.

Chris Elliott / Guardian:

Open door: Why an article on Lisa Bonchek Adams was removed from the Guardian site — I don't think it is wrong to frame a question about how those with incurable illnesses use social media, but the Guardian was wrong in the way it went about it — Lisa Bonchek Adams is a woman …

Discussion: Poynter, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Capital New York, @xeni, @glennf, @sethmnookin, @louisemensch, @emilynussbaum, The Daily Caller, @johnmcquaid, @jenseniorny, @jayrosen_nyu, @poniewozik, @stuartmillar159, @scottros, @mathewi and SocialTimes

Josh Stearns / Free Press Blog:

Net Neutrality and the Future of Journalism — Tuesday's court decision, which struck down the FCC's Open Internet Order and threatened the future of Net Neutrality, has huge implications for the future of journalism and press freedom. — According to the Pew Research Center …

Discussion: @jcstearns, Gigaom and Consumerist

Bloomberg:
Tallying the Cost to Netflix in Verizon's Victory Over FCC

Discussion: @harrisj and @harrisj

Tim Wu / The New Yorker Blog:
FCC's Wheeler can preserve net neutrality by taking back its authority over broadband

Discussion: The Verge, Re/code, Gigaom, The Switch, E Pluribus Unum, @somebadideas, The Huffington Post, Crikey, The New Republic, Forbes, Free Press Blog, Ars Technica, Globe and Mail, CNET, TheHill, @superwuster, NYT Bits and @mathewi

Pew Internet:

E-Reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps — The proportion of Americans who read e-books is growing, but few have completely replaced print books for electronic versions. — The percentage of adults who read an e-book in the past year has risen to 28%, up from 23% at the end of 2012.

Discussion: Publishers Weekly, GalleyCat, BetaNews, VatorNews, Digits, @pewresearch, @geoffreyfowler, @lrainie and The Next Web

Mark Stencel / Poynter:

Tech reporter Brian Krebs hacks it on his own, one scoop at a time … Few news stories in the past month landed on homepages and front pages with a louder thud than the theft of credit and debit card information from millions of Target customers. — The Target break-in was the latest scoop …

Discussion: @ampress, @amzam, @ezraklein, @jayrosen_nyu, @poynter, @ktoughill and Talking Biz News

Mark Potts / Recovering Journalist:

Introducing Newspeg — A New Way to Look at News — Do you get the feeling you're awash in a flood of news? — The internet has unleashed a torrent of news sources, old and new, that we're all scrambling to make sense of and sort out. The old convenient package of news that landed …

Discussion: @mathewi and @jeffjarvis

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: @alexia, Capital New York, Softpedia News, AdAge, Business Insider, VentureBeat, @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

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

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Netflix ‘original’ documentary lands Oscar nomination — “The Square,” a Netflix-backed film about the 2011 Egyptian revolution, secured an Oscar nomination for documentary feature on Thursday, fulfilling the Academy Awards buzz it drummed up at film festivals.

Discussion: LA Observed, Forbes, VentureBeat, FishbowlNY, The New Yorker Blog, Variety, Rolling Stone, @tiff_net, The Next Web, The Verge and UPROXX

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Spotify introduces unlimited free music on the web just days before Beats Music launch — The nice thing about raising $250 million is that it lets you offer your customers services that few competitors can match. Spotify, which is riding high after completing a massive fundraising round in November …

Discussion: Spotify Blog, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Washington Post, WebProNews, Business Insider, @gighub_, @vanessa_lgd and Gizmodo

Helienne Lindvall / Guardian:
Will Beats Music trump Spotify with its artist charm offensive?

Discussion: Pocket-lint

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Maker Studios Hires Ex-AOL Exec Rene Rechtman to Lead International Operations — Exec also will take a stake in the multichannel network operator eyeing expansion outside the U.S. — @xpangler — Rene Rechtman, who resigned as CEO of AOL's branded content division last fall …

Discussion: The Wrap and Re/code

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: @pbsmediashift and @brookeerinduffy

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, @jayrosen_nyu, @buzzfeedandrew, @romenesko, @ravisomaiya, @ericboehlert, @erik_hayden and The Dish

Ed Christman / Billboard:

FCC Shelves Pandora's Bid For South Dakota Radio Station — In another minor setback to its music licensing plans, Pandora has received word from the FCC that it is no longer processing its application for the transfer of the ownership of broadcasting license for KXMZ, the Rapid City, South Dakota radio station it acquired last June.

Discussion: Gigaom, Radio Ink Magazine, Billboard, @mpinc and Music Week

Reporters Without Borders:

Iraq bans local printing and distribution of Saudi daily — Reporters Without Borders condemns the Iraqi government's decision to ban the printing and distribution in Iraq of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily newspaper. — On 14 January, Iraqi security forces raided …

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Facebook tracks hot topics with Twitter-esque Trending area of the News Feed — Facebook today announced Trending, a new section in the top right corner of the News Feed that highlights TV shows, events, and articles that are being talked about by its users.

Discussion: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, ZDNet, Associated Press, USA Today, Bloomberg, NYT Bits, Digits and Billboard

Miranda Neubauer / TechPresident:

Need a Journalist? In Germany, There's an App For That — Call a Journalist app (Cross & Lecker/Facebook) — Over the past weeks, the city of Hamburg in Germany was caught up in ongoing occasionally violent standoffs and demonstrations between left-wing protestors and the police …

BBC:

Egypt ‘charges’ three al-Jazeera English journalists — The three journalists detained in Egypt last month while working for al-Jazeera English have been charged, reports say. State prosecutors accused them of using unlicensed equipment, broadcasting false news to disturb public order, and possessing fake footage.

Discussion: CNN, CBC News, @evanchill, Daily News Egypt and @bbcbreaking

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: GalleyCat, Good E-Reader and Digital Book World

John Plunkett / Guardian:

Tony Hall urged to intervene to ensure Savile reforms implemented at BBC — National Union of Journalists ‘disappointed’ recommendations over bullying have not been followed up — The BBC director general, Tony Hall, is being urged to intervene to ensure internal reforms proposed …

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

Lauren Kirchner / Columbia Journalism Review:

FOIA fight for NSA documents continues — The government has released some heavily-redacted legal opinions, but ProPublica, the ACLU, and others say that's not enough — This past November, ProPublica attempted to open up “the smallest nesting doll” of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance …

Alex Miller / VICE:

Kelvin MacKenzie is Wrong About International News — Last night, parochial news troll Kelvin MacKenzie appeared on Newsnight to claim that foreign reporting “is killing TV news”. He was being entertained by Paxman and the rest thanks to new research, which suggests that TV viewers are often indifferent to foreign news stories.

Discussion: @viceuk