Mediagazer: Sony exits the North American ebook business and gives its customers to Kobo (Laura Hazard Owen/Gigaom)

1:05 PM ET, February 6, 2014

Top News:

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Times Co. Reports Digital Subscriber Increase, but Continued Ad Declines — The New York Times Company said it added digital subscribers and slowed declines in print and digital advertising revenues during the fourth quarter of 2013, a year of transition for the newspaper publisher.

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, FishbowlNY, Capital New York, Mashable and @romenesko

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Times chief lays out ‘a critical year’ for ad revenue — 2014 will be a “critical year in the story of advertising” at The New York Times Co., chief executive Mark Thompson said this morning. — On a conference call with Wall Street analysts following the release of the Times' fourth …

Discussion: @joshsternberg

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

New York Times digital subscriptions grew 19% in 2013 — The number of digital subscriptions to New York Times Company products grew from 640,000 at the end of 2012 to 760,000 at the end of 2013, a gain of nearly 19 percent. Revenue from circulation was up about 4 percent over the previous year …

Discussion: investors.nytco.com, @mathewi, The Huffington Post, @edmundlee, @pkafka and @bgrueskin

John McDuling / Quartz: Can the New York Times's online readership offset its prolonged ad slump?

Sruthi Ramakrishnan / Reuters:

AOL revenue rises 13 percent as ad sales jump — (Reuters) - Digital media and entertainment company AOL Inc reported a better-than-expected 13 percent rise in quarterly revenue as its advertising revenue rose, especially from video. — The company's total revenue rose to $679 million …

Discussion: Capital New York, VentureBeat, Re/code, Forbes, FishbowlNY, CNET, Deadline.com, @aoladvertising and TechCrunch

Steven Jacobs / Street Fight: AOL's Armstrong: 'We're Not Giving up on Patch'

Leslie Kaufman / New York Times:
AOL Reports Solid Revenue, but Patch Tamped Down Profit

Discussion: CNBC, @joepompeo and Silicon Republic

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

Gannett's print-focused paywalls flounder — The quality imperative and charging for news online — Gannett's fourth-quarter newspaper results, announced Tuesday, were basically miserable. — Revenue at its publishing segment dropped 4.6 percent in the fourth quarter from last year …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and Gannett Blog

Eric J. Smith / NetNewsCheck Latest: Gannett: USA Today Inserts To Hit 35 Markets

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:
Newsquest increases circulation revenues as sales go down

Discussion: @greghadfield and National Union of Journalists

Alex Barinka / Bloomberg:

Aereo Reopens New York Online-TV Service to New Subscribers — Aereo Inc., the online-television company that's battling broadcasters in the Supreme Court, reopened its service to New York subscribers after regaining enough capacity to handle demand. — People who were on a waiting list …

Discussion: TechCrunch, @engadget and @sai, Thanks:@alexbarinka

Brent Lang / The Wrap: Fox Is ‘Cautiously Optimistic’ Supreme Court Will Stop Aereo

David S. Cohen / Variety:

Winter Olympics: How NBCUniversal's Army Of Techs Conquered Sochi — For viewers, the Winter Olympics are just 18 days of sports and entertainment. — But for NBCUniversal, they're part of vast exercise in planning and logistics that stretches back to the end of the 2012 summer games in London …

Discussion: Forbes, Latest News & Headlines, AdAge, The New Yorker Blog and Softpedia News

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:
For NBC, a challenge in covering the Sochi Winter Olympics objectively

Discussion: Forbes, ThinkProgress, @brianstelter, @washingtonpost, @joesudbay, Deadspin and Hit & Run

Catherine Taibi / The Huffington Post:
NBC News' Richard Engel: My Computers, Cellphone Were Hacked ‘Almost Immediately’ In Sochi

Discussion: Poynter, Erik Wemple, ABC News, Business Insider, Mediaite and New York Times

Michael Wolff / USA Today:

