Mediagazer: Hollywood Rallies Support for Republicans After Piracy Defeat (Lucas Shaw/The Wrap)

8:35 AM ET, February 28, 2014

Top News:

Darren Boyle / Press Gazette:

FT Group boosts profits to £55 million as business daily's digital subs rise to 415,000 — The FT Group made a profit of £55 million last year despite plunging print circulation figures for the FT according to results reported this morning. — Profit was said to be up 17 per cent year on year, on an underlying basis.

Discussion: Guardian

Kristen Schweizer / Bloomberg:

Pearson Plunges as Earnings Drop on Education in North America — Pearson Plc (PSON) fell as much as 8 percent after saying it wouldn't emerge from a difficult transition period until 2015 after earnings plunged last year on weak demand in U.S. higher education and restructuring costs.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Life Style Extra, Reuters, Financial Times, @tcarmody, City A.M., RTTNews, London News and Bookseller news

Jasmine Wang / Bloomberg:

Hong Kong Paper Raises Reward to Find Lau's Attackers — Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News tripled its cash reward to HK$3 million ($387,000) for catching the assailants who critically injured its former chief editor Kevin Lau, the newspaper said today. — Media Chinese International Ltd. …

Discussion: Reuters, The Irish Times, Here & Now, New York Times and Wall Street Journal

Agence France-Presse:
Hong Kong journalists vow not to be intimidated by savage attack on Kevin Lau

Discussion: Poynter and Wall Street Journal

Lucas Shaw / The Wrap:

Hollywood Rallies Support for Republicans After Piracy Defeat — Bruised by the defeat of an anti-piracy bill two years ago, Hollywood's chief lobbying organization is giving more money to outside political groups that support Republican lawmakers. — During the 2012 election cycle …

Discussion: CREW and TheHill

David Sirota / PandoDaily:
MPAA response to Pando investigation confirms strength of visual-effects workers case against Big Hollywood

Discussion: Variety and @mcarney

Dan Rayburn / StreamingMediaBlog.com:

Here's How The Comcast & Netflix Deal Is Structured, With Data & Numbers — There's been a lot of speculation involving the business and technical details surrounding the recent deal between Comcast and Netflix and plenty of wrong numbers and information being used.

Discussion: @numonkeys, @patricknorton, @samschwartz, @pkafka and Daring Fireball

Ben Thompson / stratechery:
Comcast deal is beneficial for Netflix but not for true net neutrality

Discussion: Marco.org and @lorcand

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Reddit is having the same problem as traditional media: Defining what the news is — I'm not sure if it qualifies as ironic or not, but just a day after I wrote a post about how Reddit's new “live reporting” feature could contribute to the opening up or crowdsourcing of journalism …

Fernando Alfonso III / Daily Dot:
Why Reddit mods are censoring Greenwald's latest bombshell

Discussion: @lightcoin, Mashable, @mathewi, Washington's Blog, @michaelroston, @intercept_this, @antderosa, @mathewi, @mattzeitlin and Techdirt

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Hulu is selling its Japanese service to Nippon TV — Hulu Japan is being acquired by the local broadcast giant Nippon TV. Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins announced the move in a blog post, which read in part: … Hopkins said that the service had grown to a size where a sale to a strategic buyer made sense.

Discussion: Hulu Blog, Variety, Los Angeles Times, Hollywood Reporter, Broadcasting & Cable, Reuters, The Next Web, VentureBeat, CNET, TechCrunch, Home Media Magazine, Engadget and Re/code

Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:

Business Insider launching in UK this year, first outside US with no franchisee content licensing deals and its own staff — Business Insider prepares to take the UK — For Business Insider, the next move in its bid for global domination is to colonize the U.K.

Discussion: @hblodget

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

Someone Outranking You With Your Own Content? Use The New Google Scraper Report — One of the most frustrating experiences for any publisher is discovering that someone not only has copied your content but outranks you on Google for searches related to that content.

Discussion: Softpedia News

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

TheWeek.com Launches ‘Speed Reads’ Vertical — In the past couple of years, the “longread” has been one of the most popular buzzwords among online publications, with outlets from BuzzFeed to The Atlantic touting investments in more deep-dive, longform journalism.

