Mediagazer: Promoting Its Own Products, a Magazine Labels an Ad as News (Andrew Adam Newman/New York Times)

3:40 PM ET, January 17, 2014

Top News:

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

Trouble for Aaron Kushner's contrarian bet in Southern California — Trouble for Aaron Kushner's contrarian bet in Southern California — The Orange County Register, the rebuilt Chevelle SS of the newspaper industry, has blue smoke coming from the tailpipe.

Mary Ann Milbourn / Orange County Register:
Register names new newsroom leadership

Discussion: @lilyshumleung, Poynter and LA Observed

Kevin Roderick / LA Observed:
Kushner announces new team at Register, explains ‘restructuring’ *

Discussion: Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register

Ken Bensinger / Los Angeles Times:
Layoffs come at OC Register and Riverside Press-Enterprise

New York Times:

Bumps on a Road to Revival for Yahoo — SAN FRANCISCO — It looks as if the Google pixie dust isn't so easy to spread around. — Marissa Mayer's arrival at Yahoo as chief executive a year and a half ago was widely hailed as an opportunity to infuse the struggling Internet pioneer …

Discussion: Forbes, @lachlanfharris, @om, @karaswisher and @deanemurphy

Kara Swisher / Re/code:
Exclusive: Yahoo's Editor-in-Chief Jai Singh Departs Company

Discussion: BuzzFeed, Mediawire Daily, Capital New York, Mashable, VatorNews, Softpedia News, @karaswisher, TechCrunch, @mhelft, Business Insider, @jpodhoretz, @ivanthek, @rafat, @awallenstein, @mathewi, DealBook and Beyond Search

Andrew Adam Newman / New York Times:

Promoting Its Own Products, a Magazine Labels an Ad as News — CONTENT from advertisers that resembles editorial coverage, commonly called native advertising, is drawing heightened scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, which wants to establish guidelines for labeling it clearly.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Capital New York, @cspi, @nytimesbusiness, @_mediaspace and Mediawire Daily

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

And The Most Downloaded Torrent of 2013 is.... Completely Legal — Earlier today we published a list of the top 20 most-pirated artists. With well over 5 million downloads this chart was topped by Bruno Mars. Interestingly enough, the honor of the most-downloaded artist on BitTorrent goes to a legal download.

Discussion: Plagiarism Today, Business Insider and Softpedia News

Rebecca Grant / VentureBeat:
With 60M downloads, BitTorrent's Bundle experiment is paying off

Discussion: TechHive, The Official BitTorrent Blog and TechCrunch

Katie Roof / Fox Business:

AOL's Patch May Be Dismantled: Source — AOL (AOL) shopped its Patch news service for more than a year to various media companies before reaching a deal with private equity firm Hale Global for what's been described as a low-ball bid for the money-losing venture, the FOX Business Network has learned.

Discussion: @katie_roof

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Phone hacking: Wall Street Journal wins ruling on reporting restrictions — US-based newspaper will be able to report fully report on the trial of Rebekah Brooks and others without signing written agreement — The Wall Street Journal has won a ruling allowing it to fully report …

Discussion: @jackofkent, @paullewis, Talking Biz News, The Drum and @lisaocarroll

Arif Durrani / Media Week:

London Evening Standard profits double in 2013 — The London Evening Standard has more than doubled its profits in the year to September 2013, to around £2.5 million, while the embattled Independent slashed its losses by 50% in the same period, according to sources. inShare 1 London Evening Standard …

Discussion: @geofinns

Mark Sweney / Guardian:
Alexander Lebedev sounding out buyers for Independent titles

Discussion: MediaTel, @david_hewson, Telegraph, Financial Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Guardian

Dan Levine / Reuters:

Blogger gets same speech protections as traditional press-U.S. court — (Reuters) - A blogger is entitled to the same free speech protections as a traditional journalist and cannot be liable for defamation unless she acted negligently, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

Discussion: E Pluribus Unum and The Volokh Conspiracy, Thanks:@jaredbkeller

Paul Mozur / Wall Street Journal:

Chinese Microblog Use Fell 9% In 2013, Government Says — The Reduction in Weibo Users Likely Reflects Censorship, Mobile-Messaging Options — BEIJING—The number of Chinese using Twitter -like microblogs fell 9% in 2013 from 2012, according to a new government report …