Revenue prospects are dim for the recent flurry of new journalism start-ups — Revenue prospects are dim for the recent flurry of new journalism start-ups — The great foment in the news business involves journalists leaving established news organizations to strike out on their own …

Discussion: @robenfarzad, @jamesbreiner, @myriamrobin, @jayrosen_nyu, @carr2n, The Atlantic Online and The Huffington Post

Amy Schatz / Re/code:

Twitter Hints at Legal Action to Release More Data on Government Requests — Twitter said Thursday it was considering its legal options in its effort to release more detailed information about the requests for information it receives from U.S. agencies. — Company officials …

Discussion: The Twitter Blog and NYT Bits

Nick Summers / The Next Web:
Twitter transparency report shows government takedown and account info requests are on the rise

Discussion: Twitter Transparency Report, TechCrunch, Silicon Republic, Twitter Transparency Report and Twitter Transparency Report

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Celebrity Weeklies, Fashion Magazines Continue to Struggle on Newsstand — Today, the Alliance for Audited Media released its consumer magazine circulation data for the second half of 2013, and once again, the narrative remains the same. Overall circulation remained relatively flat versus …

Discussion: AdAge, New York Times, Alliance for Audited Media and Talking Points Memo

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Marc Andreessen talks about the evolution of the news business and why he is optimistic — Everyone seems to have an opinion about what's wrong with the news business — whether it's the best of times or the worst of times for journalism, whether paywalls are the answer, and so on …

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, @pmarca, @emilybell, @emilybell, @gaberivera, @mg, @ceciliakang, @mikeisaac, @gigaom, @cmschroed, @marklittlenews and Featured stories

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:
Marc Andreessen: The 'problem with local news is most people don't care'

Discussion: Street Fight, @pmarca, @pmarca, @nitin_mangtani, @anildash, @pmarca, @meganbungeroth, @c_s_green and @themurdochtimes

American Press Institute:

American Press Institute announces major project to improve fact-checking journalism — ARLINGTON, VA—The American Press Institute ("API") announced today that it has received a grant of up to $400,000 over two years from the Democracy Fund. The grant will support research to improve political fact checking.

Discussion: @jessicaplautz, @ampress, @jcstearns and @cjr

Jasper Jackson / The Media Briefing:

Metric warfare on the advertising battlefield: What News UK's debate with the Guardian is all about — The mini war of words between News UK CEO Mike Darcey and the Guardian is being billed as a choice between two models of journalism, between free vs paid, between mass media vs quality media.

Discussion: @rorybrown and Press Gazette

Laura Hazard Owen / Gigaom:

Sony exits the North American ebook business and gives its customers to Kobo — Sony, which is essentially a non-player in the U.S. ebook market at this point, is cutting its losses and shutting down its digital bookstore in the U.S. and Canada, the company reported Thursday.

Discussion: Publishers Weekly, Press Articles, The Verge, Publishers Lunch, Engadget and Digital Book World

Brian Morrissey / Digiday:

Scoreboard: Upworthy Combats Clickbait Critics With Attention Data — Upworthy has replaced BuzzFeed as the viral star of the moment, an object of both adoration and loathing for its meteoric rise on the back of clicktastic, heartwarming headlines that are shared in tremendous volume on Facebook.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Upworthy Insider, @michaelroston, @ampress and Adweek

Brian Beutler / Salon:

Exclusive: Despite escalating government intimidation, Greenwald will “force the issue” and visit U.S. — Months after the first insinuations that he risks arrest if he visits the US, Greenwald is more concerned than ever — When big-name public figures and Edward Snowden critics …

Discussion: @buzzfeedben

Robinson Meyer / The Atlantic:

Facebook aims to become digital publishing kingmaker by sending massive traffic to news sites — And Just Like That, Facebook Became the Most Important Entity in Web Journalism — The graph above tells maybe the most interesting—and definitely the most surprising—story of the past year of digital media.

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …, @theatlantic and @lauraolin