Discussion: theweek.com

Erik Gruenwedel / Home Media Magazine:

Blockbuster brand licenced by Crash Entertainment in UK, retail, by-mail, VOD coming late 2014 — Blockbuster Lives On in the U.K. — The nine lives of Blockbuster Video continues. — Dish Network's three-year ownership of rental icon Blockbuster may have resulted in a cumulative net loss …

Discussion: MCV: Home Stream, VideoGamer.com, Pocket-lint, Strategy Informer and VG247

Margaret Simons / Guardian:

The Saturday Paper: who on earth would launch a newspaper today? — Meet publisher Morry Schwartz and his 25-year-old editor, Erik Jensen, who over Darjeeling tea dreamed up an audacious plan to buck the rampant trend towards digital — Print enthusiasts Schwartz and Jensen.

Discussion: @themurdochtimes

Todd Spangler / Variety:

ABC will live-stream Oscars on web and mobile only to pay-TV subscribers in select markets — ABC Will Live-Stream Oscars to Web, Mobile Apps for First Time — But There's a Catch — Alphabet net to offer kudocast through Watch ABC apps and website, accessible only through certain pay-TV partners

Discussion: Capital New York, Broadcasting & Cable, AppleInsider, App Advice, MacRumors, Engadget, Mediaite, CNET, The Verge, The Wrap and @zseward

Todd Spangler / Variety:
ABC Signs On to Twitter's Advertising Program, Starting With #Oscars

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Mashable, @twitterads and The Next Web

Lars Brandle / Billboard:

Liberation Resolves Copyright Issue with Lawrence Lessig, Admit ‘Mistakes’ Were Made — Liberation Music has “amicably resolved” its copyright dispute with Professor Lawrence Lessig, with the Australian independent label admitting it was wrong to hit the academic with a “take-down” notice.

Discussion: NPR, Home theMusic.com.au, @lessig, Sydney Morning Herald and Electronic Frontier Foundation

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Amazon Talks to Music Labels About a Streaming Service — Amazon gives away movies and TV shows to people who join its Amazon Prime subscription service. When will it start giving away music, too? — Maybe this year. People have been predicting that Amazon would offer a Spotify …

Discussion: Electronista, VatorNews, GeekWire, Good E-Reader, VentureBeat, AppleInsider, Mashable, MacRumors, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Engadget, App Advice and The Next Web

Mary Beth Quirk / Consumerist:

NBC Says It Stopped 45,000 Instances Of Video Piracy During Sochi Olympics — When there's a $775 million broadcasting investment on the line, you better believe that a network like NBC is going to go after video pirates just like Peter Pan and his gang in Neverland.

Madison Gray / Poynter:

Detroit news outlets join forces in reporting from the grass roots — A long worn-out joke about Detroit goes something like this: “The last one out of the city, please turn off the lights.” — It's a tired jab at a city that has taken more than its share of punches for its seemingly …

Discussion: @poynter

Casey Newton / The Verge:

ShowYou update turns viral videos into a personalized iPad TV channel — For all the great videos on the web, picking which ones to watch has never been much fun. Sites like YouTube and Vimeo suggest related videos for you to watch, but often require a lot of decision-making on your part.

Nicoletta Pittner / American Press Institute:

Why fact-checking is the root of journalism: 8 good questions with PolitiFact's Angie Drobnic Holan — Angie Drobnic Holan is top editor in charge of PolitiFact, a news unit within the Tampa Bay Times organization. She sees fact-checking as a part of journalists' mission to hold politicians accountable.

Discussion: @ampress, @tglaisyer and @niemanlab

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Tribune and Time Inc. spinoffs face uncertain future as parents strip digital assets, add debt — The newsonomics of the print orphanage — Tribune's and Time Inc.'s — Talk about spin. Two of America's once-iconic publishers are about to be spun. Spun off, that is …

Discussion: @niemanlab, @saila, @jbenton, Mashable and Bloomberg