Mediagazer: Disney's Anne Sweeney Talks Successor, Online Pay TV Services (Georg Szalai/Hollywood Reporter)

9:40 PM ET, March 27, 2014

Top News:

Amazon planning free ad-supported TV and music streaming service, no Prime subscription required — Amazon Plans Free Streaming Media Service — Website Said to Drop Strategy of Only Offering Video to Users of Its Prime Shipping Service — Amazon.com Inc. plans a free …

Discussion: Deadline.com, USA Today, CNNMoney.com, The Huffington Post, BGR, TechCrunch, Radio & Television …, Globe and Mail, Business Insider, Gigaom, The Verge, SlashGear, Pocket-lint, App Advice, Engadget, Business Insider Australia and Variety

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Amazon Says It Has No Plans to Offer a Free TV and Music-Video Streaming Service — Here we go again: Amazon.com denied a Wall Street Journal report Thursday that the Internet retailing giant is working up a free, ad-supported TV and music-video service. — “We're often experimenting …

Discussion: AppleInsider, Wall Street Journal and Pocket-lint

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Amazon Launching Video Box Next Week — Amazon's entry into the set-top box world, which has been delayed for months, is coming next week, according to people familiar with the company's plans. — The e-commerce giant has invited reporters to gather for an “update on our video business” in New York next Wednesday, April 2.

Discussion: Business Insider, AdAge, Forbes, The Verge, Engadget, Reuters, 9to5Mac, Daily Mail, Electronista, Los Angeles Times, @seanbesser, TechCrunch, Mashable, WebProNews, BuzzFeed, Pocket-lint, BGR, AppleInsider, Gigaom, @zseward and App Advice

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

NBCUniversal-Owned DailyCandy and Television Without Pity Will Be Shut Down — DailyCandy and Television Without Pity, two high-profile Internet content properties owned by NBCUniversal, are being shuttered, a move that management told staff this morning would be occurring next week.

Discussion: TVNewser, Variety, Mediaite, @atotalmonet, @saramorrison, @hblodget, The New York Observer, FishbowlNY, @felixsalmon, Mashable, @doreeshafrir, @taraariano, @shani_o, @pamelaribon, @poniewozik and AdPulp

Thornton McEnery / Crain's New York: NBC mismanaged DailyCandy to death, former adviser says

Committee to Protect Journalists:

Turkish courts release eight journalists in two days — The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release this week of at least eight imprisoned journalists in Turkey, but calls on Turkish authorities to scrap the charges against them and release all of the journalists jailed in the country.

Hurriyet Daily News:
Turkey blocks access to YouTube after leaked recordings of key security meeting

Discussion: New York Times, PandoDaily, @zeynep, BBC, @robertmackey, Electronista, Variety, @hasavrat, GlobalPost, Los Angeles Times, @buzzfeednews, @arikan, @hdner and Newsy

Fercan Yalinkilic / Wall Street Journal:
After Twitter Ban, Turkey's Netizens Find YouTube Blockage a Breeze

Discussion: @eff, @alistairmbarr, @policy, Los Angeles Times, Re/code, ReadWrite and Motherboard

Hurriyet Daily News:
Turkish court rejects Twitter's petition

Discussion: Hurriyet Daily News, New York Times, The Switch and Reuters

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Tweets About Music to Get a Billboard Chart — Chatter about music is everywhere on Twitter. Soon there will be a Billboard chart to rank all of it. — On Thursday, the two companies will announce a deal to create the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts: continuously updated lists …

Discussion: Billboard, The Next Web, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, @liahaberman, Hollywood Reporter, TIME, The Verge and ReadWrite

Wall Street Journal:
Twitter rolling out new music strategy centered on music conversations and content this week

Discussion: The Twitter Blog, NBC News, @neilshahwsj, @wsjd, @ryanchittum, TechCrunch, VentureBreak, Digital Trends, hypebot, Associated Press, Complete Music Update, @brokencool, @maura, VatorNews, The Next Web and 9to5Mac

Felix Salmon:

Grand, immersive designs, increasingly common in journalism, vastly oversell smaller stories — Against beautiful journalism — Have you seen that site's gorgeous new redesign? Every article has a nice big headline, huge photos, loads of white space, intuitive and immersive scrolling …

Discussion: @yurivictor, @langealexandra, The New York Observer, @bendwalsh, @jayrosen_nyu, @zimbalist, @dylanlathrop, @feliciasonmez, @nycsouthpaw, @kgittleson, @benjrooney, @wblau, @matthewteller, @martinstabe and @johngasaway

Nate Raymond / Reuters:

Ex-MP3tunes chief hit with $41 million copyright verdict — (Reuters) - The former chief executive of defunct online music storage firm MP3tunes was ordered to pay an estimated $41 million on Wednesday after being found liable for infringing copyrights owned by record companies and music publishers once part of EMI Group Ltd.

