Mediagazer: Tribune's profit declines 43% (Walter Hamilton/Los Angeles Times)

12:10 PM ET, March 28, 2014

Top News:

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: NetNewsCheck Latest, WebProNews, Wall Street Journal, AdExchanger, @sassy_spy, AppleInsider, Engadget, Pocket-lint and Business Insider Australia

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

Greg Bensinger / Wall Street Journal:
Amazon planning free ad-supported TV and music streaming service, no Prime subscription required

Jeremy Wagstaff / Reuters:

Journalists, media under attack from hackers: Google researchers — (Reuters) - Twenty-one of the world's top-25 news organizations have been the target of likely state-sponsored hacking attacks, according to research by two Google security engineers. — While many internet users face …

Discussion: @javelinsecurity, Computer Business Review, The Independent, Politico, @ashk4n, @freedomofpress, VCPOST, @ampress, @headhntr, @rsfnet and @mpoppel

Michelle Castillo / Adweek:

Facebook Algorithm Tweaks Hurt Viral Sites More Than Other Publishers — Publishers are claiming that content they share on Facebook pages isn't reaching as many readers as it used to. — Adweek reached out to comScore to find out how referral traffic through Facebook has changed …

Discussion: @adweek

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Johnston Press posts £287m loss — Value writedowns contributes to loss, but company boosts operating profits for first time in seven years to stand at £54.3m — Johnston Press chief Ashley Highfield is confident growth in digital revenues will soon outweigh the decline in print.

Discussion: @jeffmoriarty, @alexgubbay, @bernardginns and @marksweney

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

Newsrooms freeze out freelancers moonlighting for brands — For the freelance journalist, the siren call of “brand journalism” is tough to resist. It's a growth industry, and one that pays pretty well at a time when the $2-a-word magazine piece is hard to find.

Walter Hamilton / Los Angeles Times:

Tribune's profit declines 43% — The parent of the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets reports net income of $241.6 million last year, down from $422.5 million in 2012. — Tribune's financial results showed the pressure facing newspaper companies as they grapple with the migration of readers to digital devices.

Discussion: Chicago Tribune, Chicago Business, Wall Street Journal, Variety, @rosental, TVSpy, PR Newswire and digitalfacility.com

Erik Wemple:

MSNBC disputes Pew study on newsgathering reduction — The Pew Research Center's “State of the News Media 2014” report contained some hard-to-swallow data for MSNBC. It chronicled, for instance, the network's awful drop in daytime audience and its primetime difficulties.

Discussion: Mediashift, Marketing Charts …, Mediaite and Marketing Pilgrim

Preetam Kaushik / The Huffington Post:

American Media Brands Cast Web Over News in India — The Indian news cycle has been operating at a feverish pitch of late. The world's most populous democracy is about to choose a new government, politics is at its polarizing best, and a colorful cast of characters vying for power is supplying a constant stream of sound bytes.

BBC:

Phone-hacking trial: Murdoch tried to stop Brooks resigning — Rupert Murdoch wanted to know if Rebekah Brooks had any plans to resign as News International chief executive so he could intervene to stop her doing so, the phone-hacking trial has heard. — Mrs Brooks's husband, Charlie …

Discussion: ITV, Press Gazette, Guardian, thedrum.com and Guardian

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Fresh Off Disney Deal, Maker Studios Comes to Cable TV (EXCLUSIVE) — Deal was reached prior to Disney's $500 million-plus acquisition of YouTube multichannel network company — Maker Studios, which is being acquired by The Walt Disney Co. in a deal worth up to $950 million …

Discussion: Mashable

Alina Selyukh / Reuters:

U.S. TV stations' test finds channel-sharing technically viable — (Reuters) - Two television stations in Los Angeles that tested sharing radio frequencies found it technically viable, they said on Friday in a report to federal regulators who see the practice as one way to free up more airwaves for wireless broadband.

Discussion: Gigaom, Broadcasting & Cable, Los Angeles Times and FierceWireless

John McDuling / Quartz:

Inside Twitter's plan to fix itself — “I am not going to be satisfied until we reach every connected user on the planet, period,” Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo declared at an investor conference last month. Them's fighting words for any internet company. But especially for Twitter, which has a user growth problem and knows it.

Discussion: Business Insider and @rlytle

Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:

The case against the venture capital craze for content — Last year marked a major shift in venture capital interest back toward media companies, which investors have traditionally shunned. And for fast-growing digital media companies, it's hard to resist the allure of venture capital.

Discussion: @janinegibson, @richantoniello, @yummymummyclub, @digiday and @jpych, Thanks:@rbilton

Kenneth Li / Re/code:

Roku Will Be Your Future TV's Operating System — His world is about to get more crowded — that's a phrase that has haunted the coverage of Roku CEO Anthony Wood for the past decade. — Critics are applying the phrase again as the maker of the set-top box that streams Web TV to your TV faces another big rival.

Discussion: BGR, 9to5Mac, @johnpaczkowski, @johnpaczkowski and AppleInsider

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:

China's Baidu defeats U.S. lawsuit over censored search results — (Reuters) - Chinese Internet company Baidu Inc on Thursday won the dismissal of a U.S. lawsuit by pro-democracy activists who complained that Baidu illegally suppressed political speech on China's most widely used Internet search engine.

Discussion: New York Times, International Business Times, Washington Post, TechRadar.com, Quartz, Engadget and Wall Street Journal

Richard Leiby / Washington Post:

Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer and the weird state of post-scandal journalism — Today in our “Politics and the Media” graduate seminar, we're having a brief quiz. What is the best way to prepare for a job as a political columnist? — (A) Get hired in journalism, cover tedious town council meetings …

Discussion: Poynter, Business Insider, @jeffjarvis, @jacktemp and @washingtonpost

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Takes Another Crack At Read-It-Later With “Save” Button — Facebook's undying quest to be your newspaper has seen it launch multiple News Feeds, the standalone Paper app, trending topics, and more. You're not always able to stop what you're doing and read what you discover, though.

Discussion: Business 2 Community and NDTV Gadgets

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

RIAA Demands Personal Details of Pirating YouTube Users — To many, uploading a music video of their favorite artist seems to be a relatively harmless act, but the major record labels clearly disagree. — Up until now “pirating” YouTube users would only get a slap on the wrist by Google …

Discussion: Music Week

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

AOL Goes After $32 Billion Market With Automated Web Ad Service — AOL Inc. (AOL), pushing an expansion beyond Web publishing, introduced a system that helps companies automate the process of buying and selling online advertising. — The service lets publishers sell space on websites and digital videos using software.

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Betaworks-Backed Tapestry Releases Update To Let You Build Stories In-App — Today Tapestry, the story-telling service out of betaworks, has released a big update to the mobile application, allowing users to create tapestries within the app for the first time ever.

Discussion: ITBusinessNet.com

Jennifer Saba / Reuters:

CBS Outdoor to go after more ad dollars as new company — (Reuters) - CBS Outdoor Americas' top executive says he plans to convince top advertisers to move more of their dollars toward billboards and other displays as the company splits from media broadcaster CBS on Friday.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, Wall Street Journal and New York Times

Chine Labbe / Reuters:

Actress Gayet wins privacy lawsuit versus tabloid in Hollande affair — (Reuters) - A French court ordered Closer magazine on Thursday to pay actress Julie Gayet 15,000 euros ($20,700) for publishing photos that revealed an affair between her and President Francois Hollande, her lawyer told Reuters.