Top News:
Edward Wyatt / New York Times:
Senate Committee Begins Its Review of Comcast Deal — WASHINGTON — Comcast took its case for acquiring Time Warner Cable to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, arguing at a Senate hearing that its proposed $45 billion takeover would benefit consumers by generating greater investment …
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Talking Biz News
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Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Comcast: Without Time Warner Cable, we can't compete against Google, Netflix — Comcast says it has “one arm tied behind our back” on eve of Senate hearing. — Comcast today filed a 175-page “public interest statement” with the Federal Communications Commission to explain …
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New York Times, Lost Remote, CNET, Politico, The Huffington Post, Softpedia News, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Verge, Businessweek, Guardian, Gigaom, @dangillmor, Reuters, Re/code, VentureBeat, The Wrap, Los Angeles Times, TheHill, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Reuters, Radio & Television …, The Switch, Forbes, Fast Company, PandoDaily and Variety
Palmer Gibbs / Sunlight Foundation Blog:
Comcast and Time Warner Cable give big to some senators reviewing merger
Comcast and Time Warner Cable give big to some senators reviewing merger
Discussion:
The Huffington Post, @emilysteel, @sunfoundation, CNNMoney.com, Engadget and The Verge
Harrison Weber / VentureBeat:
Q&A site Quora raises $80M to build the next Wikipedia — Quora believes it has built the best question and answer service on the Internet. Now, it's looking to Wikipedia for inspiration. — With a fresh $80 million in the bank, Quora's head of business operations, Marc Bodnick …
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Gigaom, TechCrunch, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Re/code, Forbes, @mathewi, @yoavlurie and Reuters
Mike Shields / Wall Street Journal:
Why CNN Is Launching A News Show Built For Twitter — As every media company from Yahoo to Microsoft to Crackle looks to up the amount of original Web video it produces, here comes CNN. — The television news network has been in the middle of major overhaul undertaken …
Discussion:
@jennifersaba, @mdornic and @jcstearns
Joel Achenbach / Achenblog:
Journalism is aggregation — While reporting a story last week I had a sudden revelation: I'm an aggregator. I'm one of them. I'm the person that I've been kvetching about for years now. “They think information wants to be stolen.” You know the rant.
Discussion:
Nieman Journalism Lab
John Glenday / The Drum:
Time borrows $1.4bn to buy British sister company — US publishing giant Time has announced its intention to raise $1.4bn of debt in order to purchase the UK operations of the media brand which are currently owned by Time Warner. — Time the publishing arm of Time Warner …
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International Business Times
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Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:
Hibu lays off nearly 200 journalists — Chalk up another flop to another plan to turn a profit with digital hyper-local media. — Hyper-local was the all the rage a few years ago, but there are few success stories in 2014. — Hibu, which was the former Yellow Pages, had an aggressive plan …
Discussion:
The Times Herald, KCRG-TV and TheGazette
Carrie Battan / The New Republic:
Podcasts: The Last Refuge of the C-List Celebrity (and Bret Easton Ellis) — oday we're going to talk about goddamn camera phones, and everybody wanting to take a picture of every goddamn thing," the rapper-turned “Law and Order: SVU” star Ice T said recently. “ This is not gangster. This is not fly.
Randall Chase / Associated Press:
Guild can intervene in fight for Philly newspapers — WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A Delaware judge says the union representing hundreds of workers for Philadelphia's two largest newspapers can participate in the dissolution of their ownership group. — The judge this week granted a request …
Stuart Elliott / New York Times:
Oxygen Shifts Focus to Millennial Viewers — In another sign of the growing influence of the millennial generation on Madison Avenue, the Oxygen cable channel will be revamped to appeal to a modern young woman, offering several new series with a multicultural focus.
Discussion:
@sulinnichols
Alex DeMarban / Alaska Dispatch:
Digital news organization Alaska Dispatch buys McClatchy's 68-year old newspaper Anchorage Daily News for $34M — Alaska Dispatch to purchase Anchorage Daily News — In what amounts to a stunning media shakeup in the 49th state, the still-young online news organization Alaska Dispatch announced …
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The New York Observer, New York Times, CNNMoney.com, bizjournals, NetNewsCheck Latest, PR Newswire, KDLG, Merced Sun-Star & …, @alaskarobyne, @anjumsheh, @adn_jomalley, @ethanklapper, @vosdscott, News, sports and weather …, Mashable, Reuters, Associated Press, bizjournals, @alaskadispatch, @wconnors, @arcticassembly, @weberwest, @nickriccardi, Poynter, @mlcalderone and @ethanklapper
Press Gazette:
UK minister responsible for the future of press regulation, Maria Miller, resigns over expenses row — Culture secretary Maria Miller quits over expenses row — The government minister responsible for the future of press regulation, Maria Miller, has resigned as Culture Secretary …
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The Independent, Guardian, Daily Mail, Bloomberg, Daily Star, Mirror.co.uk, Telegraph, Guardian, The Independent, BBC and Telegraph
Craig Silverman / Poynter:
Publications aim to make debunking as popular as fake images — Adrienne LaFrance and Matt Novak live in different cities and write for different sites in the Gawker Media network. LaFrance is a freelancer who contributes to several other publications. Novak works full-time on his blog, Paleofuture, which is part of Gizmodo.
Discussion:
@poynter, @history1800s and @caitlindewey
Helienne Lindvall / Guardian:
Muso a friendly way to fight piracy — Finding your music on infringing sites feels like being burgled, but a producer and songwriter has come up with a solution — Imagine if you downloaded a file from an illegal filesharing site or cyberlocker and, when you tried to open it …
Mike Isaac / Re/code:
Reddit Execs Ellen Pao and Jena Donlin Get Serious About the Site's Business (Q&A) — Reddit is one of the biggest sites on the Web. Now it just needs to start making it rain. — Since 2005, the online community message board and link-sharing site has risen from an esoteric bulletin board service …
Discussion:
@laurahazardowen, @pkafka, @niemanlab and The Switch
Paul Sandle / Reuters:
Vice Media targets more mainstream TV deals after Fremantle tie-up — (Reuters) - Vice Media, the New York-based group whose edgy reportage has proved a hit with young people, plans to sell more content to mainstream TV groups after signing such a deal with “American Idol” producer Fremantle Media, it said on Wednesday.
Tom Perry / Reuters:
Egypt arrests journalist said to work for Al Jazeera - agency — Egyptian security forces have arrested a man who worked for Qatar's Al Jazeera television network and accused him of inciting and taking part in violence, the state news agency MENA said on Wednesday.
Discussion:
allAfrica.com, Minneapolis Star Tribune and @hany2m
Laurie Burkitt / Wall Street Journal:
IMAX to Sell 20% Stake in Its Chinese Business — China Media Capital, FountainVest to Help Movie Firm to Expand — BEIJING— IMAX Corp. plans to sell a 20% stake in its Chinese business to two China-focused investor groups in an $80 million deal that the big-movie-screen operator hopes …
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Variety, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and Forbes
Paul Sawers / The Next Web:
Sesame Street now has its own dedicated video-on-demand service called Sesame GO — Breaking Bad fan? Sign-up to Netflix. Looking to stream more recent theatrical releases? Check out Amazon Instant Video. Kids addicted to Sesame Street? Well, there's a new kid on the VOD block just for that.