Mediagazer: Spotify Adds Commission-Free Merchandise Feature As Artist Sweetener (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)

10:15 AM ET, January 20, 2014

Top News:

Print focus at OC Register fails to stem bleeding as publisher Aaron Kushner tries to scale — Publisher Stumbles in Wild Chase for Growth — Timing matters when it comes to news. I had been reading about Aaron Kushner's audacious strategy to invest in journalism ever since he bought …

Discussion: Street Fight, @publiceyestl, @peterlattman and @mattdpearce

Josh Levin / Slate:

Digging Too Deep — Every journalist has worked on a story that started out being about one thing and ended up as something else entirely. That's what happened to Caleb Hannan, who got curious about a weird-looking golf club he found on YouTube and started quizzing the inventor about her far-out scientific theories.

Discussion: The New Republic, Nieman Storyboard, ThinkProgress and The Huffington Post

Hazel Cills / Gawker:

Twitter Explodes After Trans Subject of Golf Article Kills Herself — On Friday, journalist Caleb Hannan tweeted a link to a recent Grantland story he did, writing, “Not sure what to say other than this is the strangest story I've ever worked on.” — The piece, entitled “Dr. V's Magical Putter …

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

After Mulling Sale, Business Insider Raising a New Round of Funding — Business Insider — which rejected an informal acquisition offer of around $100 million floated by AOL last year and has discussed other sale efforts — is likely to be raising a new round from its existing investors, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Discussion: @pkafka, @carney, @zseward, @peterlauria3, VatorNews and Mediawire Daily

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Michael Kinsley to Join Vanity Fair and Write a Monthly Column — Mr. Kinsley will write a monthly column for Vanity Fair, which is likely to cover “what I've written about most of the time: politics, in one form or another,” he said.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu, @romenesko, @raju, @dkthomp and Mediawire Daily

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

In France, value of legacy media companies plummets — Those media assets that are worth nothing — The valuation gap between high tech and media companies has never been wider. The erosion of their revenue model might be the main culprit, but management teams, unions and boards …

Discussion: @blathnaidhealy, @s_m_i and @frasermatthew

Fergus Pitt / Tow Center for Digital Journalism:

Which News Organizations Influence Wikipedia? — The New York Times leads the Wikipedia record of 2013's biggest news stories, according to a very simple (and perhaps simplistic) analysis of the online encyclopedia's citations. The analysis and process are quite basic …

Discussion: @raju, @fergle and @towcenter

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

News International security chief said he ‘burned stuff’, colleague tells court — Mark Hanna made comment to security guard after they discussed News of the World closure, phone-hacking trial hears — The News International director of security told one of his team he had dug a hole in his garden to …

Discussion: @guardian

Betsy Rothstein / The Daily Caller:

Ex-Politico reporter sells blog to U.S. News & World Report — Goodbye tank tops in December. Hello lucrative job in Washington in early February. — Political reporter Dave Cantanese left Politico in January, 2013 under a swirl of controversy. In a New Years Eve resignation note …

Discussion: @betsyscribeindc and The Run 2016

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

International editors warn UK Government sending ‘negative message’ to world on press freedom — The World Association of Newspapers (WAN-IFRA) two-day press freedom mission to the UK concluded with a warning that changes to press regulation and Government “intimidation” of The Guardian were sending a …

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

After the Times Redesign, Complaints and Changes — I've seldom had as much response to any post as to one last week - from the first day of the redesign of The Times's website: about 1,000 comments on this blog, in addition to hundreds of emails to my office.

Discussion: @vivianschiller, @albertocairo and @sulliview

Ben Fritz / Wall Street Journal:

For Movie Producers, a Golden Age Fades — As Hollywood slashes spending, nobody has felt the brunt as much as movie producers … LOS ANGELES—They still sit on the northern edge of the Universal Pictures lot—symbols of an era when producers were the kings of Hollywood.

Discussion: @benfritz