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Gigaom, Billboard, Complete Music Update, Music Week, TorrentFreak, Digital Media Wire, hypebot, AllAccess.com and Techdirt

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:

Sources: Dropbox Acqui-Hiring Social Reading App Readmill For $8 Million — With fresh capital in its coffers, Dropbox appears to be on somewhat of an acquisition spree, albeit a quiet one. Following the cloud storage company's recent purchase of workplace chat solution Zulip …

Discussion: @laurahazardowen, @hermancarlsson, @mikebutcher, @mhauer, @ehn, @henrikt, @jorilallo, @maxfenton and App Advice

Michelle Castillo / Adweek:

HitFix Launches Multiplatform Video — After dabbling in video pieces over the last few years, entertainment news site HitFix announced today the full launch of HitFix Video. — “Basically, for us, video is the way, the hook, the content and the opportunity to get in front of consumers …

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Twitter pressuring companies highlighting tweets for TV not to work with Facebook — Twitter Plays Hardball With Facebook Over TV — And TV Networks Gripe — TV networks love to work posts from Twitter, Facebook and other social networks into their programming.

Discussion: @caseynewton

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Revenge porn could be opening up an exception to publishers' protections online — At Gawker, Michelle Dean has a piece on revenge porn — the awful practice of jilted men (mostly) posting explicit videos and pictures from their exes online — and the legal backlash building against it.

Discussion: US News, Gawker and The Daily Caller

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

Entertainment Weekly goes the platform route — Some of the hottest new publishers often paint themselves as platforms, open to contributions from the “people formerly known as the audience,” as journalism professor Jay Rosen has put it. Old media wants in.

Discussion: Mediaite, The Week, FishbowlNY, The Wrap, @guylodge, @loganhill33, @scott_tobias, @andygreenwald, @nprmonkeysee, @erik_hayden and Re/code, Thanks:@lmoses

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

Viacom in fight with small distributors over fees for networks — Small cable operators may lose access to Viacom channels including Comedy Central, home to “South Park.” (Comedy Central / March 26, 2014) — Small cable operators think Viacom, parent of MTV, Comedy Central …

Discussion: Anniston Star, CBS News, Island Packet, Bolivar Commercial, Arizona Range News, Multichannel.com and Bloomberg

Washington Times:

Washington Times launches CurrentSee, a digital magazine aimed at conservative black Americans — The Times launches new digital magazine: American CurrentSee — Publication aims to serve conservative blacks — The Washington Times on Thursday launches American CurrentSee …

Discussion: @jessewashington, @pareene and The Daily Caller

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Rebekah Brooks's PA denies lying about knowledge of police inquiry — Cheryl Carter tells phone-hacking trial she would have been aware of matters related to investigation in the spring of 2011 — Rebekah Brooks' former secretary has denied telling “a lie” in previous evidence …

Discussion: mUmBRELLA

Edirin Oputu / Columbia Journalism Review:

The Online News Association is working on a crowdsourced ethics code project — The Online News Association is working on a crowdsourced ethics code project — The Online News Association is working on “Build Your Own Ethics Code,” a toolkit to help news outlets, bloggers …

Mark DeCambre / Quartz:

Spotify is planning an IPO for this fall — Spotify could take itself public some time in the fall of 2014. — The popular music-streaming company has participated in informal chats with some of the investment banks likely to fight for a role in a potential IPO, sources familiar with the process said.

Discussion: MarketWatch, PandoDaily, CNET, VentureBeat, NewStuffHere.com, TechCrunch, Digital Trends, Business Insider, Guardian and @matthewphillips

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Disney's Anne Sweeney Talks Successor, Online Pay TV Services — At a conference in London, she discusses the “creative transformation” rather than “creative destruction” of television and comments on the company's acquisition of Maker Studios. — LONDON - Anne Sweeney …

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Twitter's brevity is its biggest strength and its big weakness — and a massive challenge — If you've been following the Twitter rumor mill at all, you've probably seen reports about a number of things that the company is trying out — as part of its ongoing beta testing of new features …

Discussion: The Next Web and PandoDaily