Discussion: @crtejada

Economist:
Chinese investigative journalist circumvents censors with popular messaging app WeChat

Discussion: @stinson, Quartz, @zseward, @letahong and @gadyepstein

Nick Hopkins / Guardian:

Alan Rusbridger: Westminster is hoping Snowden revelations go away — Guardian editor accuses UK politicians of failing to tackle issues raised by NSA revelations, which have sparked US debate — Britain's political class has been closing its eyes and hoping the revelations from Edward Snowden …

Discussion: New York Times, Forbes, Latest News & Headlines, Gawker, Mediaite, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, TheHill, Computerworld, Softpedia News, @glynmoody, @nycjim, The New Yorker Blog and BBC

Tom Grubisich / Street Fight:

Borrell Report Details Legacy Media's Struggles in the Digital World — In a new report “The Future of Legacy Media” (free executive summary here), research and consulting firm Borrell Associates has both good and bad news for old media (newspapers, TV, radio, magazines) …

Discussion: @niemanlab

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Farhad Manjoo heads to NYT after 4 months at WSJ to replace David Pogue — The New York Times Gets Its David Pogue Replacement From the Wall Street Journal — The New York Times has found a replacement for David Pogue, its high-profile tech reviewer: Sources say the Times is filling …

Associated Press:

Egyptian Police Release AP Cameraman on Bail — CAIRO (AP) — A freelance Egyptian TV cameraman who was detained while covering the country's constitutional referendum for The Associated Press was released on bail Friday, but the case remains open, authorities said.

Discussion: Poynter, CNN, CBC News and Associated Press

Tom Warren / The Verge:

YouTube starts airing 2014 Super Bowl commercials ahead of the game — This year's Super Bowl might not take place until February 2nd, but that's not stopping some ads from running early. While Super Bowl advertisers have traditionally surprised the millions of people who tune …

Discussion: CNET, New York Times, Broadcasting & Cable, The Daily Caller, The Next Web, Softpedia News, bizjournals, Business Insider and Mashable

Todd Spangler / Variety:

HBO Go Is Coming to PlayStation — HBO announced that its broadband-video service, HBO Go, will be coming “soon” to Sony's PlayStation 3 videogame console with an app for the just-released PS4 to follow. — Netflix has been available on the PlayStation 3 since 2009, and was one of 11 …

Discussion: PlayStation.Blog, The Slanted, computerandvideogames.com, @zseward, Multichannel.com, SlashGear, CNET, Engadget, Softpedia News, Home Media Magazine and Pocket-lint

The New York Times Company:

The New York Times's Most Visited Content of 2013 — The New York Times today released its Most Visited lists for 2013. Categories include the most visited articles and blog posts, multimedia and interactives, and videos throughout NYTimes.com, our mobile site and our iOS apps.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, FishbowlNY, The Atlantic Online, @blushresponse, @jacobgoldstein, NewspaperAlum, Cision, @sulliview, @hfairfield, @antonioregalado, @nyteileen, @jbenton, @dansinker and @katiepark

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Digg Is Experimenting With Original Content — Digg is currently testing a system which would see the viral news aggregator running its own original content on the Digg.com homepage, the company confirms to us today. This would be a new direction for the betaworks-backed service …

Discussion: @niemanlab

Stan Alcorn / Digg:

Why Audio Never Goes Viral — With a community of creators uncomfortable with the value of virality, an audience content to watch grainy dashcam videos, and platforms that discourage sharing, is a hit-machine for audio possible? And is it something anyone even wants?

Discussion: Gigaom, @jason_cobb, @jamiemottram, MetaFilter, @alexcornell, @grvlx001 and @thomasraukamp

Hannah Karp / Wall Street Journal:

Radio's Answer to Spotify? Less Variety — Stations Create More Repetition, Fearing Listeners Will Tune Out Unfamiliar Tunes — Synth-pop band Capital Cities has plenty of songs on its debut album that it wants to promote as singles—if only radio programmers would allow it.

Discussion: @rubinafillion, @walkermoskop, @djbennyb, @minakimes and @antonioregalado

Google Research Blog:

Google visualizes data from Google Play Music to show changes in music genres over the decades — Explore the history of Pop — and Punk, Jazz, and Folk — with the Music Timeline — With newspapers, blogs, and websites wrapping up their Top Ten album lists for 2013 …

Discussion: PSFK, The Next Web, The Verge and Gigaom