Mediagazer: White House says it backs FCC in efforts to protect network neutrality (Timothy B. Lee/The Switch)

10:35 AM ET, February 19, 2014

Top News:

Martin Evans / Telegraph:

Tony Blair offered to be unofficial adviser to Brooks and Murdoch over phone hacking scandal, court hears — In an hour-long phone conversation with Mrs Brooks the day after the News of the World was closed in July 2011, the former Prime Minister advised her to “tough up” telling her “it will pass”

Discussion: Guardian, @felixsalmon, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Reuters, @davidfolkenflik, @theredrag, @aaronbastani, @emilybell, @dansabbagh, @callingengland and @emilybell

John Rentoul / The Independent:

Blair responds to Brooks email — Statement by a spokesperson for Tony Blair: — “This was Mr Blair simply giving informal advice over the phone. He made it absolutely clear to Ms Brooks that, though he knew nothing personally about the facts of the case, in a situation as serious …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

LinkedIn Opens Its Publishing Platform To All Members — To date, LinkedIn has allowed a small, editorially selected group of “Influencers” like Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Barack Obama to publish their thoughts and advice to its network as long-form blog posts.

Discussion: blog.linkedin.com, Gigaom, NYT Bits, @danroth, Mashable, The Next Web and mUmBRELLA

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Journalists seeking accreditation for Brit Awards asked to agree coverage of sponsor Mastercard — The organisers of tonight's Brit Awards for pop music appear to be asking journalists to guarantee coverage of sponsor MasterCard as the price of attending. — Before providing journalists …

Discussion: The Independent, Guardian and The Drum

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:

Whisper publicizes and claims it vetted a new Gwyneth Paltrow affair rumor shared by a user — Whisper, The Sequoia-Backed Secret Sharing App, Makes A Move Into TMZ Territory — Whisper, the popular anonymous social sharing startup that's raised $24 million from venture capital giants …

Discussion: @neetzan, Defamer, @whisperapp, @ryanlawler, @neetzan, @neetzan, @fmanjoo, Brian Solis, Business Insider, Betabeat, The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed

Graydon Carter / Vanity Fair:
Graydon Carter explains why Vanity Fair didn't run with Gwyneth Paltrow piece

Discussion: FishbowlNY, The New York Observer, Digital Spy, WebProNews, @jayrosen_nyu, Guardian and @vfhollywood

Sam Kirkland / Poynter:

AP brings Olympics coverage to local news outlets with customizable, white-label microsites — If you've seen an Winter Olympics medal count on your local newspapers' homepage, there's a good chance it was built by the Associated Press Digital News Experience program team.

Discussion: @ap_corpcomm

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:
Some people want a lot more Winter Olympics; some people want no Winter Olympics at all

Discussion: Latest News & Headlines, Forbes and The Whip

Tim Peterson / AdAge:

Vice Goes Into Food Business With ‘American Idol’ Producer FremantleMedia — Site to Debut in Early April and Air Videos Online, on TV — In early April Vice will debut a yet-unnamed food vertical with “American Idol” producer FremantleMedia. The brash digital-media company also has a food-related ad network on its menu.

Discussion: The Wrap, Digital Spy, broadcastnow.co.uk, thedrum.com, Digiday and Variety

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Warner in Deal to Sign Acts Found on Shazam — In the good old days of digital music — say, five or six years ago — high-tech talent scouting by record labels meant trawling MySpace for hot new bands. Labels still hunt for acts online, but the pools of data they consult have become much more vast …

Discussion: @sisario, @wiesenthal, Music Week, AllAccess.com, Mobile Entertainment Feed, BroadwayWorld.com, hypebot and The Next Web

Costas Pitas / Reuters:

British court quashes legal challenge by partner of Snowden leaks reporter — (Reuters) - Britain's High Court has quashed a legal challenge against the detention under anti-terrorism laws of the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who brought leaks from former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden to world attention.

