Mediagazer: Softcover Is A New Self-Publishing Platform Aimed At Technical Authors (Anthony Ha/TechCrunch)

2:20 PM ET, March 28, 2014

Top News:

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 …

Marcus Wohlsen / Wired:

Amazon's Bold Plan to Start a Last-Place TV Network — The many-legged business beast known as Amazon is growing one more tentacle. — According to the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, Amazon has plans to launch a Hulu-like service that will stream TV shows and other video to people across the net for free.

Discussion: The Switch, Talking Biz News and The Wrap

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Amazon Says It Has No Plans to Offer a Free TV and Music-Video Streaming Service

Jon Swaine / Guardian:

Faith and a media icon: Newsweek's unconventional new owners — It was meant to herald the triumphant return to newsstands of a venerable 80-year-old American media institution with a proud journalistic record. — Newsweek's 4,500-word relaunch cover story on Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto …

Discussion: @alexkoppelman

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.

Discussion: @mikestiles, @digiday, @niemanlab and @slosee

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

Matthew Lynch / Capital New York:

Jonathan Mahler to join Times media desk — Author, columnist and longtime New York Times Magazine contributor Jonathan Mahler will join the paper's media desk full time next month, media editor Peter Lattman told staff in a note today obtained by Capital. — According to the memo …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

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: Scotsman, BBC, London News, The visitor, Wigan Today, dailyrecord, MediaTel, Home on News, Stock Market Wire, Talking New Media, @jeffmoriarty, HoldTheFrontPage, @alexgubbay, @bernardginns and @marksweney

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, @ckrewson, PR Newswire, @rosental, digitalfacility.com and TVSpy

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 … and Mediaite

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.

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Softcover Is A New Self-Publishing Platform Aimed At Technical Authors — Softcover is a startup offering what it calls a “frictionless” platform for self-publishing e-books. — Co-founder Michael Hartl is an author himself, having written the Ruby on Rails Tutorial.

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: @rubinafillion, @jmcduling, Business Insider and @rlytle

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: Times of India, WebProNews, AllFacebook, Business 2 Community and NDTV Gadgets

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

Why the ABC News ‘Pink Slime’ Ruling Is Bad for the Media Business — The judge is not only allowing defamation to proceed. She won't allow the First Amendment to bar a tortious interference claim either. — Diane Sawyer — For those who have seen the Academy Award-nominated film …

Discussion: Bloomberg, Reuters, @ashmessesq and Hollywood Reporter

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

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, Guardian, thedrum.com and Guardian

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

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

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.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post Canada and Wall Street Journal

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

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: 9to5Mac, BGR, @johnpaczkowski, @johnpaczkowski, App Advice and AppleInsider

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

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.