Mediagazer: Comcast, Charter Said to Near Pact on Time Warner Cable Assets (Alex Sherman/Bloomberg)

4:15 AM ET, January 28, 2014

Top News:

The limits of Ezra Klein's star power — No greater act of press criticism exists than to launch your own publication. Starting anew allows a journalist to leave the cracked glass, dents and rust of the old behind, to reject the past and all its mistakes and compromises, and to show by example how the work should be done.

Discussion: Felix Salmon, Columbia Journalism Review, The New Yorker Blog, Newsonomics, @ravisomaiya, @brianstelter, @jpheasly, @jaredbkeller, @jayrosen_nyu, FishbowlNY, Erik Wemple, AJR.org, Poynter, Media Nation and Capital New York

Tim Peterson / AdAge:

Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff on Ezra Klein's Plan to Re-Imagine the News — News and Culture Site Expected to Launch in the Spring — The parent company of tech news site The Verge and sports blog SB Nation has lured The Washington Post's recently departed politics-and-policy wunderkind Ezra Klein …

Discussion: VentureBeat, Gigaom, CNNMoney.com, @darrenheitner, BuzzMachine, The Corsair, Business Insider, Mediawire Daily and FishbowlDC

Andrew Jacobs / New York Times:

China Appears Set to Force Times Reporter to Leave — BEIJING — Despite objections raised by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in meetings with its top leaders, China appears set to force a correspondent for The New York Times to leave the country this week, and it is continuing to block …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @nickkristof, @barbarademick, @andrewjacobsnyt, Politico and FishbowlNY

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Bloomberg's China business grows despite ‘brouhaha’ — Bloomberg L.P.'s footprint in the still nascent Chinese banking market is growing despite all the trouble China has been making for the company's journalists lately. — In 2012, China famously blocked the financial wire's website …

Discussion: Forbes

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:

Nate Silver has hired 15 journalists for FiveThirtyEight and plans relaunch “early this year” — Status Update: Building FiveThirtyEight — We're continuing to build our team of journalists at FiveThirtyEight as we prepare for re-launch with our partners at ESPN and ABC News early this year.

Discussion: @brianstelter, @burger, @dansinker and The Next Web

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Omidyar: First Look plans to launch ‘family of digital magazines’ — In a video explaining his plans for First Look Media, founder/funder Pierre Omidyar says that in addition to a flagship site covering news, entertainment, sports and politics, the venture plans to launch “a family of digital magazines.”

Discussion: Capital New York, @poynter, Mashable and NetNewsCheck Latest

Dylan Byers / Politico:
Pierre Omidyar releases video previewing First Look Media

Discussion: @pierre, The Huffington Post and @dylanbyers

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Inside's News Is Longer Than Twitter, Shorter Than Business Insider and Jason Calacanis Says You'll Love It — It's 2014. Do we need another service that summarizes news other people have written? — Yes, says Jason Calacanis. And because Jason Calacanis is a very persuasive pitchman …

Discussion: @antderosa, The Verge, @digidave and @danielfletcher

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:
Jason Calacanis launches Inside, a mobile news-curation app powered by humans

Discussion: Capital New York, TechCrunch, INSIDE, CNET, @jason, @mickhagen, The Next Web and @mathewi

Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:

Comcast, Charter Said to Near Pact on Time Warner Cable Assets — Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) is near a deal to buy New York City, North Carolina and New England cable assets from Charter Communications Inc. if shareholders approve Charter's takeover bid for Time Warner Cable Inc., people with knowledge of the matter said.