Discussion: Guardian, The Intercept, Softpedia News, The Daily Beast, BBC, The Huffington Post, @colvinius, Associated Press, Guardian, The Verge, @article19org, @davidleigh3 and @paultowen

Patrick Kingsley / Guardian:

Peter Greste and fellow journalists to finally appear in Egyptian court — The three al-Jazeera staffers, who have been held for 46 days, are locked in a cell next to the country's former prime minister — Three al-Jazeera English journalists seized last December from their Cairo hotel rooms …

Discussion: @lindblomkarin and @con_agius

BBC:
The BBC, NBC News, Reuters, and others call for release of Al Jazeera journalists

Discussion: TVNewser, bookforum.com, @selingirit, @dhrutishah, Guardian, @fieldproducer, @aljazeera, @mishalhusainbbc, @andrroy, @malonebarry, @ssirgany, @halagorani and Kirk LaPointe's …

Derrik J. Lang / Associated Press:

Q&A: A documentarian working in virtual reality — You are here — Home » AP Party » Q&A: A documentarian working in virtual reality — LOS ANGELES (AP) — Forget 3-D glasses. — Oscar-nominated documentarian Danfung Dennis believes the next evolution in filmmaking …

Discussion: Fast Company and Wired

Jim Romenesko:

U.S. News deletes archived web content published before 2007 — A Romenesko reader recently noticed that U.S. News wiped out a good chunk of its archives. He writes: “The way that I stumbled upon this is that I am constantly going back into archives of various publications while doing research.

Discussion: @mtdukes, @dancow, @beschizza, @clare_oc, @notjessewalker and @felixsalmon

Timothy B. Lee / The Switch:

White House says it backs FCC in efforts to protect network neutrality — FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (Jacquelyn Martin/AP) — Since President Obama took office in 2009, the Federal Communications Commission has been struggling to decide what to do about network neutrality.

Discussion: White House.gov Blog, Broadcasting & Cable, NYT Bits, TheHill, PC World, CNET and Re/code

Motherboard:

Ukraine's Newest Media Company Is Ensuring the Revolution Will Be Televised — Just behind the wall of flame, a teenager raised a smartphone to the air. Beside him, a man hurled a leg of a chair into the blaze. Hundreds of people ducked in and around, covering their heads, yelling, feeding the fire.

Marton Dunai / Reuters:

How Hungary's government shaped public media to its mould — BUDAPEST (Reuters) - On June 21, 2011 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban made a first appearance in what would become a regular slot on MR1 radio's news show. — The appearance in itself was nothing extraordinary …

New York Times:

El País Ousts Editor; 3rd Spanish Paper to Do So Amid Financial Woes — MADRID — El País, Spain's leading daily newspaper, ousted its top editor on Tuesday in a new sign of economic turmoil in an industry in which the leaders of two other top Spanish papers …

Discussion: Bloomberg and In English Section

John Plunkett / Guardian:

BBC Radio 1 top 40 goes with the flow by including streaming plays — Station to follow shift in way young people consume music by integrating data from Spotify and other services into singles chart — The BBC Radio 1 top 40 UK singles chart is to undergo the biggest upheaval in its 62-year history …

Discussion: BBC, Pocket-lint and thedrum.com

Glenn Greenwald / The Intercept:

On the UK's Equating of Journalism With Terrorism — (updated below) — As my colleague Ryan Devereaux reports, a lower UK court this morning, as long expected, upheld the legality of the nine-hour detention of my partner, David Miranda, at Heathrow Airport last August …

Discussion: thedrum.com, @laughingstoic and @attackerman

Jason Schwartz / Boston Magazine:

Will John Henry Save the Globe? — Maybe, but his ambitions are much grander. “I feel my mortality,” he says. So here's his plan: He's going to use the time he has left on earth to try to save journalism itself. — Just days after striking a deal to buy the Boston Globe …