Mediagazer: Conservative columnist James Delingpole to lead Breitbart.com's London team (Roy Greenslade/Guardian)

7:40 AM ET, February 17, 2014

Top News:

Stealthily, Comcast Fortifies Its Arsenal — Big media companies are generally warships, blistering with firepower and declaring their might long before they attack. But Comcast, which is headed toward being one of the biggest of them all, is much more like a submarine …

Discussion: @timkarr, @antderosa, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker Blog, MoneyBeat, Los Angeles Times, @ericklinenberg and DealBook

David Gelles / DealBook:

A Bigger Comcast May Beget More Deals — Just last month, Discovery Communications, the owner of cable networks including Animal Planet and TLC, had considered acquiring rival Scripps Networks Interactive in a deal that would have been valued at more than $10 billion. — Discovery never went ahead.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, New York Times, @pkafka, Paul Krugman and Reuters

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Conservative columnist James Delingpole to lead Breitbart.com's London team — James Delingpole and Raheem Kassam head Breitbart's new London team — Breitbart.com, the right-wing news and opinion website, is taking off in Britain. The most high-profile recruit is James Delingpole …

Leslie Kaufman / New York Times:

Breitbart News Network plans global expansion with Texas and London operations — Breitbart News Network Plans Global Expansion — It has been nearly two years since the conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart died, but the online news organization that carries his name is not only continuing …

Discussion: @donal_blaney, @flipcritic, @erinmcunningham and @billmon1

Adrianne Jeffries / The Verge:

People don't always read the articles they share — You're not going to read this — But you'll probably share it anyway — Earlier this month, there was yet another lengthy public debate about Upworthy, the two-year-old publisher that has become one of the most popular sites …

Discussion: @lakey, @gerrymcgovern, @chrisphin, @monkbent, @chrismoranuk, @joseph_grima, @hunterschwarz, @jessicagalliart, @craigsilverman, @upworthyspoiler, CNET and Gigaom

New York Times:

Punching Above Its Weight, Upstart Netflix Pokes at HBO — On the night of the Golden Globes ceremony last month, Netflix and HBO held dueling parties at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Bono and Julia Roberts mingled underneath a bejeweled tent as Netflix, the upstart streaming service …

Martin Pengelly / Guardian:

Journalists who broke NSA story in Guardian receive George Polk Awards — The three journalists who broke the National Security Agency revelations from Edward Snowden in the Guardian are among the recipients of the prestigious 2013 George Polk Awards in Journalism.

Discussion: Long Island University, New York Times, @ggreenwald and Slate

Elizabeth Jensen / New York Times:

WNET to Return $3.5 Million Grant for Pension Series — WNET, the New York City public television broadcaster, said Friday that it will return a $3.5 million grant it received to sponsor an ambitious project on public pensions amid charges that it solicited inappropriate underwriting for the series.

David Sirota / PandoDaily:
After Pando probe, WNET says it will return $3.5M grant for pension series from John Arnold

Discussion: PBS Ombudsman, @davidsirota, @jledbetter, @brianstelter and Talking Biz News

Amar Toor / The Verge:

Obstructed view: how Russia distorts the Olympics — Under pressure from the Kremlin, Russia's media has painted a starkly different picture of the Winter Olympics — When the Winter Olympic Games opened last week in Sochi, much of the conversation on social media focused on the event's shortcomings …

Discussion: TIME

James Trew / Engadget:

GoPro's IPO isn't about selling cameras, it's about creating a media empire — It was 2001, more than a decade before GoPro would announce its intentions to go public, and its CEO Nick Woodman was facing a very expensive failure. In just two years, he'd lost nearly $4 million of investors' money …

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

How a crime becomes political: Trayvon Martin and the way different media co-create the news — The shooting of Trayvon Martin was one of the biggest stories of 2012. But it didn't start out that way — it began as just another local crime story, and without a number of key points …

Discussion: Latest News & Headlines and Mediaite

Ian Crouch / New Yorker:

Creators of the Hemingway App Explain Their Rules for Writing — This week, in the Times, Charles McGrath wrote about a newly digitized collection of ephemera from Ernest Hemingway's Cuban estate, Finca Vigía, which confirms that the famously terse writer was, as McGrath says, “a hoarder.”

Discussion: @amandapalmer, @phizlair, @brainpicker, The Millions, PandoDaily and GalleyCat

Sam Kirkland / Poynter:

Facebook vs. Google, social media vs. SEO: Why BuzzFeed data shouldn't declare a winner — Last week, the latest traffic referral report from BuzzFeed caught Marshall Simmonds's eye. The data indicated Facebook delivered about 3.5 times more page views to BuzzFeed Network sites in December than Google did:

Discussion: The Daily Caller