Discussion: Deadline.com, @bloombergtech, The Verge, Reuters, Broadcasting & Cable and Variety

Susan Crawford / Bloomberg:
Time Warner Cable Sale Will Cost Us All

Discussion: Light Reading

Mike Isaac / Re/code:

Facebook Is Seeking “Editors” for News App — For years, Facebook has sworn by the power of algorithms to serve users a personalized mix of status updates, stories and photos. It's what makes up the heart of the company's premier product, the News Feed. — Soon, Facebook will add another approach …

Discussion: Mashable, @pkafka, @owenthomas, @hblodget, @blathnaidhealy, @dangillmor, @kenli729, @mathewi and @romenesko

William Launder / Wall Street Journal:

News Websites Proliferate, Stretching Thin Ad Dollars — Many Generate Revenue by Hosting Conferences — Big profits in online news may be as scarce as buried gold but that isn't deterring journalists and investors from rushing into the sector. — In the past few months …

Discussion: @sarahneedleman, @evanasmith, @aburnspolitico, @mattyglesias and @jbenton

Rachele Kanigel / Mediashift:

SF Chronicle Hopes Incubator Will ‘Turn Around Legacy Media Company’ — After two decades of being pummeled by savvy tech companies that have stolen its readers, its advertisers and perhaps even its place as the leading media company in town, the San Francisco Chronicle has decided to fight innovation with innovation.

Discussion: @pbsidealab, @rakeshlobster and @mediatwit

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

Quentin Tarantino Suing Gawker Over Leaked ‘Hateful Eight’ Script (Exclusive) — The director takes legal action over the distribution of his script. — Quentin Tarantino — Quentin Tarantino has filed a copyright lawsuit against Gawker Media for allegedly disseminating copies of his script, The Hateful Eight.

Discussion: Gawker, Deadline.com, Guardian, The Wrap, Telegraph, The Verge, WebProNews, Mashable, Daily Dot, Los Angeles Times, CNET, NBCNews, Mother Jones, Online NewsHour, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, @popcultini, @eriqgardner, TIME and Variety

Ed Pilkington / Guardian:

ProPublica's Richard Tofel: ‘Our mission is to end abuses of power’ — The president of the non-profit investigative journalism website on measuring impact, team work - and Edward Snowden — Richard Tofel has had a dream. It came upon him the night before we meet and he is still a little rattled by it.

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

To Cover State of the Union, Fusion Taps Talking Animals and A Chatty Hot Dog — Cable net backed by Univision and ABC News strikes out in satirical direction to stand apart from TV-news pack — When President Obama delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday evening, NBC News will trot out Brian Williams to anchor its coverage.

Discussion: TVNewser and @rove

Michael Depp / NetNewsCheck Latest:

NPR Eyes More Personalized Digital Platform — Public radio network NPR is developing a new app aimed at fostering a more seamless listening experience between devices that employs geotargeting and algorithms to better integrate local content and play to users' taste, as well as features DVR-like time-shifting.

Robert Lipsyte / ESPN:

ESPN Ombudsman criticises Grantland's Dr. V story, calls it “inexcusable” — Dr. V story understandable, inexcusable — A young golfer's obsession with an oddly shaped putter invented by a mysterious scientist and endorsed on YouTube? I will give that kind of story …

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …, @coreyinscoe, @marynmck, @andrewrgoldman, @el_skootro, @dangainor, @mrharrybay, @craigsilverman, @drewmtips, @sulliview, @mathewi, @king_kaufman, @mattdpearce and @ourand_sbj

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Q&A: Andrew Golis on matching great journalism with big audiences (and, oh yeah, dollars) — Andrew Golis has been hanging out at The Atlantic for the past six months or so, getting to know people and working on whatever interests him. Golis was hired in June to inaugurate the role …

Discussion: @ceodonovan, @agolis and @amlwhere

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The New York Times animates the tragic tale of olive oil — It's no small secret the New York Times is trying to expand its multimedia efforts across all sections. They're producing the Times Minute, a brief news recap, as well as features videos, summaries, and short features in Op-Docs.

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Twitter's Grammy Traffic Is Flat — And So Are the Grammy's TV Ratings — For the past few years, Twitter has been telling TV programmers and advertisers that it can bring them more eyeballs, because people on Twitter spend a lot of time talking about TV, reading about TV and watching TV at the same time.